After preparing for a few dialogues with Bill then with Dr. Cleve Tinsley, after preparing a couple solo talks in Bill’s absence, I totally understand what Bill means when he says creating Ordinary Life is both energizing and a spiritual practice. As I go, I imagine myself in dialogue with you all, picture your faces, who I might see, and I want you to know that ALL of you were present with me. Thank you for the trust and encouragement.
As I contemplate, I am a bit mesmerized by the arc of the last couple weeks in which we circuited the interiority of the soul, the specificity of growing in acts of fierce love, and engaging in the wider community with an eye for justice and equity. Now that I look, it seems like these three principles of universe formation guided me the whole way whether I knew it or not: Differentiation, Specification, and Communion.
Our particular unique souls, though a facet of the cosmos expressing itself through us, represent differentiation. Each one of us is a unique, ensouled thing, possessive of haeccity or “thisness.” I love how Cleve said, “I’ve known I was a doctor since I was born; {RICE} is just now paying attention.” This is true for every single one of us. Our thisness is innate, but we often spend a good chunk of our lifetime opening our hearts and minds to who we are meant to be in the world. Some of us never fully land, but it is my belief our souls continue to evolve beyond this particular body, so have hope! {It’s another post entirely, but yes, I do believe in some form of reincarnation - even if it simply means the energy of us gets reabsorbed by the universe. Remember, matter can neither be created nor destroyed; it merely changes shape. And matter is not separate from spirit. In this way two become one.}
Specification is represented by the evolution of consciousness. How shall we love? This is the specific question I asked when it comes to growing into our unique self and expressing it in the world. Love is not mushy, benign, or mere romanticism. It can be those things, but it is also So. Much. More. Love is fierce, love is struggle, love is the willingness to see every other person - no matter how much they make you shudder - as an aspect of self. Love is the hardest, easiest thing. And yet, like gravity, it just is. It is the thing that tethers us to every other thing. When we open ourselves up to love as fact, I think we can allow ourselves to live with a little more imagination about what might pour through and between us if we live as if it were as much a law of the universe as gravity, motion, or expansion. Even Einstein believed love to be the most powerful force there is. In the words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”
And now communion. Community. Kinship. Justice. To embody the unity at the heart of the universe, we must be willing to accept the importance of all things - ALL THINGS - as an integral part of the universe system. There is no hierarchy. Tree is no more important than cloud; dark no more important than light; America no more important than Mexico; and I am no more important than you. If everything and everyone belongs, then no one has anything to lose. To realize such truths, we do not need to be friends or even neighbors, but we do need to be in solidarity with each others’ right to be just as we are without one having more power than another. Starting there grows the possibility for genuine relationship to occur. To quote Cleve quoting Cornell West, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” But here’s the rub: how we show up in public has everything to do with how we show up in private. We can start by doing a clear eyed examination of how we participate in or benefit from domination systems. Where is your money invested? How do you view folks less wealthy than you? The questions go on an on. Do you see, now, how the principles of the universe are interwoven? For true communion to be possible, we need to bring our truest, deepest, differentiated selves to the table, grow in consciousness, and make space for everyone else to do the same. In this way three become one. It is an ever expanding cycle.
The possibility for consciousness was present at the very beginning of our understanding of time some 14 billion years ago. Self conscious awareness and the ability to frame it with words, pictures, and symbols exploded when our ancestors arrived on the scene only 300,000 years ago. We are nascent in this whole process, mere babies. As far as I know time has not come to a full stop, which means consciousness has not either.
In a fractal, each part has the same statistical character as the whole. Each part is also necessary to the whole.