interconnectedness

I pace the shallow sea, walking the time between, reflecting on the type of fossil I__ like to be. I guess I__ like my bones to be replaced by some vivid chert, a red ulna or radius, or maybe preserved as the track of some lug-soled creature locked in the sandstone- how did it walk, what did it eat, and did it love sunshine?

Myth and nature are the two great garments of the world, with nature being the living green garment that covers the planet and myth being the multidimensional, many-colored fabric that continually weaves human culture.

Flowers magnetize us with their beauty and reflect back to us our own essence. Their qualities magnify positive aspects of ourselves. They serve as messengers to remind us of the preciousness of life at the most crucial times of our lives. Flowers are doing this for us all the time, and all we have to do is pay attention.

On a personal level, I chose not to look at the eclipse but rather sat outside during it and listened and appreciated nature, instead of participating in it like a pop festival. My decision was based partly on belief but also I have to contemplate the mass production of glasses and how they will only be used once, polluting our earth with plastics and harmful metals.

If you are neutral in times of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there. -Yasutani Roshi, Zen master (1885-1973)

But silence continued in the layers of the earth, and this density that I could feel at my shoulders continued harmonious, sustained, unaltered through eternity. I lay there pondering my situation, lost in the desert, and in danger, naked between sky and sand and stars, withdrawn by too much silence from the poles of my life.

With a clear intention and a willing spirit, sooner or later we experience the joy and freedom that arises when we recognize our common humanity with others and see that real love excludes no one.

Far from making me feel different and special, my [spiritual] experiences made me feel the same, ordinary, and interconnected. If I felt more spiritual, everyone else felt more spiritual as well. (276)

You are never alone. You are eternally connected with everyone.

At that point, I realized that I could see myself in all things_ objects, people, places, experiences, what have you_ as long as I was willing to look. And I guess that__ it_ as we begin to look through the layers of our own existence, their green gems will reveal themselves. It__ up to us to polish them with prominence. And let them shine.

Connectedness. One thing leads to another. Often in unexpected ways.

All these threads, like the ley-lines he'd read about in his Time-Life history books, converging on the Cicciaro girl, who lay there unaware, a glass-coffined beauty whose kingdom was in ruins.

In my mind, I could sense their roots under the soil, creeping in helical tangles of ever-increasing complexity outward and in all directions__ut beyond the perimeter of the Helsingør Wood, out below Yami__ Under City, out along the banks of the river, out to the nearest coast and thereupon out into the sea; the roots crept down further along the continental shelf, downward into the abysses, downward into the ocean floor, burrowing under the corals and under trenches, and then back up again to sprout in the darkened forest on a foreign continent: all the trees of the world now had conjoined roots, for they were now of one conjoined consciousness!

Dolmens constantly remind us to live in harmony with nature, to live within our needs and not in our greed. It reminds us that we should keep on helping everyone in need; not only those who are right in front of our eyes, but everyone and everything that are interconnected in time and space. Only abstract consequences of our good deeds and our kind actions continue to exist as soul and connect us with the past, present and upcoming generations. Rest of it will be molten into nothingness!

...at some indiscernible moment he sees all of us clearly _ every face distinct, like immiscible droplets of water, all of us individuals constituting an interconnected sea of beings.

The Sun, each second, transforms four million tons of itself into light, giving itself over to become energy that we, with every meal, partake of. For four million years, humans have been feasting on the Sun__ energy stored in the form of wheat or reindeer. Brian Swimme

What if we all stopped fighting to belong and realized that we already do? What if we acknowledged, in each interaction with ourselves and with others, the eternal, beautiful interconnected energy that flows between us? What if we recognized our equality and celebrated our differences? Imagine how the world could be.