The people who are sensitive in life may suffer much more than those who are insensitive, but if they understand and go beyond their suffering, they will discover extraordinary things.
– Jiddu Krishnamurti in Think on These Things
Sensitivity heightens everything, and can be a curse or a blessing depending on how we are able to relate to it. If we are blessed with the outer and inner circumstances to make use of sensitivity, we can discover extraordinary things. It can help us in our relationships, and in healing and artistic work. It can help us gain a great deal of insights into the human nature, and life and nature in general. It can even help us notice what we really are in our own first person experience.
And I can tell you from my own experience that whatever I do from the illusion that there is a Douglas meatball here doing it and controlling it, is rather badly and very badly done. And whatever I do from the experience that here is not Douglas’ meatball, any meatball, but Space for the whole world to happen in, is better done. There’s more energy, more love. It’s obviously not going to be perfect, but it is going to be a lot better done.
The one who searches is the very thing one is searching for.
– Ramana Maharshi
I was reminded of this quote on social media this morning.
As usual with these kinds of pointers, they are obvious – and inescapable – when noticed, and baffling if not.
What’s searching is within content of experience, it’s the sense of a doer/searcher with identification attached to it. What I am, this awake space, forms itself into the whole field of content, including that. So what searches already is what it’s searching for. It already is this awake space.
Of course, it usually imagines it’s searching for something else – money, romantic love, safety, approval, and so on. Or maybe some big experience. Or God as “other”. That’s one reason it may not recognize it.
It’s fascinated by its own imagination of what it’s searching for. It misleads itself with those imaginations.
That’s why simple pointers are so valuable – for instance from the Big Mind process or the Headless Way.
When the oneness shift happened in my teens, this became obvious although it took many years before I found someone talking clearly and directly about. Although I was familiar with Buddhism and Taoism in my late teens and twenties, I didn’t find this clear speech until I was in my thirties and found Ramana Maharshi, Douglas Harding, Adveita Vedanta, Byron Katie, and so on.
Whenever we have the grace to say YES! to our circumstances, and actively to will (rather than passively to acquiesce in) whatever happens, why then there springs up that real and lasting joy which Eastern tradition calls ananda.
– Douglas Harding
I love this. I also find it fascinating how there are different flavors, variations, and aspects of this.
One is surrender. How is it to surrender to this situation, to what’s already here? How is it to drop resistance? Complaints? Even for a moment?
How is it to accept what’s already here? How is it to accept what’s already accepted by life, space, the consciousness I am?
How is it to find gratitude for what’s here? How is it to find gratitude for it as an expression of the same life as I am expression of? How is it to find genuine gifts in it?
How is it to meet my experience, as it is here and now, with kindness?
How is it to actively want what’s here? How is it to lean into it?
How is it to identify my stressful thoughts about what’s here, investigate them, and find what’s genuinely more true for me?
How is it to dialog with the parts of me that don’t want what’s here? How is it to hear what they have to say? To listen to their concern for me, their love? Can I find a way to more consciously be on a team with these parts of me? How is it to thank them for protecting me? For their love for me?
How is it to take one of these and explore it over time, through different situations?
If I try one or a few, which one seems to resonate right now? After staying with it for a while, does it open for another? For instance, if I sincerely thank a part of me for protecting me, does that help me actively wanting what’s here as it is?
When the guru is alive, it’s a jungle. When the guru is dead, it’s an office.
– Amma, paraphrased by DN
Yes, when the guru is alive, everything is alive, rich, and moving. It’s unpredictable, and just like in a jungle, you may get eaten by a tiger (the guru). Even if there is an institution, it’s secondary to the guru.
After the guru is gone, the institution remains, and it becomes more rigid. It may still be valuable, but it doesn’t have the fluidity, aliveness, and the guidance it had when the guru was there.
Of course, even in institutions – like the main religions – there are occasionally people who live and embody awakening, and have some of the jungle with them.
Imagine, when a human dies, the soul misses the body, actually grieves the loss of its hands and all they could hold. Misses the throat closing shy reading out loud on the first day of school. Imagine the soul misses the stubbed toe, the loose tooth, the funny bone. The soul still asks, Why does the funny bone do that? It’s just weird.
[…]
When a human dies the soul moves through the universe trying to describe how a body trembles when it’s lost, softens when it’s safe, how a wound would heal given nothing but time. Do you understand? Nothing in space can imagine it. No comet, no nebula, no ray of light can fathom the landscape of awe, the heat of shame. The fingertips pulling the first gray hair and throwing it away. I can’t imagine it, the stars say. Tell us again about goosebumps. Tell us again about pain.
What a beautiful poem about the preciousness of this human life.
The experiences that come through this human life are unique. There is nothing like it in the universe or throughout time. It’s precious beyond comprehension, precisely because it’s so unique and fleeting.
That’s the same for the world of all beings, not just you and me. It’s not limited to humans.
Each being is a world, precious beyond what we can understand.
If we continue after the death of this human self, other experiences will fill our world, and yet the world of this human self will never return. The taste of a strawberry. Grief over the loss of a loved one. The feeling of the sun on the skin. The pain of a stubbed toe. The experience of a refreshing swim in a lake. All of that is only possible through this human life.
As I approach the end of my life, I have even less and less interest in examining what have got to be very superficial evaluations or opinions about the significance of one’s life or one’s work.
– Leonard Cohen, 2016
Yes, whatever evaluations and opinions we have about anything and anyone are bound to be superficial.
We only scratch the surface. We don’t have the big picture. Nobody does.
Our evaluations and opinions reveal more about us than about the world.
Our evaluations and opinions reflect what has shaped us– our culture, experiences, biases, hangups, and so on.
Our evaluations and opinions are simply ideas that arise in the human mind, not inherent in reality.
Reality and life is inherently free of our ideas about it.
We cannot know anything for certain.
If we grow up in a family and culture that get this, we too may get this from an early age.
But if we grow up in a family and culture that do not quite get this, as most of us do in the Western civilization, then we may learn it through experience and with time. We get to see the limitations and flaws in our own evaluations and opinions. We get to see that the evaluations and opinions of others come from very limited perspectives and are based on very limited information.
It doesn’t mean that evaluations and opinions can’t be useful. They certainly can be. But they are ephemeral, based on innumerable biases, say more about ourselves than anything else, and are human ideas and not inherent in reality.
So what’s left? Life itself – how we live our life, what moves us, what’s here now. Perhaps that’s enough.
Being fully present to fear, to gratitude, to all that is—this is the practice of mutual belonging. As living members of the living body of Earth, we are grounded in that kind of belonging. Even when faced with cataclysmic changes, nothing can ever separate us from Earth. We are already home.
– Joanna Macy
“On August 23rd [2025] we gathered to honor the life and legacy of Joanna Macy. Her spirit of gratitude, courage, mischievousness, and love continues to guide us all.”
This gathering includes Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield, Roshi Joan Halifax, Jack Macy, Peggy Macy, Matthew Fox, Constance Washburn, Lydia Violet, Stephanie Kaza, poets Jane Hirshfield and Drew Dellinger, and music by Rising Appalachia.
I found this gathering powerful and moving, and it was good to see many there who have been a strong influence for me.
ORGANIZATIONS INSPIRED BY THE WORK OF JOANNA MACY
From the text for the video:
Below are links to organizations inspired by Joanna. If you feel moved, you may wish to honor her legacy by making a donation to one of them.
Active Hope Training: A free, video-based journey created by Chris Johnstone (co-author with Joanna of Active Hope), rooted in gratitude, grief, and interconnection.
Canticle Farm: An intentional community and nonprofit organization in East Oakland: Inspired by the life of Francis of Assisi and the Work That Reconnects as taught by Joanna Macy, Canticle Farm provides a platform for the Great Turning, one heart, one home, one block at a time.
Interhelp: a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is the creation of inclusive, liberatory, and transformative group experiences evolving from the Work That Reconnects.
Joanna Macy Center for Resilience & Regeneration at Naropa University: Naropa University’s Joanna Macy Center seeks to advance Dr. Joanna Macy’s work and vision by empowering present and future generations to build a more resilient world that works for all.
Mindful Living Revolution: A nonprofit organization whose mission is to teach the practice of conscious compassionate awareness within the context of global uncertainty, offering various programs including the Work That Reconnects.
ReConectando: an initiative in Colombia using the Work That Reconnects in workshops for people affected by Colombian armed conflict, as well as for victims and social and environmental leaders who have taken on the promotion of peace in their territories.
School for the Great Turning: Offers a space for ecological education, social justice, and spiritual healing through the Work That Reconnects.
Work That Reconnects Network: A global community rooted in Joanna Macy’s teachings, dedicated to restoring our connection to self, others, and the web of life.
A RAINBOW
A few minutes into the celebration, I looked out the window and saw the rainbow below. I know that in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, it’s not uncommon to see a rainbow at the funeral celebration of respected and accomplished spiritual teachers.
MY INITIAL MESSAGE
There is an online gathering to celebrate the life of Joanna Macy tomorrow, Saturday, August 23, 2025.
It’s free, but you need to sign up at the link above.
I was first introduced to her when I found World as Lover, World as Self in the University of Oslo bookstore in the early 1990s. Later, I organized several events based on her and Molly Brown’s work with Practices to Reconnect, and I had the good fortune of attending a retreat with her through the Northwest Earth Institute. She was an amazing human being and her work lives on through the many she touched and influenced.
“My snow!” – when I think that, it weighs almost nothing on my umbrella-hat!
– Haiku by Kikaku, from An Introduction to Haiku by Harold G. Henderson
This is a beautiful haiku.
If I think of the snow on my hat as other, as something imposing on me, then it weighs heavily and is a source of annoyance or distress.
If I think of it as mine, as not separate from me, as part of life, then it weighs almost nothing.
Said another way…
If I see myself as primarily this human self1, then what happens to this human self sometimes weighs heavily.
If I recognize myself as this awake space that forms itself into all content of experience2, then this human self and the wider world happens within the same field. What happens is still there but weighs almost nothing.
Nuances may be lost in this translation, and, for all I know, I may be missing the point completely in terms of what Kikaku meant, but this is what seems to fit this particular translation.
NOTE
More accurately, these mental representations of me and I.
In one sense, I am this human self in the world. And I find I am more fundamentally what all content of experience happens within and as. I am what a thought may call consciousness, and the consciousness I am forms itself into my experience of this human self and the wider world and any other content of experience. All content of experience is one seamless field. This human self lives his own life just like everything else.
Of course, there is the skill aspect of art, and the better the skills the more able you may be to express what you wish to express, and have it appreciated by more people.
At the same time, art is more essentially about a match. Is there a match with someone? If so, then the technical quality is secondary.
If we are doing it for ourselves, for our own sake, to satisfy something in us, then there is already a match, the most important match, which is with ourselves. Anything else is icing on the cake.
The sketch is one I did a long time ago, when drawing and painting were part of my daily life.
The privilege of a lifetime is becoming being who you truly are.
– Joseph Campbell in “A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living”
I love this quote and, to me, it has a few layers.
BECOMING WHO I TRULY AM AS A HUMAN SELF
In a conventional sense, it’s about becoming who we truly are as a human self.
This is Jung’s individuation.
How is it to get to know more of the many, innumerable, parts of me? The many subpersonalitites?
How is it to develop a more conscious relationship with more of these?
What’s truly important to me? What do I value? How is it to reorganize my life according to that?
If I take any surface desire, wish, or want and trace it back to it’s simple essence, what do I find? What do I hope to get out of it? And what do I hope to get out of that? And that? What I find that it traces back to something simple, essential, and (very likely) universal – coming home, love, sense of safety, acceptance, and so on.
BECOMING WHO I TRULY AM AS AN ECOLOGICAL SELF
This includes becoming who I truly am as an ecological self, in two ways.
First, by recognizing that I am as rich as the world.
Whatever I see in the wider world – in people, society, mythology, dreams, ecology, cosmos – is also here.
I can take whatever story I have about any of it, turn it to myself, and find genuine and specific examples of how it’s true, including right now.
Then, by recognizing I am part of the web of life.
More than that, I am a local expression of this living planet we call Earth. I am the Earth thinking, doing, living. I am the Earth confused, destroying itself. I am the Earth noticing, protecting itself.
Everything about me – thoughts, emotions, impulses, choices, life – has infinite causes going back to the beginning of time (if there is a beginning) and the widest extent of existence (if there is a widest extent).
It all comes from somewhere else.
NOTICING WHAT I AM
For me, the quote also has to do with noticing what I already am.
At one level, I am this human self in the world. That’s not wrong. It’s what my passport says, how most others see me, and what my thoughts may tell me.
And yet, when I look more closely, I find something else.
I find I am what the world, as it appears to me, happens within and as.
I am what this field of experience – anything related to this human self or the wider world and any content of experience – happens within and as.
I am this awake space it all happens within and as.
Even more fundamentally, I am capacity for all of it.
I am capacity for this awake space and every experience it makes itself into.
In a very rough sense, the pointer becoming who I truly am also points to this.
And it’s not really becoming anything and it doesn’t have to do with who I truly am.
It’s about noticing what’s already here, noticing what I fundamentally am.
ALLOWING MY HUMAN SELF AND LIFE TO BE TRANSFORMED WITHIN THAT
This also has to do with allowing my human self and life to be transformed within that noticing.
A lot of my human self and life was formed within separation consciousness, the perception that I most fundamentally am this human being. It operates from wounds, unexamined thoughts held – somewhere in my system – as true, unfelt feelings, unloved parts of me, hangups, traumas, and so on.
How is it to invite more of me to align with the oneness I more fundamentally am?
How is it to invite in healing for these parts?
How is it to allow, and even embrace, when life brings up what’s unexamined, unloved, and painful in me?
THE PRIVILEGE OF A LIFETIME
This is all, as Joseph Campbell says, the privilege of a lifetime.
It’s a privilege to find myself in this process, to have curiosity about it, to have passion for it, to have time and opportunity to explore, and so on.
It’s all a privilege.
It’s all a gift. It all comes from somewhere else.
A NOTE ON THE QUOTE
I initially saw this misquoted as becoming who you truly are and wrote the article above based on that.
It seems that the actual quote is being who you truly are which has a different emphasis, although the essence is the same.
Becoming has an emphasis on the transformative and dynamic aspect of it, which I like.
Being emphasizes that we already are it, which is important but perhaps less interesting.
The quote is often (mis)attributed to Jung, but it seems it’s from Joseph Campbell in A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living, although I can’t find a specific page reference.
BEING WHO YOU TRULY ARE
The privilege of a lifetime is being who you truly are.
– Joseph Campbell in “A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living”
Of course, we already are who – and what – we truly are.
As a human self, we already are as rich as the world. We are living from that richness, whether we notice or not. And we are consciously unfamiliar with most of it, even if we actively explore our richness.
We also inevitably are what we already are. We already are this awake space that the field of experience – including this human self and the wider world – happens within and as. Whether we notice or not is another thing.
The privilege is that we already are who and what we are… whether we notice or not.
This is obviously important. For me, the richness comes in the becoming of it, the dynamics, bringing it into awareness and more consciously living from and as it, allowing our human self and life transform within it.
I don’t think people realise how the establishment became established. It simply stole the land and property off the poor, surrounded themselves with weak minded sycophants for protection, gave themselves titles and have been wielding power ever since.
– Tony Benn
This goes back ten thousand years, to the agricultural revolution. Before then, we were all indigenous and nobody had much more than anyone else, simply because nobody had much they owned in the first place.
With the agricultural revolution and the domestication of land, non-human species, and ourselves, came accumulation of wealth, wealth disparities, and justification of this through ideologies.
This wealth came and comes from the commons shared by all life. When is accumulated by a few beyond what’s reasonable, it comes at the expense of everyone else and life in general.
“We need a different strategy—one that doesn’t just burn, but smolders, spreads, takes root. One that knows endurance is its own kind of rebellion.
Soft Rebellion is the mycelial strategy of weaving beneath the surface, unsettling rigid structures with slow, persistent entanglement. It does not meet violence with a mirrored fist but with the supple intelligence of the willow, bending just enough to redirect the force and send it spiraling elsewhere. Soft Rebellion is the way water carves stone—not through brute force but through patient insistence, through intimate knowledge of the cracks, through the whisper of time.
Its strategies are those of the trickster, the lover, the root and the reed. It listens before it moves, feeling into the hidden weaknesses of oppressive systems, understanding that no empire, no ideology, no monolith is without its fractures. It knows that control is a brittle thing, and that softness—fluid, adaptable, decentralized—is far harder to extinguish than steel.
Soft rebellion moves through stories, through the slow embroidery of alternative worlds into the fabric of the present. It cultivates beauty in places of despair, weaving small sanctuaries of aliveness that offer refuge and reimagine what is possible. It disrupts through delight, through care, through humor that turns the blade of power back on itself. It does not fight on the battlefield chosen by the oppressor; it shifts the ground beneath their feet.
To rebel softly is to refuse to be reduced. It is to remain tender in a world that would harden you, to insist on connection where division is sown. It is to plant seeds in the ruins, knowing that even in the shadow of collapse, life finds a way to creep through the cracks and bloom.
Soft rebellion is extraction work. It’s the slow, deliberate untangling of the barbed wire we’ve swallowed—hustle culture, internalized oppression, fear masquerading as productivity. It’s the quiet but radical refusal to be a machine, to be optimized, to be ground down into a function rather than a being.
Soft rebellion doesn’t look like a war cry. It looks like walking away. Like choosing to move at a different rhythm than the one demanded. Like reclaiming time as something stolen, not something to be managed. It is choosing pleasure where exhaustion was expected, choosing presence where dissociation was normalized.
Soft rebellion is the mycelial antidote to the brittle, crumbling monolith of power. In the face of a slow-moving coup—where democracy is gutted in broad daylight, where fear is the chosen currency of control—soft rebellion does not play by the rules of the oppressor. It moves beneath, between, beyond. It resists not with brute force, but with the cunning of ecosystems, the resilience of roots breaking concrete.
Soft rebellion understands that the systems tightening their grip on power want us exhausted, divided, reactive. It knows that despair is an instrument of control, that urgency is often a trap. So instead, it cultivates deep, embodied resistance—rebellion that does not just fight against but builds towards.
Soft Rebellion in Action
1. Refusing the Script of Fear
The coup depends on a narrative of helplessness, of inevitability. Soft rebellion rewrites it. It speaks in futures not yet stolen. It refuses to repeat the script that says “we are powerless.” Instead, it whispers: We are vast. We are unruly. We are not so easily governed.
2. Sanctuary Networks
Authoritarianism thrives on isolation, on making people feel like they stand alone. Soft rebellion builds underground networks of care—mutual aid, resource sharing, protection. It weaves safety where the state seeks to unravel it. This looks like organizing community bail funds, housing networks, off-the-grid communication systems. It looks like knowing who in your neighborhood needs help, who has a safe house, who can be counted on when institutions fail.
3. Disobedient Joy
The coup wants you terrified. It wants you brittle and compliant. So laugh in its face. Gather in parks, sing, dance, make art that mocks the strongman and his fragile grip on power. Remember that joy is not a distraction—it is a weapon. It reminds us that another world is possible, that we are more than the violence done to us.
4. Slowing the Machine
Capitalism and fascism walk hand in hand, demanding productivity even as the world burns. Soft rebellion opts out. It works just enough to survive, then redirects energy into resistance, into community, into slowness. It refuses to feed the machine that funds oppression. It chooses to rest when the system demands exhaustion.
5. Decentralized Resistance
The state expects rebellion to be centralized, to have leaders it can imprison, movements it can crush. Soft rebellion is fungal—it spreads, untraceable, leaderless. It moves through encrypted networks, anonymous zines, whisper campaigns. It understands that a revolution with no head cannot be beheaded.
6. Rituals of Rewilding
Fascism thrives on control—of land, of bodies, of narratives. Soft rebellion rewilds. It plants trees in vacant lots. It reclaims stolen land. It teaches foraging and rainwater collection. It remembers that resistance is not just about destruction, but about growing something back.
7. Disrupting the Spectacle
Authoritarianism is theater—it survives on attention, on outrage, on the constant churn of crisis. Soft rebellion learns when to look away, when to starve the beast. It refuses to amplify propaganda, to take every bait, to let the regime dictate the rhythm of our days. It turns its gaze instead toward the work of healing, building, dreaming.
8. Turning Disinformation Into Openings
The coup thrives on disinformation, on turning reality itself into a battlefield. But soft rebellion doesn’t waste energy fighting ghosts. Instead of arguing in bad faith arenas, it uses moments of disinformation as openings—gently rerouting conversations toward truth, planting quiet seeds of doubt in false narratives. This looks like asking questions rather than attacking, offering a story rather than a statistic, introducing facts with the ease of someone handing over a cup of water instead of a hammer. It resists not through force, but through invitation—through giving people the tools to unspool their own illusions.
Soft rebellion is not passive. It is insurgent, but in a way that cannot be easily named or neutralized. It moves in whispers, in laughter, in unnoticed refusals. It weaves a world beneath the one being forced upon us—a world that, one day, will break through the cracks and bloom.”
My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird- Equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums. Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me Keep my mind on what matters, Which is my work,
Which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium. The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture. Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here, Which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
And these body-clothes, A mouth with which to give shouts of joy To the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam, Telling them all, over and over, how it is
Yes, we are not really any of it – ideas, viewpoints, identities, roles. These are all positions we can take and explore. Some are helpful in some situations and others in other situations, they all enrich our lives, and it’s good to find some fluidity with it and hold it all lightly.
Of course, that’s easier said than done. When we come from fear, wounds, and traumas, we tend to find and create a position we hold onto in order to feel safer, and when that position is threatened, it feels like we are threatened. It can feel like a matter of life and death.
WITH A LITTLE MORE DETAIL
Said another way, with a little more detail…
Roles, views, identities, ideas, and so on are clearly not what we fundamentally are. They come and go. In one situation, we take one role, in another, another role. In one conversation, we take one view, in another, another view. This also changes over time. When I was ten I used another set of views, identities, and roles than I do now.
And yet, we can feel that it’s what we are. Parts of us hold onto a certain viewpoint – which is all an identity, role, or idea is – in order to find safety. It feels safe to retreat into a certain viewpoint. It may be familiar. It’s known, to some extent. It allows us to not have to investigate so much. When that happens, we identify with and as that viewpoint. In our own experience, we become it.
That means that anything that seems to threaten that viewpoint – anything that goes counter to it, disproves it, questions it – feels like a threat to what we are. It can feel like an existential threat.
It’s good to notice, it’s good to remind ourselves of what’s going on, and it’s good to invite in more fluidity – through healing, identifying and questioning the viewpoints, and so on.
To the extent we are able to find fluidity with it, it brings less stress to our lives, it allows us to respond more appropriately to different situations, and it can enrich our lives and our experience of ourselves immensely.
WHAT’S GOING ON
And said yet another way, from another perspective…
MY NATURE
To myself, I am not fundamentally these viewpoints that come and go. I am not fundamentally anything within the content of experience since it all comes and goes, including any ideas of this human self, an observer, doer, and so on.
I find I am fundamentally something else. I am what it all comes and goes within. I am this awake space that the world, as it appears to me, happens within and as. This is not a special awake space, it’s the awake space that likely all “conscious beings” are to themselves.
NOTICING ITSELF OR NOT
The consciousness I am can notice itself, and the world as it appears to me as itself. It’s learning to notice itself through changing states and experiences and allowing this human self to live within that context.
The consciousness I am can also take itself to be something within the content of experience. It can take itself to be a viewpoint or a set of viewpoints. This works only to a certain extent, although it can seem convincing if it’s able to distract itself enough from noticing its nature.
PARTS OF ME CAUGHT UP IN VIEWPOINTS
There is another wrinkle here.
This awake space can notice itself, and even notice itself through changing states and experiences, and there are still many parts of me – many parts of the psyche – that hold onto viewpoints for safety.
Parts of me identify with viewpoints to find safety, and that’s how wounds – hangups, trauma, or whatever we want to call it – are created and maintained.
EXPLORING IT
One of my favorite ways to explore this is the Big Mind process. Here, I can notice and explore my nature, and I can also explore the many different viewpoints possible for me, including the ones parts of me hold onto for safety. I get to know them, how my personality relates to them, how this human self can relate to them in a more constructive way, create partnerships with these parts of me, and so on.
I also like to explore this through The Work of Byron Katie. I identify a stressful thought, which shows me that there is some identification with the view of that thought. I explore what happens when a part of me holds onto it. I get a sense of how it would be, here and now, without holding onto it in that way. And I get to explore the genuine validity in the many reversals of the initial thought, in contrasting perspectives on the same topic.
Apart from that, any kind of healing helps us – and parts of us – soften the grip on these viewpoints.
IT’S ALL ABOUT VIEWPOINTS
As mentioned above, any role, identity, opinion, idea, and so on are essentially viewpoints.
Any thought comes with a viewpoint. If it’s held lightly, it’s easy to shift between several viewpoints and find the genuine validity in them all, and a bigger picture that holds the limited validity in them all. If it’s held in a strong grip, it becomes something to defend, prop up, use as a weapon, hide behind, and so on.
THE RICHNESS IN IT
There is an immense richness in all of the possible viewpoints available to us.
Any idea is a viewpoint, any viewpoint is a new and different way to look at something, and it’s all in me.
The more viewpoints I explore and am familiar with in myself, and the more fluidity I find among them, the richer my life is – in the world, in perception, and in my experience of myself.
A SIMPLE PRACTICAL POINTER
When I notice I hold onto a view in a fixed way, I may not be able to shift out of it immediately, but I notice and I make a mental note of it. When things have calmed down a bit, I explore it.
What are some of the other views here? What’s the validity in each of them? How would it be to acknowledge and live that too? How would it be to find a little more fluidity here?
How would I live my life differently, here and now?
How does it enrich my life?
EASIER FOR MY NATURE TO NOTICE ITSELF
This exploration not only enriches my life by bringing in the possibility of perceiving and living from more viewpoints. It enriches my life because it makes it easier for my nature to notice itself.
Holding onto viewpoints is fine. It’s natural and ultimately innocent (although it comes with stress.)
And it can also be a distraction from my nature noticing itself. It’s a distraction from noticing what’s already so obviously here. This awake space that the world, as it appears to me, happens within and as.
I love Vananda Shiva and her work. What she says here is roughly accurate, but it can also be misunderstood.
It’s important to differentiate between the many scientific methods and the how they are used, the worldviews, assumptions, and aims of the people using them.
THE METHODS OF SCIENCE
The essence of science is the scientific methods.
These are common-sense ways to figure something out, which are then put in system. We all use the principles behind many of the scientific methods in daily life.
Scientific methods are inherently free from either domination or partnership orientations. They are just organized ways to learn about the world, some methods may be more appropriate for some situations than others, and all of them can be used with a domination or partnership mindset.
For instance, we can use quantitative methods with a domination mindset (genetic engineering of plants to make them propriatary) or a partnership mindset (measuring the increase in wildlife in a food forest). Similarly, we can use qualitative methods with a domination (generate data to justify xenophobia) or partnership (better understand the needs ot minorities) mindset.
IMMEDIATE REASONS
Of course, at one level, the difference lies in our goals, the demands put on us, what organization we are part of, and so on.
At another level, it’s all rooted in our worldview and basic assumptions about the world.
THE WORLDVIEWS THE SCIENCE HAPPENS WITHIN
Some worldviews and assumptions are inherently domination-oriented.
For instance: We are separate from nature. Nature is here for our use. Nature is infinite. The sacred is out there in a sky god and the afterlife. Non-human beings are inferior. We understand something best by taking it apart to its smallest parts. Life is a zero-sum game.
This worldview and these assumptions came out of the agricultural revolution and were used to justify the domination of animals, land, and people.
Other worldviews and assumptions are inherently partnership-oriented.
For instance: We are nature. We are ephemeral and local expressions of the living system we call Earth. The sacred is in everyone and everything. We understand something by seeing it in context and as part of larger seamless systems. We are the universe bringing itself into consciousness. We can find win-win-win solutions.
All scientific methods can be used within either of these worldviews and from any of these assumptions.
A SPECTRUM
It’s also important to point out that the domination and partnership orientation exists on a spectrum, and there is always some of each.
Also, even if we come from a partnership orientation, it makes sense to make use of whatever useful comes out of the domination culture and the science produced by the domination culture.
For instance, if we are developing a food forest, there is a lot of helpful science about soil, plants, ecology, succession, and so on that originally came out of a domination culture.
OUR BACKGROUND COLORS OUR PERCEPTION
Maybe this differentiation seems important to me since I grew up in and studied in Norway which has more of a partnership culture, so I have seen many examples of science being used with a partnership mindset.
I also understand why Vananda Shiva talks about it this way, and it’s obviously just a small exerpt from a longer interview. She has fought the horrors of the modern agricultural industry, so she knows how science has often been used from a domination mindset.
He who sees all beings in his own Self, and his own Self in all beings, he does not hate anyone.
– Isha Upanishad, Verse 6
I was reminded of this and thought I would revisit it by exploring each of the three parts.
ALL BEINGS IN ME
He who sees all beings in his own self.
I find this in two ways.
First, I notice that my experience of all beings happens within and as the awake space that’s here, the awake space I fundamentally am. In that sense, I see all beings in me.
I also notice that the world is my mirror. I can take whatever story I have about anyone, turn it to be about myself, and find genuine and specific examples of how it’s true. Usually, I can find it in the moment I have the story about someone (or something), and also in other situations.
So as what I am (consciousness), I see all beings in myself, and as who I am (this human self) I also can find all beings in myself. The first is immediate noticing, the second may take some exploration.
ME IN ALL BEINGS
And his own Self in all beings.
How do I see myself in all beings? I find this too in a few different ways.
To me, they happen within and as the consciousness I am. They are literally made up of the same stuff as me, as awake space.
I also imagine that to themselves, they are the same as me. If they “have consciousness” then to themselves, they very likely are consciousness just like me. To them, the world happens within and as the consciousness they are, just as for me.
Also, whatever I imagine in them at a human level is something I know from myself. I cannot imagine it in them if I don’t already know it, consciously or not, from myself.
So in three ways, I see myself in them. To me, they happen within and as the awake space here. I imagine they, to themselves, are consciousness just like me. And whatever qualities and characteristics I see in them are ones I know from myself.
DOES NOT HATE?
He does not hate anyone.
Does this lead to not hating anyone?
In my experience, I would say yes and no.
To the extent it’s thoroughly recognized and lived, then yes. It does lead to a dissolving of the patterns we can call hate.
Hate comes from a visceral sense of separation, of me and others, of others as different from me, of being unable to recognize or see myself in the other, and that dissolves. The causes of hate is no longer there.
At the same time, parts of me likely hate. These parts of me were formed from separation consciousness and still live, at least to some extent, from separation consciousness. They suffer and are confused. These parts of me are not necessarily on board with my conscious noticing of my nature and all of the above.
So there often, in practice, both. It’s good to acknowledge. It’s good to recognize the parts of me suffering in this way, meet them with some kindness and understanding, and give them space to soften, heal, and realign.
It also helps to have a dialog with these parts of me, get to know them better, and create a more intentional partnership with them. And it helps to identify the painful stories these parts of me operate from, explore them, and find what’s genuinely more true for me.
WHO AND WHAT I AM
For me, this all has to do with who and what I am.
I find myself as consciousness and the world, as it appears to me, as consciousness. This is what I am and it’s what’s noticed in immediacy.
I imagine others are like this too, to themselves. They are consciousness and the world, to them, happens within and as the consciousness they are. They are, quite literally, a world as we all are.
As who I am, as this human self, the world is my mirror. Whatever I see in others or the world is something I can find here.
As who I am, I also find that parts of me are hurt and wounded, and live from painful and unexamined stories. These parts of me inevitably color my perception and life whether I notice or not. It makes sense to get to know these parts of me, listen to them and get to know their world, befriend them, and identify and examine the painful stories they operate from.
This helps create a more intentional partnership with them, and it helps them join the whole in a more healthy and mature way.
All of this is an ongoing process. There is no finishing line, at least not in this life. It’s an ongoing exploration.
If you understand God, what you understand isn’t God.
– St. Augustine, slightly paraphrased
Yes, although that’s the same with everything.
If I think I understand an apple, what I understand isn’t an apple. What I think I understand is my idea about it, and I don’t even really understand that.
That’s for several reasons which can be boiled down to two that can be talked about in many different ways. It has to do with our relationship with thoughts and the relationship of thoughts with the rest of existence.
THE ESSENCE
Mental representations are questions about the world. Even statements are questions.
Mental representations help us orient and navigate in the world. They have a practical and pragmatic function only.
Mental representations cannot hold any full, final, or absolute truth. They can, at most, have limited validity.
Reality is always more than and different from our ideas about it. (And also less than, in our immediate noticing since it’s all, to us, happening within and as consciousness.)
THE MORE WE KNOW, THE MORE WE KNOW HOW LITTLE WE KNOW
The more we know, the more we understand how little we know. I have explored my nature, and these topics, for almost four decades now, and I feel I know less than I ever have. The more I explore, the more I understand how little I am familiar with and understand, and the vastness of what’s out there to explore. (That was my orientation from the beginning, but now it’s a more lived and visceral part of me.)
In a conventional sense, in the world, we may know more than most, and in a more real sense, we know we know almost nothing. We are just dipping our toes in the ocean.
A FEW MORE ASPECTS
Mental representations are different in kind from what they point to. This is just like a map is different in kind to the terrain, or a menu is different in kind from the food.
Mental representations are simplifications at best, they highlight some things and leave out other things.
Mental representations reflect our biases, limited experience and understanding, hangups, culture, hopes and fears, and much more. They inevitably say more about us than what they apparently are about.
Our mental representations about the world is a mirror for us. If a mental representation says something about the wider world, we can turn it to be about ourselves and find genuine and specific examples of how it’s true about us.
Mental representations are more or less accurate in a conventional sense. Sometimes, they are completely inaccurate and downright wrong.
Mental representations take on a completely different meaning depending on the context, worldview, and set of assumptions they are understood within.
If we, or a part of our system, hold a mental representation as true, it’s inevitably stressful. It’s out of alignment with reality. We feel we have to prop it up, defend it, remind ourselves about it, and so on. Also, life will always come up with situations that show us the limited validity, or outright wrongness, of our cherished idea.
THOUGHTS IN THE SENSE FIELDS
If we, or a part of our system, hold a thought as true, that experience is created in a certain way. Our mind associates certain mental representations (mental images, mental sounds) with certain physical sensations in the body.
The mental representations give a sense of meaning to the sensations, and the sensations give a sense of solidity, reality, and truth to the mental representations.
If it’s a central or important belief, the body will contract in order to create sensations used to give a sense of reality, solidity, and truth to the thought.
It sounds silly, and it is a bit silly when we notice. We get a peak behind the curtain.
It is relatively easy to explore and notice this. Anyone can do it, for instance, guided by someone experienced in sense field explorations. The one I have found that’s most effective is the Kiloby Inquiries which is a modernized version of traditional Buddhist sense field inquiries.
A PART OF OUR SYSTEM HOLDING A THOUGHT AS TRUE
It’s quite common, at least in my experience, that I consciously don’t hold a certain thought as true, but I find that a part of my system holds it – more or less – as true.
This is what Freud and many others talked about. Our conscious orientation, noticing, and insights is one thing. An entirely other thing is the many perspectives, beliefs, hangups, traumas, and so on that different parts of our system live from and within.
It’s good to explore both and invite the rest of our system to join in with whatever wisdom, insights, and useful noticing that’s happening at a conscious level.
APPLIES TO EVERYTHING
This applies to everything, not just God… or an apple.
It applies to our ideas about ourselves, our spouse, parents, children, bosses, employees, health, money, the past, the future, the present, life situations, and anything else.
None loves God but God, and there is no lover and no beloved but God. Lovers grasp this when they reach the point of seeing God in everything that exists.
– Ibn Arabi
This is what was revealed in the oneness shift when this human self was an angsty atheist sixteen-year-old. All is God, without exception. It’s all God expressing, exploring, and experiencing itself in myriad ways. It’s God that takes the form of the universe, the stars, the trees, the wind, this human self, and any temporary sense of being anything else than the whole of it.
If there is a lover or beloved here – one that loves God and God loves – it’s God taking that local and temporary form. It all happens within and as God.
At the time, I said that existence as a whole is God and consciousness. Existence forms itself into all there is to express, explore, and experience itself in always new ways. Since I didn’t have anyone interested in this, I wrote it in my journals in different ways, always aware that words cannot come even close to touching it.
HOW I TALK ABOUT IT TODAY
These days, almost four decades later, I don’t mind saying it in the same way, although I notice I am more drawn to another way to say it. It’s not a better way, although it’s slightly more differentiated.
To myself, I am fundamentally consciousness. I am made up of consciousness, and the consciousness I am takes the form of this whole field of experience.
It’s not wrong that I am this human self in the world. It’s how others see it, it’s what my passport says, and so on. But more fundamentally, I find I am what the world – as it appears to me – happens within and as. I am what a thought may call consciousness, and the consciousness I am takes the form of the world as it appears to me.
Even more fundamentally, I find I am capacity for all of it – for consciousness and all it forms itself into.
Any sense of lover and beloved happens within and as the consciousness I am. Any sense of God, the universe, the world, others, trees, stars, this human self, and so on, happens within and as the consciousness I am.
I still don’t really talk about this with others, apart from briefly if I happen to be with someone who notices it for themselves. Just like when I was sixteen, I mostly put it to – in this case metaphorical – paper here in my journal.
Even when tied in a thousand knots, the string is still one.
– Rumi
Yes, my string is tied in a thousand knots and it’s still one.
At a psychological and human level, there are many hangups, wounds, traumas, parts of me holding onto painful beliefs, confusion, chronic illness, and so on.
And it’s all happening within and as this awake space I am. The consciousness I am forms itself into the experience of all of it.
The string is tied in a thousand knots (all the hangups and challenges at a human level), and it’s also one (the consciousness I am forming itself into all of it).
When the consciousness we are to ourselves notices this, it can lead to a big change.
We change our relationship with the knots. We recognize them as our own nature. To me, they have the same nature as I have. They are awake space. They are consciousness.
We can rest in the noticing of what we are, and in noticing the nature of the knots (which is the same as our nature), and that can help the knots loosen. With the help of inquiry, therapy, dialog, insights, and so on, some of them may even untie themselves.
In my experience, what’s most important is the changing relationship with the knots. Instead of struggling with them, I notice their nature. (And the nature of any struggle that’s here.) The loosening of the knots can certainly happen, which makes it all a bit easier. Although the untying of the knots may happen, it may take time and it’s not something I would count on for finding more peace with them.
It’s more direct to find peace with them by noticing their nature, and it may also be easier. There are many effective ways to notice our own nature and the nature of all content of experience. (My favorites are the Big Mind process and the Headless experiments.)
Yes, that’s one of the great losses – for these people, for their community, and for humanity as a whole – of the great social inequalities we have lived with for centuries and millennia.
Societies as a whole do much better when there is less wealth inequality, universal access to good education, and people don’t have to struggle to survive. It creates safer societies with less crime, we reduce the risk of revolutions and upheavals, and we all benefit from it, including from the brilliance that’s allowed to flourish and come to life in more people.
The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man’s heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too.
For me, this has to do with an assumption of separation. If we live away from nature, it’s easy to imagine that we are separate from nature. We assume it’s not really so relevant to us. Maybe it’s something to visit in a park, or occasionally when we are outside of the city. We don’t think about or consider it very much. It becomes a kind of distant background.
We imagine that nature is out there somewhere, and forget that we are nature too. Everything is nature. We are nature. Our feelings and thoughts are nature. Our culture is nature. Our built environment is nature. It’s all nature taking all these forms. It’s all this living system we call Earth taking these local and fleeting forms.
All of this likely came with the agricultural revolution. Before the agricultural revolution, we were all native. We lived in egalitarian groups. We saw ourselves as nature. We saw the sacred in everyone and everything.
With the agricultural revolution, all of that changed. Some accumulated wealth while others did not. To justify that wealth inequality, and the new relationship with the land, plants, animals, and fellow humans, some started imagining separation.
They created an ideology to justify it all, and many expressions of that ideology is familiar to us today: We are separate from nature. We are special. Humans are more important than the rest of life. Nature is here for our use. Nature is infinite. Humans have soul and other beings do not. Don’t question wealth inequality. Wealth inequality is part of the divine order. You will have your reward in the afterlife so don’t bother with questioning the social order. We understand things best by taking it apart to its smallest parts.
This is all an expression of the heart of humans away from nature. It’s all an expression of a hard heart.
It also makes us feel lost. We are nature. We are a part of this web of life. Forgetting this, and pretending otherwise, makes us feel lost since we, somewhere in us, know better. We cannot escape that knowing.
Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.
– Aldous Huxley
IMMEDIATE ANSWER
Why is that?
The immediate answer for me is that life is far too rich and complex for too much consistency. What I am moved to in the moment, and what’s authentic for me now, may be different from how it was at another time and in another situation.
Consistency is an idea, and life is far more than and different from our ideas and shoulds about it.
At the same time, I use the idea of consistency in some ways. I use it to see if I live from what’s genuinely most important to me in different situations and areas of life. If not, am I caught up in some wound, unquestioned story, or unloved fear? I also use it to look at sets of ideas. Are they roughly mutually consistent? If not, am I missing something?
I can go into some of this in more detail…
WHAT TYPES OF CONSISTENCY ARE THERE?
First, what types of consistency are there?
There is the consistency over time, of staying with the same over time. If there is too much consistency here, if we don’t change and adapt over time, it may be because it’s imposed by a should that prevents flow and following what’s more authentic for us at the moment.
There is consistency across areas of life and situations and circumstances. If we lack consistency here, it may be good to look at and explore what’s behind it. Is it something I am not seeing? Am I caught up in shoulds or wounds in some areas of life or some situations? Do these create inconsistencies in how I am?
And there is internal consistency within a set of thoughts – a framework, model, or map. We can have a pretty good consistency, but complete consistency is neither possible nor desirable.
LIFE IS FAR TOO RICH TO BE CAPTURED BY THOUGHTS
Life is far too rich, complex, and fluid for complete consistency.
How is it to hold my ideas of consistency more lightly? How is it to acknowledge that life is far more than can be captured by my ideas of consistency? That it will always show up in ways that don’t fit my ideas, and that it’s a blessing when it does?
What are the shoulds in me around consistency? Where do they come from? My culture? My family? Others? What happens if I follow these shoulds? How do I live my life? What’s genuinely more true for me than these shoulds? What’s the validity in the reversals of these shoulds?
How is it to hold these shoulds more lightly? How is it to live from what’s genuinely more true for me?
EXAMINING THE IDEA OF CONSISTENCY
Why does something appear more or less consistent?
It seems to come from comparing my ideas about a series of things with an idea of consistency and seeing how well they match. It comes from comparing ideas with ideas.
That’s not wrong or bad, although it’s important to notice the limits of thoughts.
Thoughts are questions about the world. Each one is a perspective with some limited validity, and the type of validity varies from thought to thought.
Thoughts are maps, and reality is always more than and different from any map.
My ideas about consistency – whether there is consistency or not, or shoulds about consistency – are not inherent in reality itself. They are my ideas. They are my imaginations. They don’t capture reality.
THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF COMPLETE CONSISTENCY
Anything that presents itself as completely consistent – whether it’s a thought system, a life, or something else – pretends it’s something else than it is. If it’s a thought system, it pretends it’s more accurate and comprehensive than it is and can be. If it’s a life, it pretends it’s more consistent than what’s possible.
There are degrees of consistency, as far as we can tell by comparing ideas with ideas, and complete consistency is impossible, which is a good thing.
The idea that we can have full consistency and that it’s desirable comes from an orientation that’s out of alignment with life.
If it’s about a thought system, the idea of consistency rests on the assumption that thoughts can represent some kind of full, final, or absolute truth, and the assumption that if one thought is true, another one with a different view cannot be (either-or thinking).
If it’s about a life, the idea of consistency – and that it’s a good thing – rests on the idea of an ideal and that we should live up to it, likely to be loved, accepted, approved of, and so on.
These assumptions are found as a thread through Western history, and they go against the reality of life as Huxley suggests.
WHY IS IT BAD FOR THE MIND AND BODY?
Life is infinitely richer than and different from my ideas about it.
If I confine myself by telling myself I know how life is or should be, I create a mental prison for myself. I close myself off from my natural receptivity and curiosity.
This receptivity and curiosity seem inherent in what I am. It’s what allows me to be open to new opportunities and landscapes presented to me by life, explore and make use of them, and learn more about life.
If I imagine a prison and put myself in it, that’s bad for my mind and body. It’s bad for my health.
It’s also understandable, and natural since I live in this culture and civilization, and it comes from an innocent place.
MAKING USE OF THE IDEA OF CONSISTENCY
As mentioned earlier, I also make use of the idea of consistency.
The idea of consistency invites me to look at different areas of my life.
If something seems important to me, is it reflected in the many different areas of my life? Is it reflected through changing situations and circumstances? If not, what may be behind the apparent inconsistency? An unquestioned scary thought? A wound? Unmet fear?
Maybe there is a deeper consistency expressed differently in situations, circumstances, and areas of life?
NOT AN EXCUSE
This is not an excuse for indulging in whatever whims and wounds happen to come up.
When there is apparent inconsistency, that’s an opportunity for exploration. If there is an impulse to excuse it, that’s something to explore too.
How could we have ever believed it was a good idea to grow our food with poison?
– Jane Goodall
If humanity survives, I imagine future generations will look back at our time and wonder that about much of what we do today. It will be about as baffling to them as medical practices of the 1700s are to us today.
The main one is, perhaps, building a civilization on the assumption that nature is unlimited. That we can use unlimited amounts of natural resources, and that nature has an unlimited capacity to absorb the waste of our civilization.
We did it because we could. When the systems of our modern world were developed from the 1500s through the 1800s, we were few enough and had simple enough technology so it kind of worked at the time. Today, with our massively increased population and hugely more efficient technology, it’s fast approaching literal ecocide and suicide.
A lot of the other baffling things – like growing food with poison – come out of this system.
More fundamentally, it comes out of a set of assumptions of which “nature is unlimited” is just one.
We are separate from nature. The sacred is removed from us and nature. Power-over is better than power-with. Humans are at the center of existence and inherently more important and valuable than the rest. We have dominion over nature. The main way to understand is to take things apart. We know how things work. We are inherently more advanced or better than previous generations. European culture and civilization are the pinnacle of human civilization. Men are inherently better or more capable or more valuable than women. We can fill the hole in us through consumption. And so on.
How did this mindset come about? Perhaps with agriculture, the possibility to accumulate wealth, and hierarchy. This mindset justifies hierarchy. It’s in the interest of those at the higher levels of the hierarchy that we collectively buy into and perpetuate this mindset. After a while, nobody remembers anything else so it’s almost “invisible” to us, it becomes the water we swim in.
This can be seen as an evolutionary stage for our civilization and humanity. It helped us to explore ourselves and life in ways we otherwise couldn’t. Through imagining separation, we got to explore everything in a more detached way, and out of that came our modern science and technology.
Of course, many are awareof the mindset of separation and its consequences. For decades, different movements – social justice, feminism, environmentalism, animal rights, de-colonialization, regenerative agriculture, Indigenous rights, rights of nature, and so on – have pointed out problems with this worldview.
These days, our global ecological crisis – brought about by global ecological overshoot – brings us face-to-face with this mindset of separation. It’s clearly not true, it’s not working, and the consequences are becoming dire. We need something else.
What we need is a thorough transformation of the systems of our civilization so they are aligned with ecological realities. We need to take the best of what’s gone before – from both partnership and domination orientations –and create something that’s more ecologically sound.
It’s possible, we have examples, and we know the first steps and life will guide us as we move in that direction. What we need is the collective will to make these changes.
This living evolving planet is a seamless system. Right now, we and our civilization are one expression of the evolution of this system. Through us, this living system has developed the idea of separation and got to study and learn about itself from that perspective. It has limitations and challenges, including the destruction of other sides of itself. It’s giving itself feedback.
This living system will respond and adapt, and the short- and medium-term adaption can happen in a few different ways. One is that we, as parts of this living system, respond, make the necessary changes, and create an ecological civilization. Another is that the system shifts into a state not compatible with human life. It will continue to evolve, without us.
We are temporary and local expressions of this living system. From the perspective of the system, it’s natural and desirable that it expresses itself in always new ways. It’s how it evolves. It’s how it expresses, explores, and experiences itself.
Humans are here as one of many expressions of this living system, and our future will depend on how we respond to our current challenges and opportunities. Will we continue much as before, forcing the system to shift into a state not compatible with human life? Will we create an ecological civilization and continue to explore, and evolve?
How many of us will make it through the current and coming ecological bottleneck? Will some of us survive, and become more conscious participants in the evolution of this living system?
My vision is of humanity as conscious expressions of the larger systems and existence as a whole, using the best of what we have lived, and deepening into a partnership approach to living and continuing to explore, possibly far beyond this planet.
Note: I wrote this from more narrow to bigger perspectives. I realize this roughly may follow the Spiral Dynamic progression from green to yellow and turquoise (?). In general, I find it more interesting to vary between these perspectives.
I assume this is not the emptiness of existentialism, it’s the emptiness inherent in all experience.
To myself, I am consciousness and the world, as it appears to me, happens within and as consciousness.
The world, to me, is inherently empty of substance. It’s dreamlike. It’s ephemeral.
It’s also empty of anything in particular that I fundamentally am.
Of course, in a conventional sense, I am this human self in the world. That’s how most others see me, what my passport says, and so on. But it’s not what I fundamentally am.
I am not fundamentally more or less anything in particular within the field of experience. The consciousness I am forms itself into all of it.
Recognizing that emptiness can give some joy to this human self. It does for me, and it seems it did for Ikkyu.
More essentially, it seems that my nature noticing itself comes with an inherent quiet joy independent of states and changing experiences.
Let’s be very clear: Strong men – men who are truly role models – don’t need to put down women to make themselves feel powerful. People who are truly strong life others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together.
– Michelle Obama
I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment, and it’s clearly true. We don’t need to put others down if we are comfortable with ourselves. If we are in the habit of being kind to ourselves, we lift others up and bring people together.
At the same time, I honestly don’t know what strong means in this context. I know what strong means in terms of physical strength, but not so much here. I suspect it may mean what I hinted at above – to be comfortable with ourselves, habitually kind to ourselves and our experiences, perhaps even resilient.
Some folks seem to have a fixation on strength. I assume it’s compensation for something, for feeling “weak” whatever that means to them. Of course, the solution is not whatever our idea of “strong” is. The solution is to examine our stressful stories, find more comfort with ourselves, and learn how to relate to ourselves and our experiences with a little more kindness.
The solution is to give to ourselves – directly and through the situations and people we seek out – what we really want, which is – in my experience – love, acceptance, and support.
We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.
– Anais Nin
This is true in a couple of different ways, as who we are and what we are.
WHO WE ARE
Our perception of the world reflects who we are. It says more about us than the world.
We perceive through the stories we identify with, so these stories say something about who we take ourselves to be.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: People don’t seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
I can take any story I have about the world, turn around to myself, and find specific and genuine examples of how it’s true. I can find in myself what I see in others and the world.
WHAT WE ARE
To me, the world happens within and as the consciousness I am.
To myself, I am not most fundamentally this human self, I am consciousness.
The consciousness I am forms itself into the world as it appears to me. I see things as I am.
All I have ever known is the consciousness I am, taking all these many forms.
GROWING UP
Growing up means recognizing that we don’t see things as they are but as we are, and that’s an ongoing and deepening process.
It’s a process supported in the usual ways, mainly life experiences combined with receptivity and sincerity.
It can also be supported by therapy and dialog, and practices like parts work (Big Mind process, Voice Dialog, IFS), inquiry (The Work of Byron Katie, Kiloby Inquiries), basic meditation (notice and allow), heart-centered practices (tonglen, ho’oponopono), body-inclusive practices, and more.
GETTING IT AND NOT GETTING IT
We can get this and not get it at the same time.
We can get it in a general way and when issues are not too strongly triggered.
Sometimes, issues and wounds get triggered and we “forget” for a while, until things calm down and we are able to recognize and explore it.
Similarly, in some areas of life, we may have deep enough wounds and identifications with these wounds so we are caught up in issues without recognizing it, or we recognize it but it feels too difficult to fully acknowledge.
That’s why it’s an ongoing process.
HERE AND NOW
And really, it’s only here and now.
Do I get it here and now? Do I get it in this situation?
Do I notice that it’s my story about the world I am experiencing and reacting to?
Can I find in myself what I see in the other and the wider world? Can I find the story I have about them, turn it to myself, and find specific and genuine examples of how it’s true, here and now?
Do I notice it’s all happening within and as the consciousness I am?
Life is change and to be truly alive means to be repeatedly transforming ourselves.
– Michael Meade
Yes, I feel I have lived many lifetimes in this life.
It feels odd to say that it was me. Of course, it was, in a conventional sense. And in a more real sense, that person in the past – whether it was decades ago, yesterday, or a second ago – was another person.
He was also another person in that he now only exists as a mental representation and traces in the world like other people’s memories, photos, documents, and so on. In contrast, the person who is here now is also here in the other sense fields.
Life is a process and this person is part of that much greater process. He is a local and temporary expression of the unfolding process of the universe and existence. He is an eddy in a stream.
Even more essentially, change is here now.
The only reason I have an idea of change is because my mind compares mental representations. It compares mental representations of the past, including the very recent past, with mental representations it calls “now”. (Which just passed since the mental representations are always a little behind.) Without this comparison, there would be no sense of change.
Also, by noticing what’s here, I get, at a visceral level, that all content of experience is change and a process. Nothing is static. Nothing is ever the same.
So can I be any of it? Can I be anything within this changing content of experience? Can I fundamentally be this human self? Or any ideas of an I, me, doer, observer, or anything else?
If not, what am I more fundamentally?
(I find I am what it all happens within and as. I am what a thought may call consciousness, which forms itself into any and all experiences. It forms itself into its own always changing, always new content.)
What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.
– Alan Watts
Yes, this is obviously and inevitably true.
We are local and temporary expressions of the seamless dynamic system we call the universe or existence.
In the words of Carl Sagan: We are the local eyes, ears, thoughts, and feelings of the universe. We are the universe bringing itself into consciousness.
If we are used to thinking from a more local perspective, then this may seem deep, deep down, far, far in.
It’s also right on the surface. All that we are and do, including all that’s on the surface, are the local expressions of this dynamic universe.
This human self sitting here looking at these words, these hands and fingers, the sounds, the sensations, the consciousness it’s all happening within and as, are expressions of the universe and existence.
Cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words, and following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inward to illuminate your self. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will be manifest.
– Dogen Zenji
This is one of the classic quotes from Dogen Zenji, and it’s one of the many quotes from mystics that may seem baffling if we haven’t noticed our nature and seem obvious and simple when we do.
To me, what I am is what my world happens within and as. I am consciousness and the world, as it appears to me, happens within and as that consciousenss.
That’s my original face. It’s all I have ever known.
Here, this body and this psyche drop away as what I imagined I fundamentally was.
My light is turned “inward” to illuminate what I am.
From being focused on mental representations to tell me what I am, I take the backward step and notice what I am. Attention is turned to the context of all of it rather than any particular content like words and mental images.
As Douglas Harding said, when we notice what we are, we don’t go to words to tell us what we are, we instead check to see how accurate they are and where they come from. Do they come from a consciousness that recognizes itself? In this case, the quote clearly does.
My next great adventure, aged 90, is going to be dying. There’s either nothing or something. If there’s nothing there’s nothing, that’s it. If there’s something I can’t think of a greater adventure than finding out what it is. I happen to think there is something because of the experiences I’ve had, because of experiences other people have had. Very powerful ones.
– Jane Goodall
Yes, although I am not 90 this is how I see it too.
The most honest answer is that I don’t know what will happen. If it’s not nothing, I will likely be surprised one way or another.
That said, I also have some guesses. As a child, I had flashbacks to the time between lives – all as consciousness, disembodied, mostly timeless with a sense of time passing far away, and at some point some kind of dialog with other disembodied beings who served in the role of a guide.
A few months old, I had an out-of-body experience. I saw and remembered things I shouldn’t have seen or remembered, and that was confirmed by my family when I was in my late teens and asked about it.
What I remembered in the flashbacks is very similar to what people describe from near-death experiences, minus the tunnel and meeting deceased relatives. The out-of-body experience is also very similar to the floating-out-of-body phase of many near-death experiences.
I have also connected with people who have recently died, in a similar way to how I connect with people when I invite in healing for them. What I have sensed, and others have sensed as well, is a wide range of experiences. One was in some kind of confusion and turmoil (TH). One was in deep peace (the sister of a friend). One seemed frustrated that he had died because he had more left of his mission in life (MD). This is in the few days after death, and it seems that much of what’s related to our human experience and psyche is stripped off in the following period.
In Tibetan Buddhism, if I remember correctly, they talk about unprocessed material coming up at some point after death and since we don’t have the grounding in the body and the possibility for distractions, it can be extra challenging. I won’t be surprised at all if not unprocessed materials surface – to be seen, felt, loved, and recognized as happening within and as consciousness. That’s how it is life so why not also after this life?
That’s also why, for this life and maybe what follows, it makes sense for me to explore how to better relate to my experiences, especially the challenging ones.
I should also mention that although I find myself as what the world, to me, happens within and as, that doesn’t mean this consciousness will last forever. It’s fully possible that this consciousness I am is somehow dependent on this physical body. (Although I wouldn’t put my money there.) This is the small or secular understanding of awakening which I have written about in other articles.
As Jane Goodall says, most honestly, it’s going to be a big adventure. I cannot know what will happen and it’s either nothing or something, and if something, it will inevitably be surprising.
Well, hard times are good things. I mean, one of the things I’ve realized is that I only really learn anything when things are just disastrous. It’s the only time I’m able to actually be vulnerable enough to learn anything. Because the rest of the time it’s like, ‘Yeah, that’s good. I’ll do this. I’ll do that.’ It’s fun and exciting, but, you know, whenever everything just falls apart—it’s not that I look forward to it now, but I almost do.
Yes, it’s true in my experience that big shifts have sometimes happened when it feels like my life is falling apart. That’s when my system is more receptive and the asking for help – from life and the divine – is more urgent and sincere. (The initial oneness shift happened when I was sixteen and with a lot of teenage angst, and the Amma shift happened last fall on a night when I was falling apart because it looked like our Andes project was falling apart.)
At the same time, it doesn’t have to be big or dramatic. This morning, I woke up with a low-grade sense of dread and anxiety. It’s familiar and old and I know it’s more about the past (my childhood) than now. I know I can do things so it’s not so prominent in my sense field, which is fine and also somewhat of a missed opportunity. So I stay with it instead. I notice the sensations and the murmurs of images and words associated with it. I rest with it. I wordlessly and gently lean into it, welcome it, and meet it with some curiosity and kindness. It’s a familiar kind of contraction. I notice an opening up. Vulnerability. Receptivity.
In a way, these daily discomforts – the parts of me emerging that old patterns in my personality may not like so much – are hard times. These are the ones I can open to. These open me when I welcome and allow it.
We can make use of difficult times, whether they are big or small, to humanize, deepen, and find receptivity, curiosity, and willingness to receive help from life and the parts of us wiser than we are consciously.
We don’t need to invite them in since they come anyway. Life is hard enough so there is no need to make it more difficult. And when it’s here, it’s a kind of gift.
We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing – an actor, a writer – I am a person who does things – I write, I act – and I never know what I’m going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.
– Stephen Fry
THE FLUIDITY OF ROLES AND IDENTITIES
One of the advantages of writing and acting is that you get to imagine yourself into a lot of different roles and identities, and that, in turn, makes it easier to see that we are not inherently any of the different roles we play in life or the labels we or others put on us.
We are far more fluid than that. We can play any number of roles and find the truth in any number of labels.
Working with therapy can do the same, whether we take the temporary role of a therapist or client.
That’s one of the reasons I love exploring subpersonalities and dreams. It’s a reminder that I can take on any role and perspective and find the limited validity in any label.
THE MORE ESSENTIAL QUESTION
All of this brings up another more essential question: If I am not inherently any role, label, or identity, what am I?
There is a sense of something more essential, a thread that continues through it all. What is that?
What I find is that my human roles and identities are useful, although they are not what I more essentially am. When I look in my first-person experience, I find I more fundamentally are something else.
I am what all of this, and the whole field of experience, happens within and as.
I am what a thought may call consciousness, and the world, to me, happens within and as the consciousness I am.
Even more fundamentally, I am capacity for all of it – consciousness, content of experience, roles and identities, taking myself as it or not, and so on.
Vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit / Bidden or not bidden, God Is present
– The Delphic Oracle, inscribed by Jung above the entrance to his house in Kusnacht
I wrote a brief post about this quote some years ago and revisited it since it received a comment. I thought I would add a few words to it now since I didn’t do it then.
I agree with the comment: Whether you call Him or not God is with you.
Or, as I would say: Whether you call Her or not, God is with – and within – you.
ALL IS THE DIVINE
In one sense, all is the divine. All is the divine taking all of these forms. It’s all the divine expressing, exploring, and experiencing itself as all of it and in always new ways. This is what some call Lila.
ALL APPEARS AS CONSCIOUSNESS
In another sense, to us all appears as the divine since, to us, all happens within and as the consciousness we are. It all takes on the characteristics of the divine to us. This is the small or psychological understanding of awakening.
GOD IS WITH US ALWAYS
In a more conventional sense, the divine – God – is with us always, whether we notice or not. This is what most forms of spirituality talk about.
THE PRESENCE OF THE DIVINE
Also, it is different when I intentionally connect with the divine – through prayer, meditation, and other practices. For me, two that stand out are the Christ meditation and Heart prayer. The presence is palpable.
THE VALIDITY IN EACH OF THESE
To me, all of these are valid.
Within the realm of space and time and stories, we can see all of existence as the play of the divine.
To myself, in my immediate experience, I am consciousness, the world happens within and as the consciousness I am so it inevitably appears as consciousness, and that consciousness has the qualities many of us associate with the divine.
The divine is with us always, as most forms of spirituality talk about.
Through spiritual practices, the presence of the divine becomes more palpable and comes into the foreground.
western cultures believe we must be alive for a purpose. to work, to make money. some indigenous cultures believe we’re alive just as nature is alive: to be here, to be beautiful & strange. we don’t need to achieve anything to be valid in our humanness.
I suspect this is accurate. Some indigenous cultures found an inherent value in humans and everything. A value that’s there just because it’s part of this wonderful existence.
We have value as we are, just like everything else. Our value is in being part of this wonderful universe and existence – expressing, exploring, and experiencing itself through and as all of us and all that is.
OTHER REASONS FOR ACTIVITY
The idea of having value through what’s peripheral – purpose, roles, actions, posessions – is so ingrained in the Western culture that it seems difficult for some to imagine something else.
For instance, I saw a comment to this saying “which Indigenous cultures? they didn’t just lay around being lazy”. That seems to come from someone who engages in activity primarily in order to find value. Without that, she or he can’t imagine a reason for doing anything.
In reality, there are innumerable reasons for doing something. Free from ideas about why we do something, we still do something and are in activity. It’s part of our nature. It’s just that it comes from another place in us.
We may do it to be more comfortable, to have a different life, to have food, clothing, and shelter, to take care of ourselves and those we love.
We may do it from love. Curiosity. Wanting to experience it. Exploration. Fascination.
We may do it for no apparent reason at all. Doing things is just what humans – and all beings – seem to do.
A CLOSER LOOK
It’s worth exploring all of this.
Where do I find my value?
If I find my value in what’s peripheral – roles, actions, possessions, a sense of purpose – what happens if or when these change or go away?
If I find my value in what’s more essential – in being part of this wonderful existence – what happens? How do I live my life? How do I live this moment?
I always say to budding writers, ‘The most important thing that you can do is sit around and do nothing. Because the second you start to manufacture a story, you’re going to get stressed out, and the story can’t start that way.’
– Leslye Headland, the creator of Star Wars: The Acolyte, in Entertainment
For me, this is how life is in general. I can’t sit down to manufacture decisions. If I try, I get stressed out and it doesn’t go so well. They come on their own and in their own time.
I can gather as much information as possible. I can imagine into different scenarios. Sometimes, I talk with someone about it. And when it’s time, the decisions make themselves.
Here, I am talking about it in a conventional sense. In a more real sense, everything is happening on its own and living its own life – decisions, sitting down to make them or not, gathering information, and so on.
I love Byron Katie’s suggestion to stay in bed in the morning after waking up and wait until the body gets out of bed on its own. At some point, it just happens.
Another side to this is boredom. Allowing myself to be bored. To not do anything in particular. That allows more effortless and surprising creative impulses to emerge. Something comes up on its own. I find myself getting up and doing something that needs to be done or that is nourishing to me.
Since I don’t have much of a fixed schedule these days, my days are mostly like this. At the end of the day, I make a list of things I could do the next day. It’s a kind of menu. And the next day, I wait and see what comes up. Usually, I am surprised.
Some days, like today, not too much happens. I found myself looking into and finding sources for more plants for our food forest and permaculture project in the Andes. It was not on my list, but it just happened. It felt right and there was a nice flow with two others involved in the project who were on the same wavelength at the same time. I received an SMS telling me some storage boxes I had ordered were in the store waiting for me, and I also received an SMS telling me about a sale in another store close to it. I checked, and they had some very nice pots on sale that I had wanted to get for the cabin. So I walked downtown to pick up the boxes and buy the pots.
I have a menu of options for tomorrow, and I am curious to see what will happen.
As I mentioned, I am often surprised. I am surprised by the timing, and I am surprised by what I find myself doing. Yesterday, I had planned to take a day of rest. At some point, I found myself going outside to clear out some volunteer plants growing among the berry bushes in the garden. I had not planned to do it so it was a pleasant surprise. Some days, I find myself getting up at 4 am and getting much of my list done before most people have even started their day.
In our culture, we are trained to think that we need to force ourselves to do something, otherwise it won’t happen or it won’t happen in time. That’s not my experience. When I allow myself to wait and be surprised, things get done, and it gets done not only in its own time but somehow on time otherwise too.
That’s how I write here too. I sometimes write down ideas for articles, and I have a long list. When I actually write, it’s because I am moved to do it in the moment. I cannot not do it. If I tried to follow a plan and write something I think I should write about, or I had an impulse to write about at some time in the past, it wouldn’t go very well. There would be little or no flow, it would be uncomfortable, and it would not be very enjoyable.
This is not an excuse to do nothing, to avoid responsibilities, or to not be a good steward for one’s own life. If that happens, it may be because the mind takes this and makes it into an ideology. That creates inflexibility and goes against the natural flow and impulses. This is about waiting with curiosity until a movement happens on its own.
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