My World: The First 50 Years

© 2004 MICHAEL JEAN NYSTROM-SCHUT

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 05/03/04

ISBN: 1-4184-1902-8 (e)

ISBN: 1-4184-1901-X (sc)

ISBN: 1-4184-1900-1 (dj)

ISBN: 9781418419028 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2004093241

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

One

The Nature of My World

Two

Wonders in My World

Three

My World and God

Four

Learning My World

Five

My World Each Day

Six

Intimate World

Seven

Outer World

Eight

Wealth and Distribution

Nine

Ethics and Attributes

Ten

Wild World

Eleven

Sufferings

Twelve

Pleasures

Thirteen

Surviving My World

Fourteen

Essential World Understandings

Fifteen

Deep Within My World

About The Author

IPI

Intermixt Press International

San Jose – Indianapolis

Some of the writings of:

Michael Jean Nystrom-Schut

Life Notes

Summer Letters

Earth Dwelling

Survival Thoughts for the Continually Depressed

A Quiet Stream

I Was Thinking

How Long Have You Been Standing Here, God?

Living the Waking Dream

Loving Sensual Exchange

My World: The First 50 Years

San Juan: Glimpses in Time

The Inquisition

Forty Songs

Bricks in the Wall

Keeping it Real in an Unreal World

Mountain Peaks: Elevated Glimpses into the High Life

How Did We Get To Here?

Worldview 101

Remaking Michael

Other Works in Progress:

My Twelve Steps to Freedom

Suckers: Surviving Life on an Insane Planet

To Cuba, With Love

Dedicated to those who see my world

differently than I do…that’s wonderful! It

is what makes life such a beautiful thing – that we

are all created and evolve differently…

WARNING-DISCLAIMER

This book is designed to provide basic information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher and author are not engaged in rendering legal, consultative or other professional services. If such expert assistance is required, the services of competent professionals should be sought.

It is not the purpose of this book to reprint information that is otherwise available to the author/publisher or reader, but rather to compliment, amplify and supplement other texts. The reader is urged to read all the available material, and learn as much as is possible about life, tailoring the information to the individual path.

Every effort has been made to make this book as accurate as possible. However, there may be mistakes both typographical and in content. Therefore, the text should be used only as a general guide, and not as the ultimate source of information related to these topics. Furthermore, this book contains information that may no longer be either relevant or accurate, as much as we all would like to think our words and thoughts are timeless.

The primary purpose of this book is to educate and entertain. The author and publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused, or alleged to be caused, directly or indirectly by the information contained here.

"I have the desire to see the world my way,

…not yours…

and these are the ways I see my world…"

First of all:

     I live in my world…not yours…

Ten years ago, at the remarkably unenlightened age of forty human years, I wrote a book entitled Earth Dwelling – An Owner’s Manual. The book contained 288 basic ideas, grouped in 12 chapters of 24 ideas each – symmetry!

At the time, they roughly constituted my thoughts on the meaning and purpose of life. I was pretty sure I knew a thing or two about it.

Back then I boldly prognosticated that I would return to the subject in ten more years. In fact, every ten years I would continue to do it – as long, in fact, as I exist in this form.

I thought it a good idea to re-visit things that often, since nothing remains the same, and all things are continuously in change. Hence, a need for a new look at it, now and then, might be good.

A decade streamed by. Whew, and it was so fast in doing so! I kept to my word and did what I said I would do then – write that updated book on my core philosophical outlook on everyday life and existence – my personal view of the world.

Let me say right away to you that if a few of these thoughts stick in your head – in your heart, or in both places at the same time – and cause you to grow in the experience of your being, I will have gotten to the purpose of this newest of my world view books. But the fact is that while I care about you, yet I don’t.

What, you say? I say that because I know that your world can only save you – it can’t do much of a damn for me. We are individual beings here on the earth – the same, and one, yet totally different, because we aren’t quick enough to see the similarities.

Still, while one, the paradox of our individuality unfolds: Your food feeds you. Your water quenches your thirst. Your rest refreshes you. Your breaths keep you alive.

I need my own food-water-rest-breath to provide the same for me. Yours can’t do it for me; if it could, I would seriously consider how that is done, and maybe do it your way…but it doesn’t work that way and I know it.

It’s been, for me, now, fifty interesting years. Right about this time fifty years ago my mother was carrying me, on a swift-moving journey, to living, breathing consciousness. When I arrived on the scene, I spent the early years listening to the collective wisdom of others, and at first assumed that what they said could not be seen any other way.

I thus became an imitator, emerging from a long line of imitators, who carefully patterned his thoughts and actions after those who came before. When I looked up one day, and saw that what I was all about had been borrowed – it was all basically second-hand stuff – I brought forth, from somewhere deep inside of me, a metaphorical wheelbarrow, and stacked it high with whatever I then stood for, and somberly walked along with it, to the trash heap of second-hand beliefs.

Smiling widely, I dumped everything over a metaphorical cliff.

I felt so great about doing that, but I soon was to discover that I now had another problem; I forgot to replace the emptied void with something in which to start over.

So I wandered and wondered, and wandered some more, and wondered some more.

I blinked, and fifteen years managed to elude me; I knew it was time to mount the metaphorical horse. Once back up on it, I rode and rode and rode; I quickly killed that first horse. Then I got another one, and rode him to death, too. I figured there was a lot of riding to do, and I had gotten a late start. So on I rode.

I out-rode many other riders. It was a long, long journey. I went through a few more metaphorical horses.

More sands through the precious hourglass of life streamed away. I found myself in a desperate search of that which I had discarded long before – only now I needed a bigger and better, more livable and realistic version of reality. Nothing else would do.

I sought a way to see my world that worked. I needed something that could equip me to live a productive, meaningful, happy, balanced, contented, purposeful life.

Was that asking too much?

I didn’t feel it was…

I have since filled in many of the gaps and have redefined who and what I think I am. New definitions now hold true for God, life, the meaning of life, the purpose of it all, and on and on.

As I reflect on it now, I wouldn’t mind having back a few of those lost years, but lost years are lost because they are gone forever. Our pasts slip between the folds of some Kosmic sheets, and are stored in the sleeping Bedroom of Time.

I don’t know if we can ever know them again.

But there’s a reason for everything, and for some reason I took a while to ripen on the vine while on all sides of me, the good stuff, the fruit of great Knowledge and Wisdom, was dropping.

My world can now be said to be a peaceful, frantic one. An adequate paradox might be that I get moving while trying to continually hold still. Riding this ride towards a deeper understanding of existence, I have found it personally to be nothing short of an absolutely marvelous quest.

One important thing that I have learned – and learned the hard way – is that things have got to be my way or the highway (to borrow the cliché). I can’t rest on the belief systems of anyone else; maybe you can, but I just can’t do it, and I won’t.

I have to be unmistakably me; I can’t play around and live out my life through anyone else. Why would anyone want to do it that way anyway?

So, back ten years ago or so I took back my life, and restored some of the broken pieces of it, and thought through a plethora of matters. In the process, I filled so much of that void. Now, here I am again, still doing that same thing, and ready to update this decade to see where I have come.

…So I don’t see it your way, and I am not trying to. You are a nameless and faceless part of my outer world. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be like you.

Now, give me a legitimate piece of thinking and philosophy from any one of you, and, if I try it on, and it fits, I’ll make it mine. To be sure, many of your viewpoints from yesterday have had a way of becoming my viewpoints today. I have to honestly say I like that about you, and as I reach inside of your mind, and take something from it that I like, and apply it to me, I tend to become a better person every time. In fact, whenever I can, that’s just what I like to do. So, let’s exchange ideas whenever we can!

…Feel free here, now, to reach down, inside of part of me, and take what you like, and make it yours, too. You can read one a day, for a year (more symmetry!), or you can zoom through it at whatever speed your mind is interested in grasping the basic concepts.

My world is my world because I like it the way I have created it…otherwise I would change it some more. The big question (and I suggest questions at the end of each day’s topic) is: what do you think about your world?

Sign on for any part of this you like here, and, with the rest, get out the wheelbarrow. If it’s not you, don’t make it you; dump the trash, and keep going.

Secondly…

     What I am not…

I am not an Optimist.

I am also not a Christian.

I am not a Pessimist either; nor am I a Buddhist.

I am not a Republican or a Democrat. I am not a citizen or a sociopath. I am not a Freudian or a Puritan. I am not tall or short, fat or thin, white or black, young or old, male or female; none of these am I.

I am not a zoologist.

I am not a mechanic. I am not a human, nor am I alien. I am not heterosexual and I am not homosexual. I am not a cook in the kitchen. I am not a sleeper in the bedroom.

I am certainly not a writer.

I am not a boob man or a leg man and I am not a vegetarian or a carnivore. I am not a sympathizer of the Palestinians, but I sometimes don’t know what those Israelis are up to either. I am not anything you think I am whatsoever.

I am not a brother, a father, a husband, a lover, a son, a cousin or a turtle basking on a protruding log, in a golden pond of greening algae.

I am not a poet, and I know it.

I am not a drinker, smoker, overeater, gambler, womanizer or chewer of cud. I am not a wildebeest. I am not a student or a teacher. I am not an American and I am not a Costa Rican. I am not a creditor or an extender of credit. I am not purple, red or blue. I am not a music lover and I am not a TV watcher.

I am not a Great White Shark; nor am I a skinny silver minnow.

I am not my persona. I am not reflection of my beauty or my ugliness. They are not I.

I am not a wearer of eyeglasses. I am not a sunbather. I am not hairy or bald. I am not soft or rough. I am not sweet or bitter. I am not the President of the United States or a member of the most recent assembly of its contiguous congress.

I am not a philosophist, which is not a word. I am not a scientist, which is, in fact, a word. I am not a mathematician. I am not a cultural anthropologist. I am not a theologian. I am not a businessman. I am not a voter.

I am not a sufferer of irritable bowel syndrome.

I am not a sports fanatic and I am not a man who follows the pursuit of golf balls. Why do that?

I am not an eager beaver and I am not a lazy old walrussealelephant, which are now, of course, extinct.

I am not sick in the head; don’t ask me to prove it because you’ll just draw an argument.

I am not good, bad, indifferent or any combination of the above. I am not a New Ager and I am not a teenager either. I am not what I think I am and that which I don’t think I am I am not either. I am not hunger, not full, not a person in need of a bathroom just now.

I am not a cheeseburger.

None of the above-mentioned labels are any of whom I am. I represent none of them. What is it that I am then? I don’t know…I just am an am. But really, I am not even that…I am not, I tell you!

You see, I live in this world that forces definitions upon me which I most often then succumb to using in my everyday experience. When I stop to think about it, though, none of it represents me; any label, no matter how outrageous, can characterize me, regardless of how fitting it may seem to you to be.

Any label will limit my ability to continually define me, and shape who and what I am (and am not.) Thus, I avoid the use of labels, which, in my world, does not qualify me as an avoider of labels; it just makes me know I am not a label.

In my world I am continually defining and redefining and redefining again and again and again. I do this because nothing stands still. I do this because the shape of things change continually in my mind, and I can never get a grasp on the head of the twisting serpent of understanding that slithers quickly all about me.

I am not a good user of metaphor. What I see in my world, and how I describe it, is a meager attempt at interpretation and understanding. In my world, I know nothing at the beginning of each new moment. In my world, I am continually empty.

I did not write this book. This book was assembled from glimpses into a reality that is continually and evasively living, somewhere out there, over that next rainbow, just east of that pretty oasis, just beyond my grasp.

What I merely think I think, I always find out I don’t think at all. And I never wind up being that which I think I am, either. It all serves to tell me, in each moment of my being, that mostly, I am simply…not.

Inadequate and pitiful as they can be, however, I have chosen the medium of words to break down some of the (ridiculous!) things I think I think, and I think that what I think about these words are that they are not representative of anything real, or serious, but since nothing’s real, and nothing’s very serious either, let them serve as flashes into reality that might fill voids with meaning and purpose.

As such, I offer what is to follow here…

Just before we start…

     Words: The meanings behind them…

All at the very same time, words (labels, symbols) are both liberating and restricting. Take as an example a woman is talking to her man. Of course, by her man I don’t mean she owns him, that he is her property, I mean just that he is hers. You know what I mean by that…don’t you? See what I mean already?

Words are tricky. Anyway, she is trying to relay some important messages to him. While she is attempting to state what she thinks, allowing herself to unleash the feelings and thoughts she has inside of her, she is also playing around with highly subjective little critters that can divide-separate-confuse him – I am, of course, in reference to the words.

We have to be so very careful about our use of words. If we are trying to portray meaning, and get with each other on the same wavelength, it will generally take more than just a few words to do that.

She is talking about their relationship, and about where it is going, what it really represents, what her values are all about. She uses key words to create her meaning. Some words she uses are love and friendship and God for example: What do those words really mean to her? Are they subject to any possible misinterpretation between her and her friend? I think so, don’t you?

I think they are essential, albeit potentially dangerous labeling devices that contain the dual capacity of getting her more or less totally understood, or completely differentiated from him. All of the outcomes are the responsibility of the givers and receivers of those words. How are they meant? How clearly has she spoken them? What true meaning emerges from any combination of her words? Did they come close to making the point attempted? Did they bring about some common and clearly recognized good between she and he?

And then to him, the receiver: Did he strive to understand? Is he sure that the definitions being used are close to what she, the giver of the words, is stating? Is he on the same party line, same wavelength, as she is? Is he interested in the oneness that can come from this form of communication with her if he successfully hears and relates back to her?

…In this book, my chosen format and approach has been to volley into play a word-a-day, for one year: three hundred and sixty five (365) high-impression and defining words are converted into symbols of specific meaning and interpretation.

Each word has been placed in one of fifteen general sections. I have tied relevance to each of the words, in a way that is designed to create a cohesive, simple, interpretive way of productively seeing the world.

Each section starts off with a lengthy paragraph that summarizes the use of each word in that section.

Incidentally, I asked myself over and over again during the long period (two years) of this writing: "Did I get all the important words?" Did I choose the 365 best words, and their accompanying meaning?

The answer to that is a resounding of course not! but if I had, wouldn’t that make me some sort of word wizard? No, instead, the words chosen are intended to form the basis of some kind of overall way I see my own existence, my own world. They are a synaptic look at my worldview, my personal philosophical stance.

Each daily word (provoking a set of thought) can be contemplated upon for an entire year. Use it like a philosophical devotional if you like.

All contemplations and interpretations included herein will vary from person to person, in both content and emphasis, and no two of us will ever see things the same way. (We can thank God for that special little gift.) At any rate, perhaps as we take in the meaning of the words, our world can be increasingly shaped from more of nothingness, to more of something-ness. That’s what I hope, at least.

And where there was less previous understanding, we will now behold magnificent structures of insight and human evolution. This is all simply done through the interpretation and incorporation of the symbols of our language – words, and their meaning.

The book, I wrote – stream of consciousness style – on each of my carefully chosen words, and placed relevance and significance to them. Taken contextually together, they form, for me, a worldview that is unlike the philosophy or religion of anyone else in the universe.

This, in fact, is why I am special. It’s why you are, too.

I am now free, as I practice living out my worldview in day-to-day existence, to interpret further meaning and purpose into all that comes my way.

This, then, is an outline of a personal philosophy of life that I use as I see my world. I really think it’s important we all work on that.

You might ask, Why do it? I do it because I want to be more about something than just a group of a few dozen half-baked opinions and theories about life. I feel that way because I have a need to make some sense out of the chaos and confusion that life, in all of its complexities, and with all of its interactions, brings to me. I do it because it is obvious that we (Mankind, that is) have always been pontificating these matters, ever since the dawning of Man.

I represent no exception to the rule – it’s something I, too, find I have to do.

…Besides, it was fun. And is fun still. And perhaps most of all, that’s what my world is all about. No matter what, it’s always got to be about fun.

But you might ask then, just what really is fun?

What is fun to you? In fact, what is life to you? Have you thought much about it? Well, I have. And what have I decided, after living for a half century on the face of the green and blue ball called earth?

Just read on and see.

Part One

The Nature of My World

Birth (001)

Origins (002)

Elements (003)

Replication (004)

Matter (005)

Body (006)

Mind (007)

Soul (008)

Spirit (009)

Spectrums (010)

Evolution (011)

Holarchy (012)

Motion (013)

Uniqueness (014)

Variety (015)

Style (016)

Personality (017)

Intelligence (018)

Harmony (019)

Uncertainty (020)

Equality (021)

Living (022)

Dying (023)

Aging (024)

Death (025)

Annihilation (026)

One

The Nature of My World

Somewhere, somehow, it all started with a single birth. A world was born, and everything in it. From our earliest origins it’s like we sprung into being. The basic elements of our existence combined, and a steady process of replication has been our human history. We members of humanity make this great trip from matter, to body, to mind, to soul, to spirit. The last leg of the journey (the spirit part) puts us, I suspect, right back in touch with God Itself. The spectrums of our being/doing, and the range of consciousness within us are open for continual expansion all along the way. Questions abound; we wonder what the range of possibility includes. The very most basic of questions are the first to surface; it’s like we emerged from some form of cocoon to begin to openly interpret what we think we are. Our evolution is all before us in the beginning, and we discover that our growth is concentric, expanding out in holarchic circles. We are set in motion all of the time – cooperating with it or not – in the steady advancement of our understanding. We are diversified beings, unique and of great variety, and each with our own special style. We are different, yet the same. We are personalities, which seem to be prime constructs of great individual creation. We possess intelligence that is profound. It is the same that is in all things. And we live in a world of some kind of strange harmony. We, as Man, seem certain of nothing, perhaps only that uncertainty will follow us all of our days. Equalities (as well as inequalities) are present at all times. As we grow, we naturally wonder about this process of living, and of life’s inevitabilities, such as, dying, aging and death: What are they for? What do they mean? And, very importantly, we ponder whether destruction of the body spells the annihilation of everything about us. We want to get to the meaning of the truest nature of things, so we begin to put the pieces together that pertain to our essential and basic nature. …I, myself, am cloistered away in the pursuit, asking the darkness the provoking questions that pertain to THE NATURE OF MY WORLD.

My World 1     Jan01     001

     Birth (or dawning, beginning)

The crown jewel of life…

Without my birth there, of course, would be no ushering in of life. Birth (life’s crown jewel) is both my Father, and my Mother. It is the same with all of life. Birth is an incredible miracle settling right underneath my nose. I most often let it go unrecognized for what it really is: the inaugural Gift of a Benevolent Creator…a Loving, Kosmic Act.

Birth is the onset of organisms, places, thoughts, things and everything else not represented in that synaptic. It is the origin of something new, something good. Birth is the genesis of every first and last thing I will ever know.

I am because of a birth. Without it, I still am not, at least in this present form, and I have nothing to say about anything. But because I am (because of my birth) my world unfolds to me according to the light that shines into me that is subsequent to my birth.

The shallowness with which I might examine the miracle of all birth would keep me from the recognition that innumerable things about it are marvelously inescapable. As I look deeper it becomes so self-evident.

I needed my birth; it was my start in this life, though not my first start. It was just the start of this life. This birth is my new newest dawning. This birth is my fresh starting point.

In the beginning, all Life in my world was initially birthed. All that is this life since then has come from the same place, from the great Wonder of birth. With regards to this me, it started with my birth.

How do you see your own personal birth? How do you view your own dawning? Is birth a great wonder to you?

My World 1     Jan02     002

     Origins (or genesis, start, earliest roots)

It’s an earthling thing…

We each have a name. I was given the name of Michael at birth, and have somewhere since come to perceive myself as a common earthling. I live here, in my world, on this planet, with many, many other such beings.

We actually just sprang from the planet a relatively short while ago – the earth, itself, has apparently been here for four or five billion years – as we humans manifested quite recently.

I came from other earthlings; I was, in fact, peopled. From a long line of peoplers, you might say I peopled forth. All other living organisms, in fact, seem to be doing their thing here on earth: Apples are appling. Plum trees are plumming. Cattle are cattling.

And people? People are peopling.

Like is begetting like, and it’s good. Yes, it’s a good thing.

It’s interesting to note that the sacred dust that is this I is also the contextual stuff of the stars, and of the ground, and of all things. For sure, we are sacred, and, in fact, we are a sacred part of a sacred pattern. All is sacred, and by that I guess I mean that it’s all spiritually special, and by that I suppose I mean it’s all from the same place – God.

Though someone else might call him Dog.

Whatever we call Dog, life has emerged from it. Just as I had parents, so did they, so did they, so did they, and so on. In some kind of beginning, no matter how I choose to reconstruct it, there was God, and God created it all.

I am not fixed on the number of days it took Dog to do it all; it might have been six. It might have been six billion. They could have been twenty-four hours long or light years long – but it seems like a pretty impressive feat that Dog pulled off. Don’t you agree?

Since studied earthling historians don’t know much about the when’s and wherefores, I don’t imagine I will speculate beyond what they have. But that’s a blind alley. What’s really important to me is to note that it’s an intelligent place, for sure, and that it seems generally friendly.

From that, I am inclined to project an intelligent and caring Creator of it, and while that may be a quantum leap for some, I figure it to be a small hop for me.

The struggle for why we are here is a puzzling one. But regardless of the reasons, I can assume it has something to do with loving and playing and growing to know myself better. So, shouldn’t I then pursue those things?

In the end, I don’t know any more about where I am going than from whence I came, but I enjoy the varied processes of life, and have come to be quite attached to this place called earth.

What do you know to be your origins? Do you think much about you being personally ushered into existence? Where did you come from; where are you going?

My World 1     Jan03     003

     Elements (or fundamentals, basic stuff)

What do I consist of?

In one real sense of the word, I am a self or a something that is made up of essentially six basic elements: matter, liquid, fire, air, space and consciousness are what I am.

A fundamental constitution of these six things makes up me…nothing more – nothing less. I am solid matter, which includes my flesh, my bones, my skin, my hair and my nails. I also consist of liquid, which includes my blood, my phlegm, my bile and other various secretions. There is a fire element to me. Not real fire; not the thing man first figured out how to kindle and control some 400,000 years ago.

Heat and energy make up the fire that resides within man.

Another aspect of me is air; this is represented within me by breath and wind. I also occupy space. Finally, I can conclude that I am constructed of consciousness, which is the sixth and final aspect of me.

What else is there?

So matter, liquid, fire, air, space and consciousness are what I am. These six essential elements of my being are all of what there is of me. I acquired them all during the course of my birth, and my life, and, at the time when it becomes appropriate and fitting, I will, no doubt, surrender all of them back.

None of these things are permanent and abiding within me, and, thus, cannot truly be spoken of me as I. None of them, combined, are of much worth, either. So, what makes me up is not worth much. The raw ingredients are not valuable on the open market.

Whatever remains after matter, liquid, fire, air, space and consciousness leave me, is up for questioning. I only can conclude that these elements are being borrowed in support of me, now, and, at some point in the ongoing events of my time, I will forfeit them.

In favor of just what, I cannot completely say.

The significance of them to my life now is that I incorporate them in carrying on my existence. These borrowed elements are a gift, one given to me personally, and for my private use. They are from the Universe at large. As such, considering their source, I value them, and direct them in ways that glorify the existence of my being. I find this is overwhelmingly worth doing.

What makes up the you that you have come to know? What has become of you, beyond what you were initially made up of, that is? Are you finding everything to be worth it?

My World 1     Jan04     004

     Replication (or duplication, reproduction)

We duplicate our successors…

I was replicated, and I have also participated in the act of replication. Two particular human beings were responsible for ushering me into existence, and I, with a link-up of someone else, also brought copies of myself into the world.

Human life carbon copies more human life. As long as we can do this, we can ensure the success of the species, provided, of course, we don’t over-replicate, and force ourselves out of the spaces necessary to survive.

Through sexual fusion, we create more and more of us. I see this as a thing of beauty when it is done under the right circumstances, and for pure reasons. Otherwise, it can be a sad thing.

As human life evolves, we are duplicating the processes by which we can grow and develop ourselves. We have been provided the means to create the miracle of birth. It is a sacred process, one that we often honor as such in our rituals and general approaches to life.

We have no idea of the resulting possible magnitude of the act of our sexual unions. When life comes from it, so emerges a miracle of unmatched proportion. It has no comparison or parallel in the human existence, and it represents verification to me – in my world – that there is meaning and intelligence in this creative universe in which I live and dwell.

Do you see how replication can be a mind-boggling thing? If the replication of life is imagined on a Kosmic scale, doesn’t that represent a great miracle to you? Are you thankful for the processes of duplication?

My World 1     Jan05     005

     Matter (or substance, core)

Matter is assembled and evolves outwardly…

I emerged from ground consciousness – floor number one. Going all the way down as deep as I can, I could speak of the core of me on the atomic level. From there, what I am is expanded out to molecules. Many molecules constitute molecular chains. But I am only beginning. These chains form simple cells, which combine to form cellular complexes. I am now emerging from basic matter, and conclude with tissue to make my essential genesis complete.

So, it all adds up to make matter – I, in fact, being one essence of that matter.

The evolution of my existence is relatively clear. I came from nothingness to something-ness, and I did it because and through the Creative Force that is often called God. I, thus, emerged somehow from God. Whoever and whatever God is, God is most certainly the Prime Mover in my being.

The miracle of life is upon me now, and the roots and origins of it are marvelous and amazing to comprehend and behold. Life is the great creative act, and I am here in the midst of it, out of nothingness, with a chance to experience this great gift.

What matters to you? How do you see your personal emergence into the conscious state? Is life a condition of wonder and awe to you?

My World 1     Jan06     006

     Body (or temple, vessel)

My body emerges into being…

Matter is the stuff of my body. My body emerged from the nothingness, and came together through the assembly of matter. I went from non-form, to form, and I did it in short fashion.

In my beginning – having sprung from birth – I could not separate the rest of my world from me. I comprehended my world, actually, to be me. This made me all there was to my world. My world, at this level, was simply I, and nothing much else.

Sooner or later, I understood my body to be different from the rest of my world. It was what I lived in, and in residing in it, it was my operating place for the rest of whatever that was a part of me.

I might like it, or I might not, but this body is the one I am going to have for the duration of the trip. So I adjust to this. And prepare to live out my life.

So, this is it. This is the vehicle that has been designed to accommodate my voyage through life, and I vow to do what I can to provide for it and cherish it. I join forces with my mind to carry out this commitment. My body is my shell. It is a very delicate organism, and something I must take care of, inside and out.

Its soft exterior leaves me susceptible to all kinds of problems, and I am not sure that I will be able to endure this journey forever encapsulated in this skin and bones.

How do you see the comprehension of matter? Do you have a personal investment and concern for the only body you will ever own?

My World 1     Jan07     007

Mind (or psyche, consciousness)

A mind ever evolving…

My body includes a brain, which is only about three and a half pounds or so, in weight. It feels, I am told, quite similarly to a piece of tofu.

This thing is more or less in charge of the rest of me. But it is not the organ itself that does the thinking. This brain is occupied and inhabited…by a mind.

As a human, my body and mind will take a long time to discover effective ways to work together throughout my lifetime. But they will slowly, in their own unique ways, find that it is best for them to do so.

Mind over matter (my body, being developed matter) is one of the goals of a disciplined and orderly life as a being in life. It will take some doing to get it to happen.

For most of my life, I viewed the mind as one thing, and the body as something else. In reality, a more accurate picture of it is that I have a mind-body, or, a body-mind – take your pick; which do you call it?

My body-mind is a force to be reckoned with, once it is tuned into its purposes and intentions on earth. I will evolve to great levels of being, and my consciousness will undergo many cyclical changes and expansions.

This trip through the spaces and gaps of life will be (is) nothing short of amazing. And it is more and more the case as time passes.

Before it’s over, all said and done, I may have the privilege to travel many places in my mind. And in the end, I am not quite sure what happens to it; it seems like such as waste of gathered wisdom and experience to have it die along with the body.

In some fashion I know I carry on, however, it is unclear to me, as a mortal, with my mortal mind, what that could all possibly mean.

I am simply left, then, to trust in the processes. That is something that I gladly do.

Do you understand your mental connection to the whole of life? Is it important to you to cultivate the functioning of your mind? How do you see Mind/mind?

My World 1     Jan08     008

     Soul (or interior essence, heart of spirit)

My soul reaches up and out…

There is an immortal aspect of me that is clearly not matter, apparently not the essence of matter (my body) but also not my mind either. It is my soul. Within it I rise to greater heights, to touch other sentient souls, and also to experience the depths of my understanding and appreciation for the whole of life.

I can, as a human with a soul, rise above the baser elements of my being through the conscious inhabitation of this soul. It will touch so much that is my world, and it will do it by assembling the senses in just the right order so that contact can be made.

I cultivate the workings of my soul. It is initially undeveloped in me, and susceptible to both growth and stultification, as time proceeds. Which way it develops is primarily up to me.

Have you ever walked upon someone who had no flourishing soul? There is nothing much left of them; they are void of hope, morality and grace. While I can’t exactly say how that comes to be, I do know that it is not necessary for it to happen.

My soul can be alive and healthy, and, most of all, it can touch the spirit in me, which is the part of me that has the ability to contact the Universe itself (whom we also call Dog, or God.)

Do you recognize the part of you that is your soul? Can you see how it emerges from you and is capable to reaching out and touching others? Is your soul healthy?

My World 1     Jan09     009

     Spirit (or life principal, of touching God)

Ready to join with God…

My higher self can be called by many names. The most evolved parts of me represent the utmost order of my being. From matter, to body, to mind, to soul, to spirit: here I come forth! My spirit is the highest self within me. And it even has the distinction of possessing a personal link straight to the Presence of God.

When all other aspects of me are functioning, and doing their part, I rise in my spirit, to the places where God resides. Here I am seeking not just to witness God, or spend time in the company of God. No, I am here to share the Oneness with the Kosmos that I understand exists with all of us if we would simply just know it.

My spirit can join God when I am ready for that to happen. When in my spirit, I touch the Spirit of God, and we become one, together. My world is suddenly on purpose, clear, filled with meaning and understanding.

When I join as one with the Universe, I know that this is the epitome of what the journey of life represents.

I often soar in my spirit. And I do it more so, the more I realize that it is possible to share in the pleasure and partnership with the All that is. Is there more of this world which I could then ask? I don’t think so, for, on those occasions when I have, in the places in my spirit, touched Dog, I have been filled with everything there is to experience.

Only death, and my direct return to the Oneness of Everything, can be a closer recounting of my experience of life.

Has your spirit joined up with God? Did you know that you could touch God in this way? Are you like the bird, which is soaring high? Or have you allowed yourself to become grounded?

My World 1     Jan10     010

     Spectrums (or ranges, gametes, continuums)

The balance of extremes…

In a universal view of it, there does not seem to be three or four polarities to understand. Nor is there just one, or five, or a hundred; there appears to be but two.

These two extremes present a range, one that extends from one extreme, to the other extreme. Thus, we can comprehend such concepts as happy-miserable, lovable-hateful, right-wrong, active-passive, good-bad, left-right, liberal-conservative, man-woman, day-night, peaceful-turbulent, overcast-sunny, yin-yang, and on and on.

I sit on one end of each issue of the spectrum, or on the other end, or, far more likely somewhere in the middle of the two extreme ends, at all times. For some reason, the thinking of Man has seemed to always be prone to view this as one verses the other, and it is a useful tool in which to see the world.

Frequently, our way of seeing the world is one of balancing it’s content between the two extremes. Life is not easily understood, or lived, when we don’t grasp the need for this kind of balance. There is a moderate way – a middle way – that is nestled between the two extremes, and is an appropriate way of seeing our world, and all that is in our world.

I seek it out, this middle ground, and I predominately rest my views and convictions somewhere between the extremes, knowing I achieve more balance in doing so when I do.

As it pertains to the day, I am happy with what the weather brings. If it is sunny, or overcast, then fine. Anything in the middle will do, too.

With regard to the illusive concept of happiness: I do not need it. I can be somewhere between happy and miserable, and be fine. Or, I can be on