Start at page 70 for reformat of pictures

Friday, July 20, 2007

Symbiosis

Several billion years ago, it appears a group of prokaryotes (primitive cells) were colonized by proteobacteria. Each one of them apparently benefited from the relationship. We do not know exactly how this took place, but eventually the bacteria became so closely linked to the functions of the cells they lived in that they became a part of the cell, rather than a separate entity.

Biologists call these sections of the cell mitochondria. They have their own DNA, which is inherited only from the mother's gene line.

Mutually interdependent relationships of this kind abound on the planet. Sometimes, symbiotic relationships become so close that it is difficult to distinguish whether the two completely different organisms are actually a separate entity, or whether, because of their absolute dependence on each other, they should for all intents and purposes be considered a single creature. One good example is the various species of tropical rain forest ants that live in Acacia trees. The trees have hollow stems for the ants to live in, and produce sugars for the ants to eat. In exchange, the ants keep the tree almost entirely free of parasites. Take the ants away from the tree, and the tree cannot survive--insects eat it up just like that. Take the tree away from the ants, and the colony is helpless -- it expires.

The analogy consistently holds true on larger scales. For example, it is nearly impossible to entertain the idea of flowering plants without considering their pollinators, the majority of which are insects of one kind or another. The evolutionary paths of the bee and the sunflower diverged billions of years ago, but they are connected. Both carry DNA, and if it's inspected in enough detail, we'll be certain to find some strands that are all but identical. (Read Richard Dawkin's The Ancestor's tale. Despite his rigid defense of atheism, the book is of great value--proving even narrow-minded people aren't all bad.)

In another example, we could consider the symbiosis between fungi and blue-green algae or cyanobacteria, which give class to the entire and spectacular range of organisms called lichens, which specialize in inhabiting environments that are inimical to other life forms.

So why the biology lesson? It's simple enough. Everything on this planet -- in fact, everything everywhere -- is built on relationships. Everything needs everything else. It's all part of one single thing (Lovelock's "Gaia.")

This concept offers the possibility of investigating our understanding of consciousness and experience differently.

For example, I am staring at a mineral specimen on my desk right now. It consists of mica with plates of aquamarine beryl. This specimen is an absolute lawful result of the way our universe is arranged, just as I am.

Are we actually different entities? The response to that is not anywhere near as obvious as it appears to be.

If we shrank ourselves down to the atomic level, we would not see any clear-cut lines of demarcation between my body and the minerals. True, the density of the atoms would vary as one moved out of my body into the gaseous medium of the air, and back into the mineral specimen--but that's about it. From the atomic perspective, everything that arises exists within a kind of "quantum soup." It is indeed all part of one thing-- literally, an ocean of energy.

This concept probably bugs people who don't like all that "new age" energy stuff, but there it is, inescapable from the point of view of physics.

It is in the nature of our own consciousness, at this level, to perceive divisions, but perceived divisions are always a consequence of levels and of scale. We might have a bit more sympathy for both ourselves and everything around us if we realized that we are all part of one creation.

Everything depends on everything else for its arising and its existence. Mr. Gurdjieff attempted to refer to this by explaining it through the "law of reciprocal feeding," where everything feeds everything else.

We all search for meaning in life. Meaning is acquired only through relationship. As we live our lives, if we consistently investigate the meaning of relationship with in life, we find that all the food that creates what we are lies within this single vast sea of exchange.

I find that the deepest path to understanding what we are and what our place is lies in inhabiting the environment that we find ourselves within. By this, I mean attempting to stay connected to the organic sense of our own being, that is, the understanding that we inhabit these organs called bodies, and are in relationship with other organisms. In order to do that, it is necessary to develop a certain kind of new, and larger, connection to sensation.

It may not be everything, but it is a place to begin. Once we know, through sensation, that we inhabit this life, or we can begin to seek meaning within relationship.

We need each other, we need the struggle that arises between us. We need the effort that we make to overcome our differences. This is true in both an inner and an outer sense.

I'm off this weekend for a five day retreat. ZYG blog postings will resume next Thursday or thereabouts.

May your trees bear fruit, and your wells yield water.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Childhood

This is a picture of Genevieve, who arrived on this planet--and in our house-- a few weeks ago. We took her mom in a few months before she was born because she was living at a women's shelter, and my wife and I felt that was Not the Greatest Place to Have a Baby.

Anyway, welcome, Genevieve. Much tree-planting and well-digging lies ahead of you.

Returning from my spiritual retreat, I find myself emerged in a rich ocean of new impressions, experiences, and understandings.

It will probably take some time to process all of this; today, I am going to try to avoid the temptation of reaching for what is most readily available, and instead enter into an attempt to discuss something I saw during meditation yesterday.

We are all within childhood on this planet. We do not understand it this way; we grow old, give birth to children, get white hair--in short, we believe we enter what we call adulthood.

Nonetheless, religious traditions continued to refer us back to the idea that we are children of something higher. Certainly this idea is embedded deeply in the Lord's prayer, since it begins with the words "our Father."

I don't think we understand this idea very deeply. Our experience of this life does not, somehow, affect us as a child's experience of life, even though I believe the potential to do so is always there. Children are soft and permeable; over the course of a lifetime, in all of us, something hardens, and we no longer receive our lives the way a child receives its life. We believe that we have grown up, and--generally speaking -- that our adulthood represents an achievement of some kind.

The whole point of being here is to receive our life, but we stop doing it. Instead of receiving it, we try to take it. We live entire lifetimes at this stage of grabbing and snatching at everything around us.

If we enter adulthood at all in this life, it is at the point of death. Even then, numerous traditions suggest that it takes many deaths to become an adult. So everything we attempt in this life, every step we take, every breath we breathe in, and every exchange we have with another person, no matter how much younger or older they are than us, is just a part of childhood.

We are all just children.

Perhaps part of self remembering is remembering that. For as long as we think we are grown up, as long as we presume an authority conferred upon us by experience and age, we indulge in the sin of arrogance.

Here's my sense of it:

If age brings anything real, the first thing it should bring is humility, as we see how small we are, how far short we fall of any real sense of Being and responsibility, and how much more effort it will take us in order to reach anything that could be called a "man" without the quotation marks.

Mr. Gurdjieff did his best to remind us of that over and over in his magnum opus, "Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson." He repeatedly explains to Hassein how severely the reason of man has deteriorated-- we have forgotten the source of our arising.

He points out that most people, at the end of their lives, reach a moment where they suddenly begin to see reality more clearly, but by then it is too late. It is as though our childhood is almost over-- and we abruptly realize it-- but it is too late to obtain the education we were supposed to have as children.

And no wonder -- why bother to obtain an education if you think you are already grown up? ...It reminds me of all the dreams I used to have where it was the end of the school year, exams were coming up, but I had failed to attend any of the classes. (This never actually happened to me, as I was a very diligent, if inexcusably rambunctious, student.)

If we look at the way we behave, the way we treat each other, don't we all still act like misbehaving children most of the time -- willful, disrespectful, grasping, impatient, cruel, unthinking? Aren't all the religions and disciplines on the planet actually systems to help us try and grow up?

I need to ponder this question more. I think if I saw, organically, within the depths of my being and with all of my parts that I am still, at the age of 51, in childhood, it would be a big understanding. It is one thing to grasp this intellectually. Grasping it emotionally and physically carries a demand that produces a remorse almost too great to bear. Perhaps that is why we all avoid this question so carefully.

I cannot resist adding one other observation which I had this morning in regard to the way we treat each other. It is not exactly on the subject of childhood, however, I think it relates.

I attempt to ask myself a real question, a living question -- am I compassionate? Do I have enough compassion?

What does compassion mean? If I don't act from love, what am I acting from? If every action I take is not informed by love, by a deep, respectful love of others, then where does it come from?
Do I want it to come from some other place?

...And isn't that a frightening thought?

The way this question presented itself in me this morning was in the following conceptualization:

Honor every effort in another as though everything in their effort came from your own wish.

I am glad to be back, even though leaving the retreat was difficult... God's blessings to every one of you.

May your trees bear fruit, and your wells yield water.

Download 1.48 Mb.

Share with your friends: