Uncurling from the fetal position

A mental image of uncurling from the fetal position inspires two feelings in me tonight.

Courage to uncurl.*

I just googled 'courage quotes' and got a site with hundreds of quotes - here's the first one:

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. - Steve Jobs

I worry about sounding too radical with my thoughts on climate change. I fear that I'm turning people off to the message altogether. I'm afraid that most people know much more than I do about this stuff and have really figured something else out, that I'm foolish or naive. I'm concerned I'm not doing as much as I could, like I'm missing the best path for optimum impact. I'm scared to see my kids in pain, scared, sick, or sad. I'm anxious that I'm underprepared.

That's me in the fetal position. 

I uncurl when I'm present to my gorgeous family, the funny things we all say, when we're having conversations. I uncurl when I'm present to life and the physical world around me, the giant trees behind our house or rainwater streaming in a gutter. I uncurl when I'm playing music, or hearing the tick tock of perfect reasoning. I uncurl when I feel compassion without burden, concern without weight, joy without insult.

Uncurling by maturing. 

Here we are, as a society, not exactly prenatal, but young. We've been growing and becoming more coherent, but we've got uncurling left. 

From my favorite author, Kurt Vonnegut:

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

Can we satisfy our needs (including comfort, compassion, and enjoyment) without destroying the place? Yes. So why do we keep destroying it?

What if:
All we're missing is authentic connection - With other people - With the physical and biological world around and within us - Within the world of mind. What if we're just distracting ourselves from loneliness with all this 'progress'?

It's time to uncurl.**

* An interviewee from a new documentary, How to Let Go of the World and Love All The Things Climate Can't Change, on a director's panel this week at a showing in town, described her fetal-to-postfetal self-image when she acts in the face of despair.
** Happy Easter! Uncurling, death and resurrection, either works for this idea!

If'n I was goin' somewhere

"An acorn's DNA has 'oak' written all over it."*

The physical stuff of the universe is there, but the biological stuff of the universe seems to be heading somewhere (telos). The acorn an oak, the tulip bulb a blossom, the apple seed a fruit tree. Even third on the ladder of the stuff of the universe (first is matter, second is plant life, third is animal life, fourth is mind - human life) we find that puppies grow to beget and care for more pups, kittens to cats for more kittens, etc.

Rocks and stars just are. Life aims to beget more life. And human life?

The direction of the highest order of life is less certain. The human mind is the deepest product of evolution on the stage of Earth. We are made of the same stuff that makes up our planet - we're mostly carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. And that stuff is arranged in the right way to give us life. Yet we are not the same as other life. We have transcended the domain of other life.

And with each transcendence in evolution there are new opportunities for pathologies:

• Rocks can get banged up. 
• Plants can get banged up and get diseases. 
• Animals can get banged up, get diseases, and get cancers. 
• Humans, well we can get banged up, get diseases, get cancers, and more...

It's the more that I'm mostly concerned with. We are currently living in a society that represses the foundations of our existence. Just as molecules cannot exist without atoms, animals cannot exist without the necessities of life. But humans must grapple not only with the necessities of life for survival, but with the higher-level aspects of our existence: culture, community, and society.

The aspects of our unique evolution that add such depth and fulness to our experience - language, art, science, mathematics, technology - are also new sources of pathologies.

Many of my students say that this disastrous path is just part of our nature, that it couldn't be any other way with us. I am sure that there is another way possible, and that's the direction I think our species tends to head.

"A city fellow, driving through the Vermont countryside, sees a man in a truck on the side of the road. The truck is axle-deep in the mud, and the wheels are spinning. 'Are you stuck?' asks the city fellow. 'I would be, if'n I was goin' somewhere.'"*

I think we're stuck because we're going somewhere.


* Quotes taken from Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution by Ken Wilbur.

Bein' preachy

I was just hanging with a few friends and I'm present to a dilemma (same topic as my last post). Finding balance between personal satisfaction and contributing to the global community isn't so straightforward for me sometimes.

Perhaps I'm just reinvigorated by Naomi Klein's conviction that people have the power to put choice back into each other's hands, but the climate change issue seems to be too big an issue for anyone who knows and cares to not shout about it.

We're on a path right now that has a pretty painful ending for a lot of people, and we're running out of time to effectively put on the brakes. Why isn't every conversation aiming to answer the question, "How do we create a better future for us and other life than the future we're rushing towards?"

Such is the yang side of it, and I can sometimes slip into despair with that one.

On the yin side are all the beautiful lifestyles and communities that people are creating and engaging with that are the birth of that new world. I want to study these much more.

I'm seeing the balance again actually - there's personal satisfaction for me in working for a new future for life. And worry and fear aren't requisite for me to have my cake and eat it too.

As that balance is asking to be sustained, the balance between shifting my own understanding and standing for a shift in our collective understanding also needs to be maintained - my being preachy ain't fun on either side of the sermon!

a Word in a valuable Story

Our language comprises 26 letters. With those letters we compose our words. We group those words into sentences to say anything.

Like different words formed from the same letters, humans are made of the same elements as nearly all other life: carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, calcium, hydrogen, phosphorus, and some others in small amounts. We contain within us no special material differences; there is nothing about our material constituents that separates us from other life.

And yet we are different.

I remember a fad in middle school being the drawing of the yin-yang symbol in class notebooks. I thought it was a cool symbol, and I thought there was esoteric meaning there that the cool kids really understood. Though still not a cool kid, I think I'm finally starting to grasp it.

Yin and Yang - agency and communion. Individualism and participation. "How can I be both my own wholeness and a part of something larger, without sacrificing one or the other?"*

Water comprises two elements: hydrogen and oxygen. The two alone are useful gases in their own right, but combine a couple hydrogens with an oxygen in H20 and we've got "a transformation that results in something novel and emergent."*

While I've been sitting to meditate the last few weeks, that voice nearly always pops up at some point during the 30 minutes to loudly question whether meditation is worth anything. The biggest insight I've gotten out of my meditation practice recently is the clarity that I am both an individual and a part; experiencing a perfect balance between those two, while usually fleeting, alone makes the effort and time worth it.

I am an individual aiming for personal satisfaction and fulfillment  ///  I am a part of the global network of life aiming for collective satisfaction and fulfillment.

I'm a word in the story of life: whole and complete on my own, yet part of a bigger story.


* Quotes taken from Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution by Ken Wilbur.