Ecocentrism: That's ECO, not EGO !

Ecocentrism has been described as post-humanism, for it transfers the reality-spotlight from humanity to the Ecosphere, from the part to the whole. This outside-the-human focus brings with it new standards for thought, conduct and action on such seemingly intractable problems as world population, urbanization, globalization, maintenance of cultural diversity, and ethical duties to the Ecosphere with its varied natural ecosystems and their wild species.

The ecocentric ethic provides a new basis from which to examine the questions of how we should value the natural Earth and its systems and of how people should live.

Ecocentric ethics can also provide moral guidance to corporate and government policy makers and to individuals around the world for undoing the enormous past crimes against Nature, and for building economic systems and communities that are in harmony with the time-tested laws of the Ecosphere.

Ecocentrism recognizes that the Ecosphere, rather than organisms, is the source of life, of creativity, of evolutionary design, and of all meaning.

Human value systems have traditionally been inward-looking, preoccupied with the immediate concerns of the individual, and by extension, of society and culture. Ecocentric valuation invites a broader, outward-looking viewpoint.

Sounds rather like Taoism, to me, but with a new-age-like / scientific-like / popular-like title to it.
Try expanding Ecocentrism to encompass the entire universe, and all it contains, and you really are talking about Tao.

What's in a name?
Whatever works

Limits.

We are obsessed with limits.
Imagining a thing can only be either this, or that,
our view of things is limited to the one or to the other.
Schrodinger's Cat would disagree...

This way of seeing things, accounts for many of the world's ills.
With only two choices, we tend to choose one.
Then we tend to see that choice as the obvious choice.
Of course, we are right.
And anyone who disagrees is wrong.

The cosmos does not operate under such fallacy.
In the subatomic world, we see that there are many more possibilities.
Whereas the human ego imagines things as good, or bad,
right, or wrong, the smallest particles, of which we,
and everything else is/are made, are both right and wrong,
good and bad...

Our egos see in terms of: or.
Reality consists of: and.

Humans are not easily able to grasp the concept of paradox.
But paradox is the stuff of reality.
Looking out at the Milky Way, we decide it is very far away.
It never occurs to us, that we are actually a part of it.
But we are.
Strangely we see ourselves as separate.

We look outwards, hoping to catch a glimpse of God.
Never imagining that what we seek is with us, always.
"I am not God," we think. "So where is God?"
"Either I am God or I am not."
"I am not God."

Looking inside, the view is very different:
There is wonder, inside. Awe and Glory.
"I see God inside me," we might decide.
"Yet I am merely human. How can God be in me?"
"I am merely human, and I am also God."

Quantum Physics can be applied to yourself:
God may exist inside you, but you will never make it so
until you look.

And this, we are discovering, is the nature of reality.
It is the scientists, who are the most amazed of all.

The Nature Of Reason.

With the advent of Rene Descartes, western civilization reached a fork in the road.
Deciding to doubt anything that could be not proved, sealed our fate.
The method of providing proof, effectively built a wall,
separating what could be proved, from what could not.
If something could be proved, it was true.
If it could not, then it was false.
We are reaping the inevitable rewards of this profound mistake.

For the very nature of what can not be proved,
is that it is the most rewarding truth of all.
The purpose of life itself.

Imagine a bacteria grown in a petri dish, by a scientist.
Does the bacteria decide if the scientist exists?
Hardly likely.
If it reasons at all, it accepts that it exists,
and gets on with the business of existing.
Thus it may be harvested by the scientist as Penicillin.

Our most intelligent minds are hobbled by the conviction that if they are unable to prove a thing, then that thing is false.
While they might be leading the rest of us, lesser endowed with the ability to reason, they are - in fact - dooming us to never know, or fulfil, our potential.

And there can be no meeting point between those who reason, and those who know.

Of the several enlightened beings who have existed throughout our history, not one of them ever mentions reason as being of any importance.
Because it is of no value whatsoever in the process of enlightenment.
It would be like trying to use an ox-cart to get to the moon.
While useful, an ox-cart is simply not the tool for the job. 

There comes a time to lay down a tool that has served well until now, for a different tool that is more adapted to the work-in-progress.
The mind can do many more things than simply apply reason:
Perhaps its greatest ability, dormant and unused,
is the ability to be able to step aside, and get out of its own way.

The Nature Of Life.

Life. Created from nothing. Out of nothing. To return to nothing.

This thing appears. It grows. It fourishes. It peaks. It withers. It dies.
What was its purpose? Why did it live at all?
Life can be seen in these terms.

Life. Created from everything. Out of everything. To return to everything.

This thing appears. It grows. It flourishes. It becomes conscious. It makes ready for its purpose. It fulfils its purpose. It leaves its physical form behind. It adds to what gave it life. It appears again. It grows. It flourishes. It becomes conscious. It makes ready for its purpose. It fulfils its purpose. It leaves its physical form behind. It adds, once more, to what gave it life...
Life can be seen in these terms.

Beyond true or false, positive or negative,
life is what you choose to believe it is.
A pointless one-off?
A glorious cycle of eternity?

We are what we choose.

The Nature Of Religion.

People do some very odd things.

Glimpsing shadows of the infinite, a man devises ways to sell it.
Calling it God, he intercedes on behalf of God, dispensing it, secondhand.
Only I - he proclaims - can speak on behalf of God, to you, and carry your messages back to God. Only through me, can you stand in line for heaven.
This odd thing is called religion.

Religion has bitten itself in the leg.
Standing between the infinite, and its manifestations, religion creates a shadow.
In this dark shadow, stand the many who yearn for more than mere shadow.
"Who are we," they cry, "and where do we fit into this?"
And religion gives them its unconvincing answers...

Stepping out of the shadow, a man is able to regard the infinite, first-hand.
This does not make him an atheist.
Instead, it makes him God.
For he sees, at last, his true nature.
Not a created thing, separate from its creator.
But the single part of the greater whole, glorious in its one-ness.

Religion removes the God from the religious.
God removes the religion from the conscious.
The conscious rediscover their purpose.
And live as God intended them to.

As part, not apart, from the creation.

The Nature Of Soul.

Everybody knows what the soul is.
Don't they?

Computers, designed by humans, contain memory, prone to errors.
There are seven useful "bits" in a memory module.
And one dedicated "check bit".
This "bit", The Eighth Bit, exists solely to check the functioning of the other seven.
It can tell if what it is checking is right, or wrong.
In computer language, this equates to a One or a Zero.
It is pure logic: Good, Bad, Right, Wrong, Correct, Incorrect...

I once bought a hand-held calculator that could not add up.
Every answer it gave was wrong.
I returned it to the store, where I was grudgingly given a new one.
Which could not add up either.
It turned out that none of these particular calculators could add up.

The salesperson was irritated at me.
He said there was nothing he could do, and who cared anyway?
It was only a calculator.
I bought a different one that could add up, and he returned the ones that could not, back to the shelf, to be bought by other people.
And clearly, he was not a bit worried by knowingly sowing chaos throughout the land.

Each of us has a "Check Bit".
The Eighth Bit that serves to show what is right, or not, good, or not...
Eight is a curious number in itself.
The symbol of infinity.
The chakra that spans the distance between the physical and the spiritual.

This Eighth Bit, is the Soul.
It checks for healthy functioning, and clarity of purpose.
It discriminates between logic and nonsense.
It knows what is right and what is not.

Your Soul is that part of you that God created in his image.
Nobody can take your Soul from you.
But you are able to sell it; even give it away.
To cut oneself off from the divine,
is to cease to make any sense, or to have any purpose.

The Soul is what gives purpose.
When you have purpose, you do not wonder what your purpose is.

Know what you are, lest you forever forget.

The Nature Of God.

God is the manifestation of what we can not understand.

Those words alone, are enough for some.
But others will not accept so few words, or a concept so simple.

Scientists set out to disprove the existence of God.
But the deeper they look, the more complex the journey becomes.
Scientists can eventually go mad: their search having become an obsession...

The Big Bang, they say: proof of the non-existence of God.
But how did the Big Bang come to take place?
What caused the mass to exist from which the Big Bang was fuelled?
What was the energy that existed to provide such an event?
Clearly, no human mind, no matter how clever, can possibly ever know.

The Cosmic Microwave Background: a detectable manifestation of something so vast that it can never be quantified or assimilated.

God is the manifestation of what we can not understand.
Or in its simplest terms:
God Is.

The Nature Of Love.

Love is a word used by the many.
Understood by the few.

The universe could not exist without love.

Love is that which removes separation.

Over infinite distances, love closes the gap, removes space.
Moving without moving.

Love makes one out of two.
Love makes one out of many.
Love subtracts all that is not love.
Love is what remains.

The Meaning Of Life.

What is the Meaning Of Life?
Whatever it is, the one doing the wondering, is not engaged in carrying out its meaning.

One does well to ponder The Meaning.
While remaining aware that such pondering is not The Meaning.

Then how to answer this question-to-end-all-questions?

Remove The Question.
Thereby removing the need for The Answer.

Do not question, simply be.
You may find you have become The Answer.

I Think, Therefore I Am Not.

If one find one needs a shed, or a house, or even a lean-to, where does one start to build it?
At the foundation.
Yet the foundation, almost without exception, is the one part that receives the least amount of attention. It is the part one has to go through: the process of building before one starts the actual building. As if it somehow is not part of the building.
It is so often poorly thought out, poorly executed, and afterwards, completely forgotten about.

Every human construct requires a foundation.

Descartes observed: "I think, therefore I am".
For all anyone knows, he may actually have known what he was talking about.
What seems clear, in retrospect, is that almost nobody else did.
And yet this concept became one of the foundations of western philosophy.

Occidentals display, almost without exception, an ego.
Orientals display, almost without exception, a lack of ego.
Why is this?

Oriental philosophy honours the Great Mother. The Tao. The Void.
All beings spring from it. All are part of it.

Occidental philosophy honours the mind. Thinking sets us apart and above everything else that exists.

Orientals are part-of.
Occidentals are apart-from.

I challenge Descartes.
Not the man himself, or whatever it was he intended by:
"I think, therefore I am".
But how those words were interpreted / misinterpreted.

It may well be more useful, even true, to say:
I am, therefore I think.
Or:
I contemplate, therefore I am.
Or even:
I think, therefore I am not.

I am, is a statement of fact. To say it results from thinking, is not.
In fact, the act of thinking, causes one to cease being.
The thinking mind is observing and interpreting.
It is no longer simply being.

Anything that can be built: a house, a value-system, or a philosophy, requires a foundation.
A civilization can be built, and it may last a long time, even if built upon sand.
It would certainly last a great deal longer, if it were built upon rock.

It is never too late, until it is too late, to jack up the whole construct, and securely underpin it with a re-engineered, re-thought-out foundation.
If this is not done, finally the whole thing will succumb to its own mass, and tumble, end over end, into oblivion.

Saving The World.

The Burning Question.
The One, that supersedes all others.
The Meaning Of Life...

We are not taught about this as children.
Who could teach it? How to teach what can not be known?
The answer to this question would solve all our problems, and finally allow us all to get on with the business of realizing our purpose.

We are taught to excel.
To succeed.
To maneuver ourselves into a position of advantage, in order to acquire as much as we can, for ourselves.
We are told why this is important. But we are not given a context.

The church intrudes, here and there, from the peripheries.
It drones at us in mumbo-jumbo, about things we do not understand.
It tells us that we should do and act and strive in ways that are unclear, for the apparent purpose of avoiding the unpleasant attentions of a wrathful God.

None of it makes much sense.

Unable to teach what it does not, itself, know how to do, society does its uninformed best.
As minor members of society, we do our uninformed best to make some sense of it all.
We serve ourselves, acquiring what we can, and gaining much, or gaining little, makes no real difference, in the end, to how we feel inside.

We are closer than we think, and further away than we realize, from the truth.

Serving ourselves is what we do best.
We do it, enthusiastically, or less so.
All the while, we are aware that this self-serving is fundamentally unsatisfying.
There is something missing, yet we never quite understand the nature of what is missing.

We come, sometimes, to a point of desperation that moves us to express a need to save the world.
The whole world, no less. A grandiose idea, indeed.
Barely able to function in a healthy and whole way, ourselves, still we want to help everyone, save everyone, make a difference to everyone.
The whole world.

We serve ourselves.
And this is halfway to heaven.
The unknown secret is in the understanding of why we must serve ourselves.
Serving ourselves to serve the whole. The whole world. The universe itself.

Until we, ourselves, are whole and healthy, we are not serving the whole.
And not serving the whole is the reason we are in this state.

The Meaning Of Life?
To serve oneself, in order to serve the whole.

Reality.

Drifting off to sleep.
I know the moment when, a jolt that is more a slip, that is more a tremor, that is more a sigh, that is more a losing context on a thought, that is more a forgetting of thought, and...
The questions I had, so many and so fierce and bright, so important and worthy...
These questions, made of words, unable to contain concepts, themselves unable to define ideas.
Dissolving, breathing into mist, condensing into droplets that evaporate even as they are noticed...
And are gone.

I am inside a rock.
I am the crystalline structure that itself is part of a mountain.
This mountain, itself, a part of my planet. And this planet is me.
And I am part of my solar system that is itself part of my galaxy, that is part of all my galaxies beyond number or knowing.

All this I am. And I am more. All of me is contained within my matrix of awareness, my perfect blackness that gives everything context. This blackness contains, while at the same time being contained, within itself and of itself.

The Cosmic Microwave Background: pulsing with the softest of sighs, hissing benevolently in the microwave band, broadcasting the millimeter rhythm of all existence. For ever and ever and ever.

I smile, amused, at the loss of my questions, which had seemed so very important, just moments ago. I had so much wanted to know their answers. Yet becoming the mystery, itself, becomes the mystery. And the mystery knows no answers. And the mystery asks no questions, either.

I am dead, I know. And now I do not know myself. Nothing remains of what I was before.
It relieves me to be witnessing all of this, aware that I am without a means to witness it.
I am nameless. Without form. Unknown, unheeded, unheard. Yet I know.

I remember what I am, was and will always be:
The Cosmic Microwave Background.

Why Am I Here?

What could cause a man to wake early, a smile on his face, hours ahead of schedule?
What could open his eyes, calm and wide, content with his condition?

In his dream, he finds himself employed, respected and admired, tended to by interested women, well dressed and smiling, whose interests lie in arranging for him exotic vacations in sunny locations.

He claims he needs no vacations, yet still they do their best for him.
Apparently it is their job. They enjoy doing it. They effortlessly give the impression that there is nothing they would rather be doing.

He considers stepping out for a walk, but is bemused by the instant availability of a chauffeur-driven limousine. He decides to further investigate exactly what it is, that he is so handsomely rewarded for doing.

He looks around for his employer, to ask if there is something he should be engaged with.
But his employer is busy, right now, doing whatever it is he does, to furnish his smiling employees with such lavish rewards.

The women joke, among themselves, and without malice, about the wage paid to the man in his previous position. He overhears them, considering the amount that so amuses them, as perfectly adequate for his needs. He does not quite get their point.
Neither has he any recollection of what he did before this.

He wanders around, warm, comfortable, yet strangely at a loss.
He is not sure why he is there, and what his function is.

Until finally, he understands, he is not there to do.
He is there to be.

The Time Machine.

Web-logs are like nothing else.
They have long interested me for a reason that is not very obvious.
At least, not until it is noticed:

They run backwards in time.

Like a Time Machine that is strictly one-way.
Visit what was, in real time.
Skip, delay, re-play, re-live the writer's life at that moment.
Unusual, that.

Easy to see, with a blog, where one has been.
Taken in context, with what is, might the future be predicted?
Probably.

Witnessing the collapse of their own civilization, some feel compelled to record it, adding their own unique insights, fears, opinions and prophecies.
Like a tenuous gas cloud, swirling, spiralling, sucking in whatever is nearby, coalescing into a vision that may - or may not - be real.

What you believe can become what is.

Mis-Understanding It All.

For as long as there have been humans, there has been a concept of "God".
Singular, plural, with or without form, the notion of God is as old as mankind.
Even the current epidemic of atheism depends upon it.

God must be something without which we can not exist.

Everyone understands the word "God" when they hear it.
But do they?

It is my belief that very, very few do.
Because we - as humans - view God in the same way we view each other:
We assign motives and behaviours to this God, that we assign to ourselves.
We believe God wants, hopes, desires, demands, commands and expects...

By doing this, we rob ourselves of the very thing that we seek to gain.

It is written that we are created in the image of God.
And, as is our habit: we set about misinterpreting this, as comprehensively as our clever little minds can manage...

He must look like us. He must act like us. He must want what we want. He must have motive.
And - unbelieveably - that is what we actually believe.
Madness.

The Cosmic Microwave Background enfolds, fills, joins and contains all that is.
It is the context for what exists within it.
It is not in our nature to be able to understand it.
It is within our nature to admit: it is.

And God: strip from it the trappings of our own uncertainty, and what remains?
What remains is its true nature:
Being.

Ours is not to understand this thing that is us and that we are part of.
Ours is to calmly know that it is, and we are of it, and life is our birthright.

The D.I.Y. Universe.

What? The Do It yourself Universe?
Well yes.
Don't like the colour of the walls? Paint them.
Don't like any walls at all? Knock them out.
House falling apart? Tear it down and build a new one.

It's so much work.

But what else were you doing, anyway?

Quantum Physics.
Scientists observe that the very act of observation changes the way sub-atomic particles behave.
Expecting something to be a certain way results in that something being a certain way.
Believing something to be so, actually results in it being so.
Scientists are shocked.
You can see why.

The Bible contains a wealth of incomprehensible assertations.
People - as is their way - set about interpreting what they observe.
And often get it very wrong.
The Bible is not the only body of wisdom to get this kind of abuse.
Even something as simple as the Tao te Ching gets the going-over.
And every other written account, from top to bottom.

God created Man in his own image, says the Holy Book.
That seems quite clear. OK. That must be the way it is.
But no. People read that to mean that God must look like man.
Hence the widespread belief that God is an old man, perched on a cloud.
Who knows: that may actually be the way it is.
But I don't see it like that.

Notice how man naively takes what is and turns it into what it looks like.
Thus removing the reality from reality, and replacing it with an appearance of reality.
The resulting reality of most people is nothing more than the appearance of it.
And that's quite a trick, really: turning reality into a facsimile.

No.
God created man in his image.
Each man, imbued with all that is God.
Completely equipped to create something out of nothing.
Able to be divine. Or not.

It is becoming clear that the entire universe exists inside a framework of pure consciousness.
That consciousness is everywhere, and all things are part of it.
Scientists observe what is outside of themselves.
But it is beginning to dawn on them that there is no outside.

Lao Tzu asks: "Do you think the world is perfect?"
Humans, being humans, immediately see all that is wrong with the world, and say: "No. I don't."
Not understanding that by seeing the world as perfect, it actually becomes perfect.
One person at a time.

Those walls are never going to get painted unless you paint them.
That new house is never going to get built unless you build it.
The world is going to go right on being imperfect, until you decide to make it perfect.
D.I.Y.
Nobody else can do what only you can do.

Make it so.