Dialogue ~ 2

I opened yesterday’s blog with:

“Recently, I came across an article to do with a couple of questions that were seemingly being asked by many people with regards to a growing intensity of personal conflicts as well as of broader humanitarian and environmental concerns. These questions were: “Why is this happening?” and “Does this have to happen?” The answer that was provided by a notable author was that, yes, everything that is happening had to happen in the way that it has, because that is what life is about and is how it works. The author went on to inform that life moves in cycles according to a formula (or phases) based on principles of functionality, adaptability and sustainability. Whenever the functionality of life in any of its forms is threatened, life proceeds to adapt that manifestation, so as to render itself sustainable in a new form.

An image that is coming to mind here is of the way that a flow of water in a river might encounter an obstacle in its path and will change its course, so as to navigate around the obstacle and continue on its journey. Water doesn’t necessarily change what it is, so much as how it behaves. How would complex forms of life navigate through such a journey? What happens if some of the complex forms of life experience a sense of entitlement, desire to preserve their territory or status quo and actively resist a process of adaptation? How do cultural stories (including our religious and political ideologies) work in that they both serve and disable us?”

So today I am going to explore an explanation given by an author about why things are happening as they are, as being because of an understanding that life moves in cycles based on principles of functionality, adaptability and sustainability. I can immediately find validity in a concept of ‘life learning’ about itself through the relations between vehicle and environment. As a child, I learnt that touching a hot flame was painful. So much was good or bad. I was taught how to behave, especially in social situations. So learning takes place through self-determination and is imprinted from others.

This fits in with the concepts of functionality, adaptability and sustainability. I can appreciate that I have learnt how to survive as a physical expression in the world, and how to recognise and navigate through inter-personal relationships according to needs, aspirations and goals. Some of this learning has proven beneficial and some has not. There have been some dysfunctional aspects of my learning, which ideally should have proven as unsustainable, but which has been kept in place, because on some level this learning (a set of beliefs or worldview) defined me or invited social cohesion and an illusion of truth.

An apparent need or survival instinct to fit in with others and to experience ourselves a part of a tribe often hinders us from being the one to stand out in a crowd and to proclaim (as per the well-known fairy tale) ‘the emperor’s wearing no clothes’! Fear hinders authenticity – which is interesting when you consider how the elements of light and dark have been polarised in religion. Why have those who have been vanguards of thought or have spoken out against tyranny been pilloried or persecuted? Not to mention those who have listened to their intuition – what reasons were they cast into the shadows and so feared?

What kind of learning has to be preserved and by necessity protected in order to establish a kingdom of ‘survival of the fittest’? Am I robust – strong – successful? How does behaviour, adaptation and sustainability serve me and is there any detriment? Who determines the game plan? Does it matter? Let’s play along for a moment. What am I essentially up to? Through the very act of showing up and participating in life, what is occurring? It appears as if I am defining myself in an image of my choosing or else I am allowing others to define what that is for me.

Am I my own authority or do I allow others to have authority over me? Such is the basis of an enquiring mind – an open and inclusive mind. A willingness to ask and the ways in which I have gone about answering such questions have provided the context for my life experience – it has shaped the kind of experiences that I have had.  So – to return to the questions, does everything have to happen and in the way that it does? The truth as I am able to perceive it - is that it didn’t and it doesn’t – what shows up and how it shows up is never fully grasped by the mind, how can it be, when the mind can’t perceive how it is processing information until after it has processed it and is examining its fruits?

~ Intellect might bring to the table and define what that is according to its knowledge, but it is wisdom which reveals what is present ~

Why is this important to consider in terms of the earlier passages from the Gospel of Thomas, whereby the disciples had been asking of Jesus about their recognition of the kingdom and of locating where he was at?

83. Jesus said, "Images are visible to people, but the light within them is hidden in the image of the Father's light. He will be disclosed, but his image is hidden by his light."

I had written: “In other words, we cannot know our identity/truth unless and until we become one with this truth – a smaller light does not shine into a larger light and remove from it (we cannot pick God’s brain as it were).” Another way of looking at this is that we can co-create and define ourselves in our best image and can know that we are that through how we choose to show up in the world; However, our will cannot move us into an experience of unity in the cosmos and reveal our next evolutionary steps to us – always we must make a leap into the unknown.

 
Where does this leave us, in terms of what many have been suggesting, in that we should dismantle and discard those cultural stories which are no longer serving us and establish new ones which are? Are utopian ideals nothing more than chasing rainbows or setting out to revamp any existing furniture in a room? How many are truly willing for a mould to be broken?