The Universe is Kind. That's Why We're Here
by Depaver Jan   
28 July 2011
Image We're here because we're here because we're here -- one of the wiser songs of my kiddie past, sung to the tune Auld Lang Syne. Later we got too serious and mantraed "Be here now."

Meditating -- it's not what you think.

But if so, why can't we make an exception. I propose something I'll be happy to debate with the toughest meditation gurus: dwelling on the universe can be a kind of meditation. "Okay, now I'm aware I'm thinking about the universe, so I must be meditating."

Oh, to shut off the mind and just be. Perhaps this is one reason humans like to devote themselves to activities that engross, such as a good hike -- so as to meditate in a fashion. Nature is good meditation. Did we need meditation classes in the Stone Age when we had to hear, and we loved to appreciate, the sound of the wind in the trees or the new arrival of a bird nearby? Nature offers meditation, but we moderns are too busy to bother.

Since the universe is really one, and all is one -- as my friend Allisone liked to say -- we are participants in everything going on in the universe. But we don't realize it! Certainly not when we're driving down the street looking for the cheapest gasoline.

For those troubled by stress, or under the misapprehension that they need to obtain "X" to be happy and for life to be worthwhile, it may help for them to realize that the reason humans and all other life forms are here is because the universe was kind/amenable/supportive/generous/patient enough to allow us to live and even flourish.

Harmony is the way to relate to everything in the universe. Harmony is for people to share at all times. However, humans have "transcended" what are unfairly lumped into "base animal tendencies": to kill only what is needed, and not to kill for fun. Hmm, those aren't so bad to have as practices. Say, didn't the native Americans show those tastes to the White invaders? Surely some Whites appreciated such consciousness, because, for other reasons too, they joined tribes and didn't want to return to the master slave/property/have-have not culture. Perhaps I exaggerate. Okay, it was the buckskin fashions that was the big attraction.

If we need harmony, a state which we can and must have, it may come for some by way of thinking about the kindness we enjoy from the universe. In addition to appreciating harmony and ceasing our senseless killing, as we hurt each other and drive extinct fellow universe dwellers, we may further decide we must return to the animal community. This could result in a more rational, kind species, and allow more harmony that nature tends to provide. Sure, death and extinction are part of life. But we need not accelerate them with wars, climate changing industrialism, and poisoning the land, air, water, food, and body.

Image
Jane Evershed

The body temple, as they used to say, deserves only the best! Bon apppétit mes amis! Nous laisser boire à la déesse! (Happy appetite my friends. Let's drink to the goddess!). Or just meditate on the fact that you would not be here unless the Universe were kind. Thank you,

Depaver Jan

........_o
......_\ \>,
....(_)/(_)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Art by Jane Evershed, Culture Change reader. Top: "Hilaria"; bottom "Fireworks Flower." See Evershed.com

Comments (5)Add Comment
Harmony/Balance, Hi Jan, Back in the mid-1980s when I wr
July 30, 2011     
Hi Jan,
Back in the mid-1980s when I wrote my book, Economics as if the Earth Really Mattered, I wrote, in the section "Toward a Gaian Economy": Harmony is the heart of Gaia. Harmony is the appropriate balance of the many cycles and systems, the local and global, life and death. For us to survive and prosper, we must align all our activities, including our economy, with the natural cycles of the Earth. To do this, we must listen to each other and to the Earth, to our place and to our communities. We must, I think, spend time in wild places where we can learn gentleness, compassion, and a deeper listening." I still can't up it any better than that.
Susan Meeker-Lowry
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27 Years and Counting: our greatest problem and remedy.,
July 31, 2011     
Thank you for your excellent article; it is a marvelous gift to our collective and personal well being. It made me wonder if you would like to explore additional practical solutions for our disorders through Project NatureConnect (PNC).

PNC identifies and provides a remedy for our key socialization problem. That problem is our hidden prejudice against nature.

Akamai University in Hawaii now offers online, a new, nature-connected, sensory science. It empowers caring individuals to make the changes necessary to increase personal and global well being. It gives Industrial Society a purifying tool that helps us eliminate the source of our excessive stress, abusiveness and dependencies.

Nature's path to civilization in balance does not lead to the wide range of dilemmas that we suffer. Will you help folks use the potent process that enables each of us to educate, counsel and heal in conjunction with nature's restorative and purifying powers?


THE PROBLEM: Out of shame for our seemingly unstoppable destructiveness, we deny that, to our loss, we are prejudicially socialized to conquer and exploit nature's self-correcting and renewing ways as they flow in, through and around us.

THE ROOT: Our denial of our socialization hides from us the source of most personal, social and environmental challenges.

THE SOLUTION: A grant-funded and accredited, science, Natural Attraction Ecology, is now online. It enables our thoughts, feelings and relationships to genuinely plug into authentic nature's healing and regenerative ways. Through this amazing connection we benefit from the joy of 1) reversing our denial, 2) remedying our disorders and 3) increasing well-being.

"When our eyeglasses are distorted, we see and act in distorted ways. In turn, we distort the world. The whole-life process of Natural Attraction Ecology helps nature provide each of us with organic, undistorted glasses and powers."

http://www.ecopsych.com

Overview Article:
http://www.ecopsych.com/hallucinatearticle.html

Thank you for your kind attention to this inquiry. Please feel free to contact me.

Michael J. Cohen, Ph.D.
360-378-6313


PostScript:

I take full responsibility for contemporary society's destructive relationships with itself and the environment. For thirty-seven years I have been aware of the singular nature-disconnected cause of our problems as well as the remedy for it. However, I have been inadequate in educating most people about it. For this reason our disorders continue. They now place life as we know it at risk.

Michael J. Cohen June 7, 2011
Michael J. Cohen
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..., Debate meditation? Like the great Yogi Berra said
August 04, 2011     
Debate meditation?

Like the great Yogi Berra said, "It ain't the heat, it's the humility".
izzy
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..., I loved reading this article but "Oh, to shut off t
August 11, 2011     
I loved reading this article but "Oh, to shut off the mind and just be. Perhaps this is one reason humans like to devote themselves to activities that engross, such as a good hike -- so as to meditate in a fashion. Nature is good meditation" can be best explained by a man. Men seem to be able to shut off their minds and think about nothing quite a bit. I just thought I would add a little humor to this wonderful article. Thanks so much!

 

 

 

 

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Raymond
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Changing The Way We Think , At a certain stage in our la
September 14, 2011     
At a certain stage in our latter evolutionary development beginning with the dominance of our species (we must remember that the struggle for our survival in the animal kingdom could have gone the other way) we soon found ourselves in an incongruent relationship with nature. We responded first by dominating it and then years later by separating ourselves from it. However, this dominance and separation never reached the point, as it has now, of mutual self-destruction. Each moved in its own way forward independently along its own upward evolutionary path. Then, the calculus began to change. The prospect of the devolution of both slowly became a reality. We saw the first signs of this with the advent of agriculture and the domestication of animals and then with trade and industry in the Egyptian and Sumerian—as well as eastern societies. With the industrial revolution in our current age fueled by cheap energy and its human byproduct; uncontrolled population growth, this devolution has now turned into a dangerous imbalance that is threatening the very survival of our species and the planet itself.

This incongruence is placing before the human species the most perplexing challenge that it has faced since the very beginning of its consciousness. Also, it is the greatest spiritual challenge. Mechanistic—as well as biological and other forms of scientific means are increasingly being employed, but they are failing to attack the core of the problem. And through special interests attacking scientific credibility, for many millions doubt over the existence of the problem has become an excuse for inaction.

The solution is to change the way we think. This kind of change can only come about by way of a new mythic perspective. We need to change more than just how we think in general; specifically we need to change the way we think religiously/spiritually/philosophically, ethically, morally.
David Anderson
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