Its a Happening

Deep down in the cracks and crevices of my brain, riding on firing neurons and chemical reactions, made up of the smallest things humans can imagine, the subatomic particles, are thoughts and uncertainty about these words, despite that, or maybe because of that, this seems sure to be an interesting installment of useless drivel and musings, but we shall see. Before we get there though, I need to go on a tangent, not to far, just a bit about inspiration, the thing that has seemingly eluded me these past few months, at least if measured in the number of posts here, my writing volume is way up though, pages and pages, but nothing that seemed to translate into publishable content, I started looking for it, and by looking for It, inspiration that is, seemingly keeping it away, but here we are, and now you find yourself reading this steaming pile of scientific spirituality coaxed from the deepest darkest crevasse of my mind, rambling out onto this screen through my finger tips…

Since childhood, the universe has always fascinated me, an interest sparked by Carl Sagan and his Cosmos series, that fueled a fire of curiosity that had always existed, my mathematics being what it was, never better than just above average, kept me from studying physics, which simply didn’t seem possible in that present, the question that fascinated me, “what is the universe?”, an interesting question to be asking at that age, but what I really wanted to know but didn’t know how to ask, “what is the nature of universe?”. Now with years of earthly experience under my belt, I see that there is likely no path to gain understanding on the first question, between the limitations of human consciousness and this biological existence, but we can remember Its nature. It is right in front of us, Its nature is a game, Its playful, a game of hide and seek with the force of the universe, the happening. It is balanced in a duality of beautiful patterns of perfection, It is all that has ever been, and all that will ever be, and due to that, it can only be perfect.

Those of you still on the fence about, “has he lost his mind?”, may jump on the bandwagon after this episode, but my reason for writing is not necessarily for you, it could be for you, but that is not for me to decide, this is my experience, energetically, experiencally, maybe I am raving mad man or maybe just a interesting thinker, from where I am sitting, fairly certain it has to be both, because you can’t have one without the other, one implies the other, the duality of the universe requires it. Oh well, if your still here you know who I am, whoever this “I” is, this year has been a revelation on levels. Level after level. Since New Years Day, I have spent nine weeks in Mexico on three different trips, eight days in Amsterdam, a day in Belgium, a long weekend on Vancouver Island, Vegas for a overnight, and twelve days in the Sacred Valley of Peru with my daughters, several energetic flows of challenging travel situations, met many interesting people of the earth, manifested a profoundly intriguing woman into my life, all the while, watching a pile of softball games, and manifesting some business opportunities from beyond my imagination, it has been busy to say the least. I have been writing about these experiences each energetic step all long the way, not much took though, not in a way that inspired it into life to be published here. Layer six ayahuasca journeys on top of that, split up in February and April, for all intensive purposes I have been integrating ayahuasca journeys all but one month of the year. Not something to be taken lightly, on top of the ambitious travel schedule, some of it planned, some of it not, either way it pushed me to the brink of exhaustion, life came together in a way where I have been over planned since May, just had to call it quits on some plans, well until I go to Montana at least, twice before the end of September, but for real, I did forgo some plans, and missed some friends, because I have needed rest.

Writing blocks, for that matter creativity blocks of any sort, as with most things in the universe, are interweaved with more complex variables than can possibly be accounted for in words, and the more you think about it and try to grab for it, the creative inspiration, the further it gets out of reach, in my case an attachment to the result of writing was the hang up, a finished piece, but great writing is really in the process, writing simply to write, so what I am working towards and attempting to lay out here is something I have been writing about for myself, as a way to remember what is, pages and pages, this won’t be about a place, a thing, or a person, its about It, and Its a happening, and for me it has been much like a new toy for a child, inviting me to come play, make no mistake though, this is an attempt to reach for It, just as I was doing by looking for creative inspiration, to put It in words, to explain the universe as It, to explain the seeing, I used the world seeing there but seeing is not the right word, not really, feeling, understanding, knowing, there is no verb in the English language for whatever It does, words just don’t do, but anyway that is the endeavor for which we are embarking.

Lets call this an integrated view of the universe, as in I integrated this from my life long curiosity about the nature of the universe and my life experience, I am laying out a view of the universe, not necessary the only view, but a single view, my view, one without rules, just flow, whatever It is, just as its been integrated into my experience and understanding of this life in the present moment, as I said, an integrated view of the universe. This attempt to put It into words, is inspired and brought to you by what I believe is one of the most important thinkers and brilliant orators in the 20th century, Alan Watts, there is no doubt that many of the ideas here come directly from him, not that they where necessarily his ideas, these ideas have been around thousands of years, but he was a genius in connecting them together in eloquent thoughtful beauty, I may even say them similarly but all credit to Alan, who I know would assuredly appreciate me sharing them in the spirit in which he intended, no ideology to share, nothing to sell you, with the sole interest in sharing ways to think about the universe, or as Alan referred to it, spiritual entertainment.

It happens in an instant, sudden like, but simple, in a moment where the sunlight hits me across the body, settled into my chair, all comfortable like, sun upon my face, my entire body is glowing with warm light energy, the sunbeams casting perfect raking light on my journal resting in my lap, my pen projecting a perfect long shadow over the notebook as it flows over the paper and through the words, laying down rich black ink in the most glorious perfection of swooping symbols, graceful and elegant in pattern, the beautiful patterns of light shimmering through the ink and across the heavy paper, the voids of white nothing just as important as the symbols themselves, the darkness of the shadow laying contrast to and partially obscuring the ink, which appears as beautiful calligraphy, the suppleness of it, how perfect, that is the sort of moment when you see It, we can see the whole universe in that moment, the beautiful pattern.

In order to lay this out, I am going to need you to follow me down an academic rabbit hole for a moment, language, rules of grammar, verbs and nouns, the words we use. Take a moment to consider language. What are words? What is language? For real, what is it? Have you ever thought about that? One might say, it is human consciousness expressed, the parts we can experience and explain at least, seems fundamental to me that there is so much more happening than we can explain with words.  The universe is infinite in complexity, just look at quantum mechanics and subatomic particles, this energy exists in infinite particles and waves, tiny energy vibrations attracted together by powerful forces, giving us matter, but even within the matter, the “stuff” is tiny in comparison to the space in-between, nothingness, the emptiness between subatomic particles is a vast a the cosmos itself, relatively speaking anyway, just all part of the many number of curiosities physics has has yet to explain or even knows the questions to ask, both of which are as infinite as the universe itself. Human biology and the limitations of consciousness only allows for us to experience some fraction of the universe, so of course there are no words to explain it all, too complex and we are not equipped. Just the act of writing about It here feels curiously stupid and dripping with arrogance, once again by reaching, It only moves further away. 

Probably need to get back to words because I am not done there and can feel myself about to go on another tangent, I regress, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, strung together to make sentences, an interesting expression of human consciousness, they can be wielded to such grace and beauty in an eloquent expression of this human existence, but limiting if that is the only way one considers the universe, living as is if only those experiences that can be explained with words encompass all of this human journey. If you find yourself thinking such, well then, please explain love in words, you will try, but good luck. You see that when you get right down to it, we can only have words to explain some infinitesimally small part of all that is happening, but we can have awareness that there is more going on then we could ever experience, in fact, deep down, I believe we all know it, we are just really good at pretending that is not the case. It seems clear to me to recognize language as the limiting factor that it is, becomes critical to the journey of understanding, language limits our expression of the happening.

Maybe we might ask ourselves some questions to think about this human experience outside of our conscious minds? Who is this you, the one to which you refer to? Do you grow your hair? Do you digest your food? Do you create memories? Do you love? Can you explain to yourself how “you” do those things? I don’t think so, “you” don’t know that, “you” don’t need to know that, its “you” doing it but there is no doer, its the happening, that is Its nature, the universe at work, clearly magical in quality, mystical, all these things just happen, and we just go on pretending it is not interesting or special, Its magical really, and deep down we all know that it is indeed so, we pretend we don’t, suppose otherwise it won’t be much of a game of hide and seek.

Generally speaking what is the perception of this existence in which we live? This life thing seems pretty serious right? You know life is hard, and all… But who said so? Why should I choose to perceive the universe and this game as so dire and serious? Life seems to be treated like a tragedy around every other corner, even to the point where some humans even believe we are some accident of nature, somehow the Earth would be better off without us, really, is it really so serious? Was there a memo from the universe that I missed? This experience of being human, with a finite life, seems like beautiful gift to me. The way I see it, what’s the use in playing the game if it is in fact so dire, as we contend so vigorously, in all seriousness, deep down we all know that this energy experience oscillates from udder elation and joy to despair and pain and everything in between, we all die eventually, nobody is getting out alive, would you even want too if you could, the universe is doing what it does, and universe doesn’t make mistakes, whatever is flowing, there is nothing wrong with it and there will continue to be nothing wrong with it, It is always balanced in duality, the flow will change, the universe is in constant change, attachment to an outcome will bring suffering, but an interesting human experience should welcome and enjoy the flow of the change, and even some suffering, remembering that suffering is human, and as right as any other experience, it need not be feared, it is all just the happening, if you get there, then you can sort of get on with things, letting go of It.

These words that I am stringing together just don’t seem enough, maybe I don’t possess the skill as a writer, or maybe it is unexplainable, here is the thing, try as I might to explain It, It really doesn’t even need an explanation, It is the easiest thing in the world, in fact you have to do nothing, but you can’t try to do nothing, because that is something, but once you accept that you really don’t get it, you get it, if you just stop looking, It will come to you, but this act of expression, writing these words, the feeling, the understanding, we just have to keeping coming back to it, the words express an infinitesimally small portion of the universe, these words reach for it, and by reaching for it, it moves further way, and so we try to look closer, with all our might and scientific power, and the closer we look the more complex the pattern gets, it remains out of reach.

Let’s just suppose for a moment this all began with a big bang, the origin of the universe really doesn’t matter to this view of It, but lets just suppose, the big bang seems to be the best theory physics has given us to explain both the beginning and the nature of the universe, where matter and the things of life come from, but the theory just describes Its nature, the force itself remains hiding in the game, but even given that, if all this started as one massive dense sphere that contained all the matter and energy that exists within the universe, then we are that, what else could we be, we are the big bang, the subatomic particles, the elements and atoms that create the matter that has come together to create our physical bodies and minds is part of the original powerful explosive event, an event that is ongoing, we are living as part of it, within it. We have just forgotten, if that is in fact how it went down, but that is really of no concern to me.

This happening is happening across the universe, as one giant force, and within, there are an infinite number of individual happenings going on within each second that ticks on our clocks, from us earthlings on our beautiful blue and green sphere, playing out our game of hide and seek, to other forms of complex organisms on some eerily earthy like plant in a distant galaxy, to the nebula clusters of clouds and dust where stars are born, to supernovas, to black holes, all of these come together to be “The Happening”. The whole experience need not be one of separateness from It, which seems to be how we as humans feel most of the time, but we can understand that we are part of the glorious patterns of energy that exist, we are that force, the force that shaped our biological bodies, the force that allows us to experience matter, the force that created human consciousness, and when you get down to it, that is all physics can really explain, the closer we look, just more pattern, subatomic particles, which seem to exist simply because we are looking for them. This is a beautiful view of the universe, whatever It is, expressing itself through the complex organisms on planet earth, we are not just some dot in the Milky Way galaxy, within the infinite number planets and suns that make up the vast galaxies of the known universe, we are the beautiful outcome of It, whether we remember or not. We are gorgeous beautiful patterns of light energy, an eternal force, no matter what happens here on Earth, whatever games we choose to play, the universe is experiencing itself through human consciousness, It is becoming aware of the itself through each of us, through the energetic flow of light energy that illuminates it all, the glorious interesting patterns, nothing flows through a human life, good or bad, fortune or misfortune, happiness and sadness, and especially birth and death, that can be anything other than perfect for you, it is for you, you are the universe.

In seeing It as the game It is, we begin to realize into consciousness, this giant playscape that exists as human experience, as the universe, that everything we do, in each moment of each day we are alive, down to the simplest task, the so called “mundane”, is the whole point, all of it, playing, it is the beautiful existence of the universe becoming aware of itself through you, playing the game of hide an seek with itself.

The universe, balanced in duality, with its beautiful patterns of energy, is all that has ever been, and all that will ever be, it can be nothing else but perfect.

Joshua

Thought Experiment Activity

Write about the happening, a paragraph, or two, maybe three, and if you are courageous enough, post it in the comments, for those who are not, I suppose you can email it to me @: joshua@joshuas.earth. The assignment, explain how you move your arm. Do you think about moving your arm before you do so? If you do think about it, after you are done thinking, do you say “hey, move your arm” to this person you refer to as “you”? Write about how it works, how it feels, the experience. Be creative with it! I will pick a favorite and send the writer, no matter where you live in the world, some sort of interesting muse of the universe, my choice, something of value to me, in a spiritual sense, maybe something that found me on an adventure somewhere, something that called to me, and by doing so making all of this part of the happening, some spiritual entertainment if you will.