When the scaffolding of taking yourself as the center of the universe falls, the jaguar emerges. It comes from the depths of life to remind us that we are instinct, river, and jungle.
– Hilde
I love this quote, found at the bookstore in the town I am in.
It’s not just our pristine nature that’s revealed when the scaffolding of taking ourselves as the center falls. It’s everything else as well. Our human nature. The nature in us that comes from all our ancestors going back to the first single-celled organisms. It’s ourselves as the local eyes, ears, thoughts, and feelings of the universe.
What does it mean that the scaffolding falls?
In a conventional sense, it means we realize that although we are at the center of our universe, every other being is also at the center of their universe. Every single thing is at the center of the universe. It’s not just us. We are part of the web of life. We are one local expression of this living planet and this universe, just like every single being and every single thing. Living from and as this is profoundly transformative, and it opens for the metaphorical jaguar in us.
It can also mean to notice our actual and real nature. Our thoughts may tell us what we are, for instance this human self, something within the content of our experience. And when we look more closely in our own first-person experience, we may find something else. We may find we more fundamentally are capacity for the world as it appears to us. And what our experiences – of the world, this human self, and anything – happens within and as.
Here, we find we already are the world. To us, it’s happening within and as what we are. And we are more free to find ourselves as nature, as instinct, as river, as anything.