spirit-myths
A COKE BOTTLE falling out of the sky at your feet
is as good a reason as any to believe that spirit, fate or god
exists outside yourself-- yet the coke bottle wouldn't even
exist if you weren't there, or at least somewhere. Some would
even say the bottle is you-- you are both just different
arrangements of the same stuff. The human
brain seems to insist on
seeing itself as the supreme controller of all the other
highly specialized cells which allows the whole to exist in a smoothly-
functioning unit-- yet it/we develop into what we are like all
other sentient organic life-forms, through a process of
simple cell-division from a single fertilized egg.
THE MAGIC (and perhaps the absurdity) of all this is that the
drive and the blueprint for the astonishing variety of life as we
know it is contained in each cell of each organism-- even after it has adopted its highly-specialized mature function. The blueprint
by itself is a miracle to behold,
but it is the drive, the force which energizes,
which is truly astonishing.
ONE GROUP of cells is driven to become the gossamer wing of a
butterfly, enabling it to fly, while another group allows an
entire species to talk to each other, and another group enables
the creation and composition of music or the conceptual and
practical insight to leave the earth and "fly" through the
universe. Amazing enough-- but how can anyone explain the
motivation?
THE ONLY possible explanation is that a
great spirit is at work here.
THOSE WHO have written most of the rules wish to portray this
seeming genetically-encoded driving-force as the work of a
single human-like entity, outside of us (though it has to be
turned around to read:
we are created in his image).
The great spirit, as I choose to call it, is certainly bigger
than any individual or group, but the notion that we are
subjects of this human-like entity shows the hand of certain
types of men at work. Now we have the excuse for kings and
bishops, and a whole littany of lesser lieutenants-- all
rather holier and possessing of more "legitimate" authority than
the rest of us, who are reduced to disciples, members, numbers,
cannon-fodder, and "dumb" animals-- or the insane or infidel
if it suits them.
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a
faithful servant.
We have created a society that honors the
servant and has forgotten the gift.
Albert Einstein
IT SHOULD be obvious that as long as we magically breathe, and
the electron still buzzes around an atom, the
spirit is within us.
We are each only a tiny part at the furthest extremity--
like leaves on a tree-- but we are
each of that same tree.
THERE IS a collective consciousness and conscience
at work-- or a series of them-- this is the spirit within us
, buried though it may be under ego, fear, and the daily
struggle of life in these bodies. While inhabiting them on
our journey here, there are things we feel and "know" which
we cannot prove or even measure, and this is because the suit
of flesh we wear obscures the view of the spirit within.
IN HIS BOOK,
The Celestine Prophecy, James Redfield
provides us with a thumbnail sketch of
the state of western spirituality and cultural values to the end of this millenium. Much of established
religion has become ultra-conservative or reactionary as science
increasingly forms the basis for all our social value-judgements.
Yet as technology decreases our human and physical isloation, our
inner spirits know a vacuum has been created and are moved
to emerge, break the bonds of conformity and suppression
and freely communicate and explore like never before-- with
technologies such as this. Never before have we
been able to step right past (or to) the president, the priest
and the policeman, and put forth our spirits to our brothers
and sisters everywhere.
Religion becomes demonically destructive when it goes by
the
book
and tries to make the dancing order of nature conform to the
marching order of law, and force this essentially wiggly universe
to toe the straight and narrow line.
Alan Watts
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