I am nothing, and everything

Ego has me convinced that 'I' am a discrete, tangible being, separate from the world around me. But this is illusion. I am the sum total of sensations, feelings and thoughts which have occurred since I was born. I will cease to exist when I die. There is no 'I' separate from these streams of experience. In other words, I am what I have perceived, felt and thought, and those streams of consciousness are rooted in my physical being - they are in fact three aspects of the Tetrahedron: the Physical, Emotional and Intellectual.

What then of will, the very essence of ego?

Will has to do with the fourth node of the Tetrahedron, the Spiritual. In short, will is the movement of the eternal and infinite - or the undefinable - spiritual force within me. Will responds to and interacts with the sensations, feelings and especially the thoughts that are generated in the physical me and in-so-doing shapes the person I become and the types of experiences it will encounter. In other words, will is to some degree self defining.

So how can I even use the word 'I' in this context. This is the dichotomy or contradiction that is ego. Spirit cannot manifest except through what is called 'incarnation' in some traditions. Incarnation occurs in the form of discrete, physical entities. So spirit must take on finite forms in order to exist, but in doing so it never loses its connection to eternal and infinite reality (again, the undefinable from the perspective of 'I'). In other words, spirit does not exist outside its incarnate forms, but the incarnate forms do not limit spirit except in an illusory way.

Does this view lessen my appreciation of self? Not at all. Individuated spirit is God expressing him/er self and experiencing his/er world. God does not exist without the illusion of individuated spirit, which makes each and every one of us a miraculous spark in his/er eternal state of becoming.

Cause and Purpose in the World

I imagine myself standing alone before a room full of people, asking: Anyone who believes they have absolutely no purpose in life, raise your hand. How many would seriously do so? My guess is very few.

Intuitively most of us sense a purpose to our lives and would feel lost without that underlying influence. Most of us believe we are the result of some kind of purposeful unfolding rather than the latest state produced by an incomprehensible chain of soulless reactions or causes.

That sense of purpose lies at the heart of the first statement in my personal creed: I believe I am a manifestation of divine spirit.

Although I can only affirm that for myself, I also believe everyone else manifests the divine.

It is important for me to qualify that statement right away. I am not a foot soldier in the army of the Old Testament God. Rather, I am an expression of Intelligent Desire, the influence of divine spirit unfolding in the universe. God does not command; god wishes to know and express himself through the cycles of becoming, and I am a tiny instance of that eternal, wondrous process.

I believe!

Is there spirit in the wind?

A strong southwesterly sends clouds scudding
and sets the trees dancing this morning.
It speaks to me and sings
in the rattle of leaves and the bong of chimes.
It says: 'I am spirit. I live. I animate your world.
Feel my cool caress on your skin,
the tingle of rain drops driven against  your exposed flesh.
Know me for the soul of the world.'
Sensation and emotion join in the whispering refrain,
amplify it through the neural network
and the pulsing chambers of my heart.
All is motion, and excitement, and change.
And I thrill to it.

But reason casts its doubts,
muttering its tattered logic
like old King Lear mad on the heath
rocked by a disbelief as profound as age and gravity...
and Mr. Hawking.
'This,' reason informs in his torn shirt,
from under his shock of tousled hair,
'is pure physics, the movement of air,
mere molecules rushing into a relative vacuum
in the schema of your so-called creation.'
Then he pauses to think, and think, and think again,
dissecting atoms of truth right down to...
Their uttered joy,
to the force that impells them.
And reason asks:

'Why?
Why this perpetual motion that disturbs
the very notion of rest?'

It seems to me that perhaps
all the world must live
and that I myself am a formulation
of the living breath which
shouts, and sings, and booms
and staves off the contrapuntal silence.

Empiricism?

Some dear friends gave me a copy of Plato and the Platypus!, which I been delighting in over the last couple of months - I'm an unabashedly slow reader. In the section on Epistemology dealing with empiricism, the following passage:

Despite the triumph of empiricism and science, many people continue to interpret some unusual events as miracles rather than the result of natural causes. David Hume, the skeptical British empiricist, said that the only rational basis for believing that something is a miracle is that all alternative explanations are even more improbable...

With due respect, David Hume misses the point. What we call 'natural science' is itself miraculous... utterly and profoundly and inexplicably!

I believe, I think...

flickr image by pratanti

I believe in a feeling, caring universe, but experience suggests this belief is utterly fantasy. When I compare the behaviour of 'civilized' peoples toward one another - when I reflect on the catalogue of murder, pillage, greed, abuse and indifference that adds up to human history - how can I possibly hold on to my ideal of 'Intelligent Desire' and Love expressed through evolution?

It's at that point I have a decision to make: either give up on the notion of a feeling, caring universe; or renew my faith by acting in a feeling, caring way myself, and thereby expressing 'Intelligent Desire' in the face of adversity. My flickering commitment will never make much difference beyond my circle of family and friends. But it is an affirmation that sustains Wonder and Joy in a minute corner of the universe, at least.

Enlightenment advances one soul at a time. Often we cannot see other candles, wavering in the dark; we simply have to believe they are there, and keep our own lights shining.

Theism, Panentheism, Panthesim. What are you?

~

You're looking at me
looking at you.
Hello God, How do you do?

Have I got this right? A Theist believes that God cannot change; a Panentheist, that God can change; a Pantheist, that God is change.

Love is eternally immanent.

Don't talk to me about God; be god in your actions.

~

What is Spirit?

~
Spirit is:

• Indivisible
• Inherent
• Eminent
• Uncreated
• Dimensionless
• Timeless
• Glorious

~

At what point is Free Will expressed?

Free will is concomitant with but not identical to having a choice. Humans have both free will and the freedom to choose; cats have only the freedom to choose. If we look farther down the evolutionary time line, we encounter the point where the freedom to choose begins to separate itself from pure instinct. A cat has the freedom to choose; an ant responds to stimuli immediately without any question as to the pros or cons of an action. Farther still, and we are at the point where sentience and instinct separate themselves from plant life and other non-sentient forms of being. Before that spirit must have been inherent in a form I cannot conceive of.

I have drawn out this sequence of events because it suggests Free Will is the outcome of evolution, and has only manifested in this corner of the universe in very recent times, as measured on the evolutionary scale. Philosophically that opens a portal into a huge area of discussion, which must be left for another time. But there is one crucial point that I want to consider now: Is Free Will immanent from the earliest inception of life? In other words, is life a progression toward Free Will?

Extreme caution is needed here. I am not implying that life-manifestations which express Free Will are 'above' those that don't in some sort of evolutionary chain. Rather, I want to explore the notion that the role of humans is to embody and express Free Will as part of the unfolding wonder of spirit.

The unorthodox conclusion I have arrived at is that Free Will does not exist outside of manifest spirit. As I've said elsewhere, I don't believe spirit can exist without manifesting itself in some physical form. Further, Intelligent Desire - which is the process of spirit unfolding - progresses toward Free Will, just as it progressed toward life, sentience and choice. But Free Will cannot be said to exist before it is manifest. In short, the entity many religions refer to as God has evolved, manifesting himerself in the totality of spiritual forms that presently exist, and there has been a tendency from the outset for evolution to produce beings that express Free Will.

As I consider this admittedly convoluted analysis another notion is beginning to take hold. I believe what we call God, or the World Spirit, or the Unmoved Mover is a simple force of immense power and consequence. I call that force Love and the consequence of love is Intelligent Desire.

What, then, of Hatred? Where does the tendency to nihilism come from? An important precurser to thought on this conundrum is the understanding that Free Will is meaningless unless it encompasses the ability to succeed of fail - the ability to be anything conceivable. The ability to create or destroy.

The Magnificent Crane Fly

Flickr photo: the PhotoPhreak

If ever there was an argument against Intelligent Design, it’s got to be the Crane Fly – AKA the Leatherjacket, AKA Holorusia rubiginosa for those of a more scientific bent.

Here’s the Wikipedia description of this evolutionary misfit: “Unlike most flies, crane flies are weak and poor fliers with a tendency to ‘wobble’ in unpredictable patterns during flight, and they can be caught without much effort. Also, it is very easy to accidentally break off their delicate legs when catching them, even without direct contact.”

A species that wobbles in flight? That can be caught without much effort? Whose legs snap off without direct contact? If anyone at Boeing designed a plane with those characteristics, they would immediately be headhunted by General Motors to design the next incarnation of the North American automobile – which would be good news for the flying public, since cars rarely make it off the assembly line these days, let alone off the ground.

So how do we explain the mysterious Crane Fly? I mean, what kind of Intelligent Designer would come up with a bio contraption so superlatively stupid? And what purpose could this creature possibly serve? I recently found myself puzzling over these questions, while stepping over Crane Fly carcasses in the hallway, then watching one nosedive – in classic erratic fashion – under the stove element.

Perhaps the intelligent designer in hiser wisdom invented a creature as fodder for the insect-eating hordes: easy to catch, substantially bigger than your average mosquito, and fitted with detachable appendages for quick ingestion. If you reduce divine intelligence to a barren calculation of inputs and outputs, I suppose you might conceive of such a wing-plucking God.

But does anyone really believe God’s wisdom can be measured by the type of IQ test bookkeepers excel at – anyone outside the hallowed ranks of the Fraser Institute, that is? If the unmoved mover were simply an omnipotent bean counter, evolution would surely have favoured various species of accountant. Those fond of no-nonsense shoes and awful ties would inherit the earth. We would have dogs that know the essentials of math and cats capable of herding themselves.

The former statement about accountants inheriting everything may well be true, but the aspersions concerning cats and dogs are most certainly false. Therefore, I think we can safely conclude that God is not a CMA; and further, that heshe must be emotionally intelligent; and further, that if heshe is emotionally intelligent, heshe must be emotionally intelligent in a supremely intelligent way.

Which is all fine and dandy, as far as theological syllogisms go, but doesn’t bring us any closer to an explanation for the so obviously inept Crane Fly. Non-atheists can't resort to pat answers, like: Existentialism. Or ‘Who cares?’ So I find myself in the awkward position of having to defend the concept of an intelligent universe that somehow produced the absurdity of a Crane Fly.

When a hypothesis fails to explain its intended reality, it must be tweaked, even if a few legs do fall off…

Oh! I can hear you atheists out there ballyhooing: ‘No it doesn’t. It needs to be thrown into the dustbin of history so we can start anew without any old rubbish lying about that might get mixed in with the new order.’ But for me, hypotheses are like children: You don’t toss them onto the garbage heap; you re-invent. So I’m going to make a small adjustment to the Intelligent Design theory, which I believe God would allow, even if the religious right would object.

Intelligent Desire.

See! Only two letters in the entire formula have been altered, but like a mutated chromosome, this segment of verbal code results in a miraculous new perspective. Instead of Crane Fly as gangling embarrassment, we get Crane Fly as wondrous – albeit baffling – attempt at something grand. Perhaps I’m waxing poetic here, but through this adjusted lens I can compare the careening flight of the Crane Fly to the magnificent hubris of Icarus, scorching his wings by orbiting too close to the sun.

The notion of Intelligent Desire places the urge to procreate precisely where it belongs – in the DNA and soul of every living thing. We are all finite but complete, temporal manifestations of an unfolding, collective miracle… call it God, Allah, Nirvana, the Big Bang, whatever you want. All of us – including the hapless Crane Fly – express an urge to expand the spiritual force of the universe and defy the logical inevitability of Death and Entropy.

Are all you crass materialists out there listening? Matter doesn’t matter unless it’s got soul.

Whew! I said a bit more than I intended. But there’s one more interesting tidbit about the Crane Fly that I learned through the haphazard genius of Wikipedia. What we see as the Crane Fly is really only the last stage in that peculiar insect’s varied life cycle. Before morphing into a minute, faltering version of the Kitty Hawk, the Crane Fly spent the better part of its life underground as a squirmy, wormy larva called the Leatherjacket. This previous incarnation needs to be taken very seriously indeed. One last citation from Wikipedia is in order then I rest my case.

Says the all-knowing wiki: “…once they become adults, most crane fly species live only to mate and die. Their larvae, called "leatherjackets", "leatherbacks", "leatherback bugs" or "leatherjacket slugs…" are “…occasionally considered a mild turf pest in some areas. In 1935, Lord's Cricket Ground in London was among the venues affected by leatherjackets: several thousand were collected by ground staff and burned, because they caused bald patches on the wicket and the pitch took unaccustomed spin for much of the season.”

The entry has vaguely religious overtones, don’t you think? But the main point is Crane Flies must really be taken quite seriously after all. When ‘unaccustomed spin’ occurs on the cricket pitch, surely the world must sit up and take notice.