I was listening to a lecture by Alan Watts the other day. He was meditating on the nature of reality, perception, and experience. Watts was noting that the human experience is one rooted in duality; a sensual cacophony that leads one to believe that the ultimate nature of reality consists of an “I” (the organism) operating within a field (its environment). “Reality is the relationship between a being and its environment.” This assumption has dominated the scientific and philosophical basis of the West since Antiquity. Damn empiricists! It has brought civilization to what has been touted as a technological high-point, despite the fact that these advancements have been achieved at the expense of the Earth and its inhabitants.
Watts further posited with his eloquent musings that this illusory, dualistic nature is ultimately oneness. The organism is very much one with its environment, due to the requirement that an organism must perceive itself and the environment through its own lense and faculties. There simply isn’t a way to remove the perceiver from the perceived!
Moreover, if you were to scientifically examine the external world with today’s tools, you would find compounds consisting of atoms. Ultimately, you could trace these building “blocks” all the way down until you find the pure energy that exists within them. Everything is fundamentally energy, and the “perceiver” of reality is intimately married with the contents of its environment through the organs of the ego experience, i.e. the human brain, eyes, ears, etc.
Surely this is no revelation nowadays, and it’s a sort of common knowledge carried and explored by folks- physicists, spiritualists, psychonauts, scientists, philosophers, and artists included. But hearing this lecture hit me in a special way, and got me thinking of concepts with a refreshed sense of clarity.
This “field,” this environment, the very fabric that constitutes my day to day reality which I label as “The World,” is ultimately an intimate creation of mine. Inputs of energy are received by my brain and formed into an intriguing dance and a living, breathing mirage, much like a film on a movie screen. This abstraction appears so real, that reality seems to completely exist outside of my physical body, absolutely unrelated to myself, my beliefs, and my perception.
But it couldn’t be further from the truth. I am an aspect of Oneness that is experiencing itself with other aspects of that same Oneness (you!). Perception provides a grand illusion of Oneness’ creative potential, yet I am God, just as you are. The events of our daily lives are our own creations, conscious and unconscious, external and internal.
It’s such a wonderful, yet bizarre, mystery still, especially when mystical experiences and mind-bending moments appear to “break the rules” of society’s agreed-upon reality.
Just the other day, I was hungry for a vision. I had been thinking that it had been quite some time since I had received an clear, undeniable message from the Creator… For me, these messages are special, unwavering, and powerful moments of communication with divine consciousness.
Walking our four legged companions out in a nature preserve, Judi and I had been talking about this. “It just feels like I haven’t gotten any messages,” I stated as we paced on. “You know, a little assurance that I’m on the right track would be nice.” We reminisced on past lives of monk-hood and devout spiritual paths that required 8 hours or more a day of meditation practices. Entire lives of some serious Zen!
We rounded the corner of the trail and I’d suggested we loop around again. As we moved on, I gazed forward and a red-tailed hawk swooped westward overhead. As if that weren’t enough of a “hello,” the hawk’s movement across the landscape gave way to a coyote hunting on the distant hillside. We smiled. I felt touched and uplifted by the almost instantaneous answer to my request for reassurance. “Okay, got it! I am the power and presence of God creating this! Thank you!”
Reflecting later, I realize now that we are always connected to the earth… We are all shapes of the earth, and the perceivable is the perceived is the perceiver. The observer is the observed.
I am the soft earth underneath my feet; I am the hawk soaring above that river; I am the coyote tending to its young and the whispering pines across the prairie. I am an aspect of being in a loving embrace with more aspects of itself, expressing creativity along the way. I am a child of God with divine purpose, and you are too.