In our nature

I believe this may tie in to what I mentioned in an earlier text called Chaos & Effect since when looking at the Nature of things it is inevitably going to touch on how the process of life expresses itself through a series of action and consequence. Nothing that happens here is random and by “here” I don’t mean just this text but the grand whole totality of everything that we experience and witness. 

All that is and all that comes to be does so because the conditions for it to arise have been met by circumstances that allows it to happen. When the conditions aren’t met or the circumstances change, whatever is ceases to be. That is the simple nature of things. 

An acorn may be planted in soil that is fertile but there may not be enough sunlight for the conditions that allows the acorn to grow and take root or there is a lack of water or perhaps the air is too polluted, i.e the circumstances aren’t right for the acorn to flourish into an oak tree. An acorn may be planted and the circumstances are most favourable for it to grow in which case it will. There will be nothing to stop it unless the circumstances change. The conditions for the oak to express itself is limited though, at some point its requirements to keep growing will be different than what they were say 300 years earlier and unless the circumstances has changed to accommodate this, the oak tree stops, withers and passes away. The process for the tree and e v e r y t h i n g else is the same, actually it is all one and the same process just expressing itself in different ways. 

Our nature though, human nature, blessed with the ability to take all of this in, chop the tree down, make paper out of it and write books about how good we are at wielding axes, has gone a bit astray from how we are connected to it all. It is fascinating indeed how these days “natural” is a buzzword used to sell granola bars as a testament to how far removed our everyday life and built environment is from being what we innately recognise as natural. In our ingenuity of being able to reflect on our experience and have an opinion about it we have also learned along the way that the conditions and/or circumstances can be tampered with, altered or manipulated to suit our preferences better. This is the act of will, regardless of what the intention behind them are, though more often than not it could be considered honourable to admit that it is for our selfish comfort or greed that spurs us into action. Sometimes it’s survival but in the developed world that is a rare occurrence. 

So what is it that makes us different? Well it appears to be us, ourselves who are responsible for that separation. Or rather it is our mind’s tendency to make sense in this way; divide, describe & distinguish. Since the mind is not really there at the front line, having the experience, but rather being fed second hand information from the sensory organs it has to make up for this in some way. Our mind can’t feel, it can only think about feeling and as a result it plays a constant game of association that is supported by data from the past. The memory of outcomes, emotional states and preferences related to these will prompt a like or dislike which motivates how we act in the present. It’s a complex process and so there is no surprise that a constantly stimulated mind gets a bit messy, there is just too much information to sort through and a lot of it may not even come from the sensory doors but from the mind itself. This is the root of confusion, thinking about thinking in a sort of feedback loop that is more or less disconnected from what is really going on and decisions that come from a messy mind is pretty much doomed to lead to a messy outcome. But this is the nature of the mind, it’s a very powerful factor in the human experience and a very delicate mechanism that is easily distracted. And it is when the mind is given sovereignty that this separated state arises, the idea that life happens to us and not through us. When it doesn’t happen the way we like it, we change the conditions according to our desire. 

Our capacity to enjoy the experience is a superpower that few other beings are blessed with and with great power comes great responsibility. Just as it is a very precise and perfectly balanced situation that allows the acorn to thrive for centuries just so fine is the balance of our employment of the mind to rest with what is and not disturb it with the desire to change it. This is the nature of things, everything that can happen will happen when the conditions and circumstances for it are right to do so. 

So look at the state of the world around you, the trees and the rivers and chances are you will see how this manifests in harmony. Then look at the world where the human gone to rule by ideas alone and it becomes quite obvious where the confusion lies, at the river bank or in our unbalanced mind? It is in our nature to reflect on this experience but that reflection will never be a clear mirror if we keep stirring the pond in which it arises. 

Basically what this means is that as long as the mind is tainted with opinion and ideas we will have a distorted perception of what really is. The tainted mind will not only compensate for the information it is lacking by drawing conclusions but also get lost in its own belief. The amount of confusion that results from this process in combination with the growing impatience for discomfort that is very discernible in our societies leads to an overwhelming amount of disgruntled minds constantly wishing and working on manipulating the conditions for the current state of affairs.

Again it comes down to leaving things alone, to learn to be with what is and allow that to settle without feeling the need for things to be different. It’s not a place of despondency nor is it about indifference, but about allowing things to appear as they are before we begin to have an opinion about them. This can’t happen if we keep getting involved or maintain reactive to everything that we are exposed to. If we really want to discover what is the true nature of things we must refrain from picking things apart and allow the realisation to arise that the whole process is not something separate from us but it is all one big thing that we are a part of.