“You cannot go against nature, because when you do go against nature, its part of nature too.” – Love And Rockets

There can be nothing that exists that is not a part of nature. Everything that is, is a piece of that grand puzzle of being. All is as it is supposed to be at any given moment in time. There is a cause for every effect, a reaction for every action and a continual sequence of events that spells out the story of life of which we are all a part. We as a species have throughout our development tried to separate ourselves from nature at every turn. We pretend to be entities that exist outside the natural order of the world. Beings whose existence transcends the interdependency of the biological processes of this organism we call universe. We pretend we are separate from the animal kingdom, feigning an heir of superiority. Our station in life blinds us. We are as aristocrats who cast a downward glance at the dregs at our feet. What we have is a fundamental misunderstanding of our role within this scheme of life.

Every animal on this planet affects the balance of life for every other animal. Indeed each is a piece of a system and has qualities possessed by its species, which allow it to fill its particular niche in the world. We as human beings have the tremendous responsibility of being the caretakers of sentience on this globe of life. We advance the perceptive awareness of consciousness in the vehicle of the human body. We are perfectly adapted to assume our position in this scheme and even the dubious misconceptions and erroneous judgments we might throw here and there are a part of our traveling the unbeaten path of experience. This is all a natural progressive evolution, but it is important I think for us as a race to truly consider our role within the scheme of the universe from an honestly humble and objective stance. We have, through our very unique devices as human beings, tried to separate ourselves from nature. We command our brains to rationalize ourselves right out of the loop of creation. The disharmony we experience in this life is directly attributed to our insistence on being above or beyond the natural order of being. By placing ourselves above these things we ignore our immediate connection to the world and our place in the engine that powers the machines of existence.

We have to realize as a race where we belong in the mix and what our role is in this drama we act out. It seems to me that this kind of realization is dependant on the individual efforts of every person to get to the core of their self and truly understand what it means to be a human being here on this planet at this stage of existence. We have to forge a path for ourselves that reaches back through our walls and finds that place which is in natural balance with the universal order of life. Each person who walks the path wears it down a little more until eventually the untamed and unknown wilderness of consciousness becomes a road paved with experience.

What does it mean to be a human being? Who are you? What are you doing here? It might seem at first silly to contemplate such abstract concerns, but I feel that the very purpose of our lives is the experience of these questions. Being a sentient rationalizing human being is a unique experience for understanding. By being possessed of the ability to discern and understand we have taken on the role of the active mind of existence. Whether you believe in god or gods or universal mind or whatever term may suit you, or whether you believe in no god at all it may be observed that our unique condition places us in the role of ‘the thinker’. We have the tools and the capacity to understand life’s details and mechanisms within the framework of a human being. I personally feel that we are experiencing this existence for that very purpose alone, experience. Existence. It is our position to explore the limitless space shown to us by this capacity of mind.

Consciously exploring this existence is walking the path of enlightenment. It is about understanding ourselves in total. Every nuance and pattern, every detail and habit, every emotion and thought and feeling we have is a key that unlocks a door to perception. There is something to be learned from each and every experience and perspective. By understanding where we’ve come from, where we are, and where we are heading we travel full circle back to the source through our own unique perception.

Descartes declared “I think therefore I am!”. For along time this seemed to me to be a plausible scenario but I now feel it is only partially true and moreover is precisely this kind of thinking which has caused us to be ignorant of the source of all our personalities. Through this axiom we interpret that our thinking is the root of our existence when it has become clear to me that our thinking is just a product of our condition. It is an endowment of the human condition. I feel that this statement would be more accurately posed as “I think therefore I –understand- that I am.” It means that through the devices of the human condition we have the unique perspective of rationalizing our sentient existence and deducing a distinction between one’s self and the space that one inhabits. It also means that beyond this outward contemplation lies the ability to look inward for the origin of that spark of consciousness. This is the part of the quotation that represents the “AM”. The ultimate truth of consciousness is more akin to a verb than a noun. It is a state of being rather than a position. We have the ability to utilize our human functions to examine the connection between the presence of “I” and the presence of “AM” and understand in total what it really means to be alive and conscious and in existence.