Au Natural

Warning: The following is another deep and naked swim in the seething sea of existentialism, and mental goofiness. Proceed with caution. When it gets too much feel free to surface and hold your head above water.

If you don't know by now, I'm a deep thinker, but I'm also a deep feeler too. I guess it comes with the territory of being a highly sensitive person (HSP).

When I am logical and focused on science and evidence (where I have to be to stay 'sane'), eventually I hit a point where I am saddened by the state of things.  Humans and humanity seem hopelessly unable to change for the better, being wired to be believing meat machines who think, and so many seem trapped in some really bad beliefs and delusions that on the whole are detrimental to the planet, and to us all living together peaceably, without the rampant over-consumption, greed, one upping (covet wars), waste, division, and fighting.  

In this state of mind I despair and become depressed and feel powerless to change something that is so badly broken and seems permanently wired (intransigent) in most people ... but the good news is that I don't need to change anyone but me... Good grief, what a relief!

 I want to hope that somehow we'll figure it all out, hopefully evolve, if we don't snuff ourselves off the planet with our dismissal and inaction on climate change, and eco-losses, biodiversity loss, and other scientific facts about reality (denial of evolution comes to mind).

I absolutely love animals (and, yes, that classification includes people, like it or not, you're an animal) and all life.  It makes me extremely sad when I think of the collapse of much of the ocean's ecosystems, the beautiful reefs dying, and losing much of the biodiversity in many of the planet's remaining natural habitats, and in the process the larger animals who live there; the gorillas, tigers, elephants, rhinos ... on and on and on.  

7+ billion people cannot continue living on this planet and consuming and behaving like the modern model of consumerism promotes.

Hopefully technology will save us.  There are some extremely brilliant people at work, trying to solve the problems of our impact on the planet.  When firmly in this head-space, I want to solve the problems in my human nature, and promote environmental awareness.  I want people to change their lives, and think and behave according to the truths of science, and primarily, according to what we know by cognitive science.  If you don't understand how your brain is wired to deceive you and how it causes you to think and behave badly, how can you expect to really fix it?  You are just going to be stuck in a bunch of error loops your whole life unless you seek to address the root problem.  

The first step is to realize that your brain is not as great and logical as you would like to think it is.  You are not naturally a brilliant streamlined thinking machine that collectively and objectively logs and records everything with perfect precision and accuracy ... who subsequently feels.  You are a lumbering feeling machine that thinks and recollects selectively.  Your thinking is the public servant (defender) of your feelings.  It lawyers and defends them.   Many religions teach that we are born broken, incomplete, fallen, etc.  We are.  The natural human brain is severely flawed.  People are usually okay when their religion tells them that, but they bristle when science shows the same thing.

If we define diseases of the mind as a spectrum and as the thinking and behaviors that slow or stop us from making our lives efficient and functional on a basic level, then almost everyone is mentally ill by some degree. We're born that way.  I hope that by being candid and open about my mental illness (hsp/bipolar) I can help show that it is really nothing to be ashamed of, like any other organ in the body it is prone to issues and breakdown.  Mental health is just as easy to lose, and must be maintained just like physical health. 

The mind aligned toward belief and intuition is sometimes very divergent - belief based thinking is often divergent, but it is also convergent when balanced with truth.  Ironically, religion will never make us one - science will, and I believe (and Know) that science will show us what religion has been dancing around all this time, like a pow-wow around a campfire. We have always  known the simple truth of creation (but maybe that's another blog).

But science sucks at speaking the transforming language of love and hope that every human (well most) needs to hear. Many people view science as cold and without heart and humanity.  This is the weakness and failing of science, it's lack of  expressing things in a spiritual and emotionally meaningful context - but every principle of science IS spiritual, and has a spiritual corollary.

Science is reductive, looking at things compartmentally and isolated.  This is not how the universe is.  Science is small picture stuff, important stuff, but it deals with limitation, and compartmentalization.  It ignores the bigger picture, in sweating the small stuff (yet important stuff). It gets stuck within the finite limitations of the physical world, and bounces off the borders of the paradoxes at the boundaries.

I question "emotional" knowledge because I know how fallible it is when we let it run the show, and defend it with or rational minds - this is the natural human state.  When I'm in my safe and sane zone I have to seriously keep that animal in check, maybe even dismount for a bit.

"Reasoning can take us to almost any conclusion we want to reach, because we ask "Can I believe it?" when we want to believe something, but "Must I believe it?" when we don't want to believe. The answer is almost always yes to the first question and no to the second" - The Righteous Mind 

I dismount from my lumbering elephant and retreat to the safety of logic and science, and what can actually be known and proven.  In this state of mind I seriously begin to doubt god and the validity of those profoundly expansive and deep spiritual experiences when I'm "manic", hyperconnected and "god" is talking to me, and I have visions, insights, etc...

Somewhere in the middle there is truth.  It is so hard to hang on to the middle when you are being pulled so strongly in both directions.  The force feels like I can imagine the gravity of a dense black hole, pulling me apart as I struggle to keep it together.  In a spiritual vision I saw that I was once recently a black hole and before that the innocence of ignorance sacrificed (a child).  It all may be metaphor, but felt so strongly as if to mean something profound.  I think we all must sacrifice the child within as we mature to handle the pressures and obligations of adulthood.  If we look back at our beginnings, beyond the gametes that made us zygotes, we all came from the void of possibilities, into a gradual state of growing consciousness.

"The natural (hu)man  is an enemy to god."  or as Romans puts it, "A mind governed by the flesh is hostile to the laws of the divine and cannot abide them." Actually I quite believe that one, which may seem odd given my tenuous belief in god.  In our natural state with our broken ape brains we are an enemy to god, at least good, and love, and most of all truth.  We all suffer from delusions to some degree, and the smallest delusion carries the strongest degree - crack that one if you can. I think we have been following the wrong god, the one made by humans to manipulate and control other humans.

I believe that we naturally rise to the level we can handle.  I believe that although the natural man is an enemy to god, the natural man is also attracted to good, more than evil.  Love more than hate.  Peace more than war.  I believe the world will beat the natural man right out of you if you let it - once each person tires of argument, fighting, war, death, destruction, dysfunction, etc.  Some people never will in this go around, maybe quite a lot won't. That's OK. We all act according to our understanding, we are all acting natural. 

Whatever will be will be.  My life will be guided by hanging on to love, and hope as I ride this wild and scary ride.  The perspective of safety on the edge is what makes for a good thrill, even the potential of terrible terrible loss, spikes a rush of adrenaline - good adrenaline if you feel in control.  

If it is loss, I lose, I'm gone.  
There is no me that carries on.  
If that so be I'm fine just Ron.  
And Ron is best when holding on, 
to both sides equally with both hands.  
This the most stable form of natural man.  
And gripping both sides I better see 
the wonders of infinity, 
and at every point there is a me, 
a tree, a bee ... 
an Earth spinning held captive but free.   
Love and hope is my gravity.  
Being pulled between poles extracts the best of me
like arms stretched out and nailed to a dead tree.  
A torture endured best lovingly.  
I am sacrificed so all might be.
I am a naked natural man 
hanging from a tree.  
And being Ron 
I brought it on, 
no need for sympathy. 
If the world's not ready now, 
I'm sure to come again. 
Hopefully some day 
I can stay 
and hang out a while with friends.  
And as I hang with thee
maybe you will see 
all that's good in me, 
my divinity.  
I know that I AM 
and with this see 
the me that I truly AM in thee.
For as I AM, you ARE too
and best we can hope is our best to do

If you let it, the world will transform you for good - seek the good, seek understanding over offense, Seek Love.  True love, which I define as compassionate understanding and acceptance, even if at a distance when disparate to your Ch'i.

When you see what I see (if such is ever possible between two minds) you will see that we are all one, everything living and everything giving life.  It goes around in infinite endless perpetuity and you are there at every point in one way or another.  I AM eternal progression.  I am alpha and omega, the beginning and the end.  I am that high and that brought low. And every end is a new beginning and every beginning will have its end, which can be a mixed bag dependent not so much on the journey between, but the attitude and aptitudes of the traveler.  And you can say all this too in humble self affirmation, because I see the divine in you, as I must due to the commonality of our humanity and DNA ... and we are truly one in the context of it all in comparison to all other states of life and being - we share the delights and pitfalls of being human - together.  Find your natural go(o)dness - be good.  If you cannot believe in god, seek love and hang on to hope and rise toward it.

I think it would be a shame and disappointment on grand scales if after all our struggles together and against each other throughout the recorded history of human life on this planet,  that after all of it we FAIL to understand and realize the strength of our unity.

I say all this "religious speak" knowing that each individual is beset by personal beliefs of one sort or another, and each defines god against the backdrop of how they would define their best character, or what they can percieve a "best person" to be.  So at each perception there is a unique personality that collectively describes and defines what we would wish god to be ... I say wish it, and manifest it in yourself.  Be your best person.

When people say they don't believe in god, knowing that such is typically a mental cheat for describing one's assertions of their divine, of their best self, I can't help but hear a bit of self doubt, maybe even loathing, and I hope to help this heal in them by saying, "Well then, believe in yourself, and it is the same."

As you seek your bliss, you will find (if you're paying attention) the things which block it.  You will rid yourself of all the behaviors that do not bring lasting happiness, and that mire you in addiction. Addiction to any one thing is getting stuck in it and letting it control you.  There are all kinds of addictions.  My mind as it ebbs and flows and sways to and fro has a tendency to get stuck within a certain limited view.  When I am manic I feel unstuck, but I've learned to manage it with a lot of tethers, because if I get too unstuck I start living and thinking out of context.  Context is my tether.  

Un-tethered I know I am god, not GOD, butt god, nonetheless - okay, maybe quiet-sum and the less in my current incarnation.  I have many moments lately with deep feelings and impressions that I have been all things (even Stars and Black holes)... and the prevalent view that all things are and expression of God, even me. I know this may sound quite kooky to some.  And if it makes you chuckle I'm glad for that.

I have a recurring dream where I was sacrificed (thrown away from everyone) as an innocent child to fulfill the demands of justice. I was torn into infinity as I was cast into a black hole to be destroyed for my crime of ignorance. My crime of curiosity.  I imagine that I became that black hole and that sacrifice of innocence began this galaxy and universe of division, which will culminate as it grows to reconnect and gather itself back into its true form, we - everything, not me Ron, but We GOD.  The universe is growing in complexity as are we. It is expanding and rushing away from itself. Yet I feel that as the comprehension of the spheres increases the expansion will reach the outer boundary and stall in a static state before it then makes the travel in the opposite direction (imploding back to a singularity. We are evolving back, each to our god and oneness (internal and external). We are on the edge of comprehending something heretofore incomprehensible. 

This is your story too, or some version thereof. And I love hearing the stories of others...Because we are one. Knowing this I cheer for you and tear for you, and hope you win exactly what you want - your best wishes for you and yours. 

That which I find in me is also in you, and vice versa.  You are divine.  Seek your divinity and pray to god to find it ... and be prepared to follow your innards as you are led, even into the most scary territory. 

I am the last child... at least as my dreams and my experiences continue to show me. There is little self aggrandizement in that space as a god. Being so I am willing to be led to further realization and growth. But I have a sneaky feeling that the child has the best view of all creation - I know my children have awakened my love for this world as we play and imagine, and hate to turn it off at night, waiting for another day to play.