I want to sink into the texture of my life.
So often I experience my days as if I am a God hovering over the waters of chaos, trying to wrangle order and beauty from all the mess I am responsible for. In the process I become alienated from the presence of materiality. From the texture of clothing and food and the bodies of dogs and humans, the paper beneath my hand, the leaves falling outside my door waiting to sneak inside with a burst of November wind as soon as the door is open.
I do not wish to be alienated from the physical world in which I live and move and have my being. I do not wish to recede into my encircled mind to answer emails and make decisions and solve problems. I wish to experience the texture of tree bark and the shaft of a pen and the sign of contentment when one sentient being is in august proximity with the body of another sentient being that is loved.
I believe in Love, by the way.
I do not believe that God is Love, or that Love is God, or that the universe gives a shit about us in any significant way. But within the depths of mystery yawning beneath and above and all around us, there is an emerging current as real as Gravity, arising from interactions of living organisms entangled in a web of relationality.
Energy, literal solar electric energy, is what creates life. Thoughts/ feelings / words / dreams, even love are electricity. This does not diminish the metaphysical reality of love or the existential weight of it. Rather it increases the beauty of love, by the complexity of the system of reality we inhabit -- a reality where love and electricity conspire together to make human life bearable, and the organism tumbles on.
Love is real.
It shapes oure lives, fills our existence with meaning. Life is only as bearable as it is meaningful. Without meaning, our souls shrivel. For sure, the organism that we are needs the nest of meaning to feel safe in the undifferentiated chaos of raw existence / reality.
I don't know what can be said with certainty about the universe; I refuse to make truth claims that are little more than cognitive distortions and wishful thinking. I am not interested in faith without sight.
If I am in relationship with that which is divine, how can I know God but by the materiality of my own existence?
My kingdom is of this world.
This earth is the closest to heaven I'll ever be.
(i wrote this a year or two ago, but found it today and wanted to share it with you.)
Beautiful. We are on a similar journey it seems... On the Zen path now and have had similar thoughts running through my mind. Thanks for sharing.