Tag Archives: earth

We All Get to Stay

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Sharing our prayers this morning, the hermits each reciting a prayer to the other so each can pray, and talking about the oneness of life (prompted by one of the shared prayers), the dependence of one species upon another.

As we reflected on that idea – of interdependence – it occured to me that perhaps, there might be a problem in how we as humans, interpret its meaning. We can maybe call it a kind of paradox, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

Our dependence – as humans beings – on so many other species is actually a well known, and I hope increasingly accepted, reality. For food, for shelter, for water, air to breathe. Everything.

In any case, an aspect of this interdendcence idea that struck me as perhaps missing, that I’ve not really heard before (I haven’t researched this; just winging it thought and contemplation wise) is this; If, say, bees disappeared, or all trees were cut down, would humans survive? Definitely not.

On the other hand, let’s say that in an instant or even over time, all humans on Earth disappeared. What would happen to all the other living beings? All the bugs, the fishes, the animals of all kinds, trees, grasses – all the living beings?

It seems to me that all those other species, all those beings of all kinds, would not only survive, they would most likely thrive.

Actually, now I think about it, I remember during the COVID lockdowns, people in various places around the world were amazed at the return of birds to usually busy polluted cities, and how the air seemed fresher in some places when in ‘normal times’ it was getting hard to breathe. And beaches and rivers looked a bit cleaner than usual.

Fewer people commuting; fewer planes flying; less goods being transported on congested roads; less waste going into rivers and the oceans. Seems life on Earth was doing better when we (humans) were out of the picture, even for a short while.

Which is to say, humans may not be necessary for the survival of planet Earth and the other life that lives here. Putting it very simply: We go, they thrive; They go, we go too.

But, my thought train races along its newly discovered track here, what if I’m wrong? What if I’m looking at the whole issue on just a superficial level? What if all I am seeing is the gross material level of the whole question? What if I’m missing the real point of it all?

Well it seems to me that on that purely physical, surface level, my theory (borrowed as it may be perhaps) might be right, the irony true: we go, they thrive; they go, we all go; they stay, we all get to stay.

But who are ‘they‘? Who are ‘we‘? For me it’s clear that we are not all simply and only our physical bodies and our minds living here in the material world; that’s all temporary and comes and goes. No, there has to be more to it than that.

Which is what I end up coming back to so very often: there is only one. No separation; no you and me; them or us. Just one. Without a second. Only Consciousness.

I think the best thing to do, just to be on the safe side is to look after each other – regardless of the particular body we happen to be inhabiting at the moment.

That way, we all get to stay, and we’ll all thrive

One, Without a Second, is All There Is

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Right at the front of my Bhagavad Gita (the only book aside from the notebook I’m writing this in, that I personally own), I have recorded and inserted sayings and various words , that are important to me. Among those things is a statement I first heard many many years ago, that is common among the First Nations’ peoples of this country:

I [We] stand always on sacred ground and beneath sacred skies.


It is not an affirmation of ownership or possession. It is, instead, an affirmation of belonging to the land, to nature. It is a prayer of thanks, and it is a declaration of the knowledge of unity with the rest of the natural world, that is the hallmark and foundation for Indigenous cultures throughout the world and through time.

I’ve valued – treasured – this sentiment for a very long time – probably from even before I first heard it, which was so long ago as to be lost to memory. Perhaps I always knew it because I’ve somehow always thought this idea was a fundamental truth concerning my existence as a being living on this planet.

Well, now I have heard another statement that for me makes a perfect compliment for this one. The other day, during a lecture, my teacher mentioned that in his student days a fellow student said:

Wherever you are, you are walking through Ishwara

(Ishwara being her preferred name for the divine – for all that is.)

There is a feeling or sense of ‘belonging’, of awe and wonder when we attempt to immerse ourselves in what we term the natural world.

Once again I immediately felt the bell of Truth ringing clearly through this statement. Yes, I thought, everything is divine – including our own selves – so of course it follows that wherever we go, whatever we do, we are always in the divine.

You’ve probably read a number of times me quoting my teacher quoting his teacher:

It’s not that there is only one God, there is only God.
          Swami Dayananda Saraswati

Emphasis very much on only. Meaning of course, that it’s not that God is within us, or that we are within God; we are not surrounded by God; and it’s not that God ‘sits in our hearts’. The reality (for my teacher’s teacher) was that all that is, everywhere, everything, every thought, every word and deed, everything there is, is the divine.

Another way to describe the divine or God, that appeals to me is that Ishwara (also my own preferred name for the Divine) is in reality the natural order of the universe as dictated by the laws of nature. Those laws of nature, the rules that govern how the universe works, are also Ishwara, as are all that is manifest or in existence  as a consequence of the workings of those laws.

In other words, the Divine is the sum total of what some would call the entirety of creation.***

For the hermits a sacred site. Part of a grove we named The Sentinels. A place of experience of unity and oneness of creation

For me this an enormously comforting and reassuring concept. Of course, for me at least, it is also an extremely difficult one to wrap my head around. But here’s a small summary of what I think I’ve grasped so far.

Ishwara – the Divine – is all there is; everything. Also divine is the natural order of the Universe as governed by the laws of nature. These laws are neither good or bad – there is no duality. They are neutral.

You and I, as one more entity among who knows how many others, act as we do and are subject to the laws of nature, just like everything else. We can’t change or influence those laws; we can only live our lives as they unfold.

To quote from Desiderata: No doubt the Universe is unfolding as it should

And, well, then things just work out as they do. While we can’t change the laws of nature, or bend the universe to always suit our liking, it is also true to say that every action we take, every thought we think, every word we utter, even our very presence as a living being in our time and place, do indeed contribute to ‘how things work out’. Another way of saying this is to say, we do our bit, and the universe does its bit and what happens, well, happens.

For me, this is not at all as simple or as straightforward as it sounds. Naturally  we see ourselves as individual selves, as entities on our own. After all, to state the obvious, we live and operate in a material (dualistic) world. So automatically we see ourselves as individuals living in, but always separate from all the other individual entities, as well as being disconnected from the world itself.

It is part of human nature (for the most part) to long for connection; there is so often a drive within us pushing us to create family, enter relationships, feel we belong to a community or communities, and for many but not all, there is the almost instinctive urge to seek connection with the rest of nature.

Many forms, One reality

We often think of these longings as goals to achieve, as something outside of ourselves to attain, to reach for. Consequently, so very often we tend to focus our attention outwards, towards other people, or material things.

But, instead, all these inclinations, desires and longings are simply our Self (note the capital?) endeavoring to open itself to discovering (or rediscovering?) that which already exists: our oneness with, and our non-separation, and non-difference from, The All That Is.

Peace and Love from Paul the Hermit

FOOTNOTE

***Just a few thoughts about naming, or giving labels to the Universe and its laws.  Obviously it’s a personal choice for each of us what we choose to call that creation. Then, on the other hand, we don’t have to call it anything at all. For me personally it is very difficult, even near impossible to not name it. By naming the creation, I don’t think I am attributing the manifestation of the Universe to some distant entity living in some heavenly abode (as my teacher likes to say). Rather I am acknowledging the intelligence  and order, beauty, complexity of all that is and how it all works, as its own reality. At the same time, I am learning to understand that I as my true nature am not separate from the rest of creation, and I feel the need to have a name towards which I am able to focus my thanks and my reverence.

Changing the World: Maybe not such a Tall Order

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I’ve always liked this idea, this notion, that by helping one person, you can change their world. I’ve always believed it to be true; after all,

Nobody ever made a bigger mistake than one who did nothing because they could only do a little.

  Sydney Smith

Reading this great quote again recently, I was struck by something I don’t think I’ve noticed before. Suddenly I saw: ‘might not change the world’. Might not? Then I thought why not turn the whole think around: I could as easily say ‘Helping one person might change the world …’.

But, you know, my thinking went even further: I realized that might and might not have nothing to do with it. The reality is that every action we take, and that includes the action of helping other living beings (as well as harming them, which is a whole other story for another time), actually does change the world.

Obviously we can’t always (actually it’s more like very rarely) see those changes, nor are we able to dictate what the changes will be or predict all the possible outcomes. We may think we know what the results of our actions will be; we may even guess right. Whatever the case, all we can do is take action while realising that impacts always occur and just keep on happening in a kind of cascading effect that literally never stops.

Then I thought about it some more, wondering how we can actually come to fully realise that the might not in this marvelous saying, which speaks of a negative possibility, is more an always will, which points to something definite, as well as a whole lot more positive.

All is One on the physical and the non-physical levels

We all have had at some time a sense that we are all connected; we feel that we are part of nature, part of something bigger than just a lone disconnected individual. But, have you ever had the feeling that you might be more than just a ‘part of’ the world or nature’? Have you ever had a sense that you are nature? Maybe this sounds a bit esoteric: But we are one Self; we are all physical manifestations of the one consciousness, the one Divine.

And of course we can’t know for sure what goes on beyond the physical world. But, even at that most basic level of the material, especially as we get down to the microscopic and even atomic levels, it’s hard to tell individual beings apart. Atoms merge and cross over, interact, and change, between all living and non-living things.

So, who’s to say that one small action on my part, one small change, won’t have a cascading effect as the ripples (that’s a good way to put it isn’t it?) from that action spread through the world and beyond.

The ‘What can One Person Do?’ Dilemma

Our Sydney Smith quote in a sense tackles this agonising question for us. Still, you might think that one person can’t do a lot when the needs are so vast and so many and so intractable. There is always something we can do, even at the supposedly one person, one individual level, even if as Mr Smith says, it’s a small thing we do.

Just think how many people everywhere are asking this same question: ‘What can one person do?’

If even a tiny percentage of those questioning individuals answered that they could do something, then you would start to see changes taking place for sure. How could all those actions not add up to a changed world?

The Multiplier Effect

Just now I used the words ‘add up’. Well actually it’s more like a multiplication effect.

Remember we mentioned earlier the idea of a cascading effect always in action whenever any action of any kind is performed? Isn’t there a saying that goes something like: if a butterfly flaps its wings in a forest somewhere in the world, then a polar bear in the Arctic sneezes? Okay, that’s not quite it but you know what I mean.

Then there is that concept of ‘pay it forward’. It’s an easy concept to grasp, though I don’t especially like the language.  For me it’s more to do with love, compassion, empathy, and a desire to make things better.

So, the truth is, helping one person does indeed change the world for that one person. And whatever we do for that one person, it also does definitely change the whole world. It may not appear to us personally that everything in the world has changed simply because of our one, apparently tiny action, but the world, (and that includes all of us who live here or anywhere else for that matter) is one living entity, one being, so those multiplying impacts just go on affecting everything and everyone in some way.

We may think of ourselves as just one separate little individual, but we are more than simply united with all life; we are that life, just as all life is us. And, as for believing we can be ‘agents of change’, we may think that it’s all too hard; too many problems; what can I do? The road to changing the world seems to be blocked, seems to be impassable.

Well, one teacher I admire is Ramdas. Among the many great things he said, this one stands out for me above them all. I may have the wording a bit wrong, but basically the message is:

If you set your feet upon the path, then you are already at your goal


Which is another way of saying that if you help one person, then you have changed the world.


Peace

Remnants of Sea Cliffs

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Here there are remnants
of sea cliffs.
Cliffs that have not towered
since ancient times.

Looks Like a Comfy Chair

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‘Looks like a comfy chair’.

That was the first thing my partner said when I showed her this photo. Her eyes – and perhaps even her heart – had found that which is illuminated by the sun, even though it’s surrounded by wreckage and ruin.

The wreckage by the way, of an abandoned and trashed store front. One of several in a small arcade, that’s long sat empty.

Ah, I thought: one more illustration of a metaphor I’ve been hearing a lot lately in my studies about consciousness.

Allow me, please, to adopt our teacher’s metaphor which, for me, really clarifies this concept of consciousness, or Atma as it’s called in Sanskrit.

Is the brilliant light streaming into this room and onto this chair affected in any way whatsoever because the chair is sitting amidst all that wreckage?

Is the sun shining any less brightly on the chair than it would if the chair was sitting in a luxuriously decorated space instead?

Of course the answer to both questions is no. The sun, and its brilliance remains undimmed, and completely unaffected, untouched, regardless of what it shines on.

The ‘I’ that photographed this scene, and my partner’s ‘I’ whose eyes were drawn to the chair in the scene, are both consciousness. Not ‘my’ consciousness; not ‘her’ consciousness. Consciousness is all; all there is. Boundaryless, infinite, all pervading. We can’t even say there is one consciousness, because there is only consciousness.

Ah, I hear you say: there is one sun shining on our world; and the sun isn’t ‘all there is’. Well, as our teacher likes to remind us, all metaphors are flawed: you can only take them so far.

Metaphors, are only meant to illustrate, to show us the way, point us in the right direction as it were. In our little example here, the metaphor is meant to help us gain some knowledge.

The knowledge that we are not what we see, hear, taste, touch, think or feel. We are that light – consciousness – that allows us to know what we experience with our senses.

One more thing: The light of the sun, flooding the chair with its brilliance, enabled my partner to see that it was comfy, even though it was sitting in that wrecked, abandoned and lonely place.

Just as in our lives, when everything seems to be crashing down around us and we feel we are the ones stranded in that wreckage, we can remember that the light of our own consciousness, is the way in which we may shine our attention on the truth of our unchanging eternal, and true nature, that is who we really are: perfect, eternal, absolutely unaffected by anything at all.

Peace and love

By the River’s Light

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By the River’s Light
I’ll Live My Life
out of sight of Babylon

A Note From Me: I can’t tell you who wrote these words. Maybe I did; maybe it’s a song lyric; or maybe it’s a quote from someone famous. Whatever the case, a half hour internet search failed to come up with anything even close. So, The best I can do is thank whoever did bring these beautiful words into the world. I hope you are pleased with how I’ve made use of them.

When Misreading is no Mistake

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We’ve all  had this experience I think. I’ll be reading something, and right away I’ll come to a conclusion, become either sure of something or the complete opposite; I can be confused, force myself to ask more questions. I can even have brilliant insights or realizations.

No? Well, maybe it’s really just me then. But, wait there’s more: this is a two part experience. When that second part happens we will come to realise that what we think we read is nothing at all like what the words on the paper (or screen) actually said in a factual sense.

Yes, you’ve probably guessed by now that there’s a story coming. In fact this exact thing happened to me this morning, all the way to the brilliant insight or realisation bit.

In fact it was a brilliant realisation, the only problem was that it was based on only on what I thought I read, not what was actually being said.

Anyway, I was reading the verse quoted below, from my Bhagavad Gita and a sudden flash of insight hit me.

Despite these five lines saying a particular thing in a clear and precise manner, I somehow misread the first three lines to say:

All beings ensue from Me.

Bhagavad Gita Ch 7:12

Somehow my mind skipped the ‘states of’ bit and made a leap that actually lead to a great realisation: Of course, I thought; God is not in us (as in living beings), it’s we who are in God.

Which to me means that we are all part and parcel of God. I’m not saying, I’m God; I’m not saying you are either. What I am saying is that all creation as one, unified whole, is in God. And if that one unified whole does indeed ensue from God, then it follows that all of creation is God.

As individualized, embodied entities, we (along with all life everywhere) are simply manifestations in the material form of that divine energy, that life, that truth; that which we often call God.

Now, this is an instance of a flash of insight leading to a truth, when the receiver of the insight (that’s me) is engaged with what you might call some other factual reality, that is, the actual words on the page.

At first I thought, that’s weird: how did I misread all those words related to states of being? I mean they are pretty clear right? But then I thought, no, maybe not so weird. In fact, it makes sense.

How can my material mind and intellect possibly be expected to always keep its millions of thoughts, ideas, impulses and the rest, in perfect order each thought or whatever following completely logically from the one before and to the one after? It’s never going to happen is it? Not for any of us (Well maybe I’m overstating my case here, but you know what I mean).

And if mind does indeed operate on what seems on the face of it to be a random basis, then it’s perfectly reasonable to suppose that one might be prompted to some momentous insight by, well by anything really. Even if it’s a conclusion jumped to after the misreading of a text.

In this case though, that jumping to conclusions, even though based a misreading, has turned out to be a genuine realisation that I feel on an intuitive level; my instincts tell me it’s Truth.

Jai Gurudev
All that I am today is by your grace.

I Live On a Big Round Ball

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Namaste friends

Recently I came across some notes I’d made about a book I read ages ago, at least a year I think. Anyway, the name of the book: The Art of Mindful Walking. Sorry, but no prizes for guessing what it’s about.

Reading my notes I see that I had been particularly taken with what the author had to say about ‘our place in the Universe’. He reflects on our – humanity’s that is – perception of our size in the big scheme of things.

The author recounts how we once went for a walk with American astronaut Dave Scott, who’d been to the moon on one of the Apollo missions. Scott described to him what it felt like looking back at Earth from the surface of the moon:

It hangs in the black sky like a glass bauble, a blue and white Christmas decoration. It’s a small, fragile world.

Ford then goes on to reflect that this image, of a small, fragile ball floating in space, has ‘become a part of the modern psyche’. Then he says:

We begin to see how vulnerable we actually are. We are the first generation truly to see this. We are also the generation that is coming closest to polluting and destroying it.

I don’t think I’d quite looked at it in this way before. And I admit, it stunned me a bit.

Just think: Of all the humans who have ever lived, those alive in the last 50 or 60 years have been the first to see our home planet in its entirety. At least we’ve had the good fortune of seeing images of Earth just as those astronauts saw it. Thanks to those images made from space, we now have had a glimpse of where we actually live and the nature of our world.

Yet, at precisely this point in our history as a species, when we have that particular knowledge, this is the time we seem to be almost wilfully destroying the very ground we walk upon, the air that keeps us living, and the water without which there is no life.

I’m not a warrior. I am a hermit and a pilgrim and I try hard to not make judgements. As such, I can only look on in wonder.

And I can pray.

Thanks to Jimmy Buffett for the title. It’s a line from one of his greatest songs, called Defying Gravity. Thanks Jimmy for all the music man.