We belong here. I mean you and me, all humans. Gosh, everybody else as well—spiders, snakes—we all belong here because we are the Earth. It’s not like we’re ‘part’ of the earth; we are the Earth itself. Every cell, every molecule, the electricity that runs through our bodies, everything is the earth and the universe and physics and the intricate way that everything entwines together. We are not separate from that. Everything belongs.
It is true that human beings have really mucked things up recently, but that’s only because we have started believing that we’re not from here.
Anyone who truly thinks, “I am here and I belong,” is not going to muck up their own self, their own being, where they are.
Where we are is not separate from who we are. Everything is intertwined.
We are exploring how mystical traditions on our planet interface with the natural world. We’re particularly this harmony with the natural world. The natural harmony that human beings lived in for 100,000 years until the modern mind came and brought us civilization.
Who are we underneath our civilization? And how can we find it? How do the various mystical traditions help us find it, and/or prevent us from finding it?
It’s good to examine both things because if we think that the mystical traditions are some sort of magical thing that’s going to bring us to a place of unity, nothing is ever going to happen. Nothing different is ever going to happen. We’re going to continue mucking everything up.
So, this is important work to join together on.
I’ve just finished a book on how Nonduality intersects with Native wisdom, and I’ve done a book on Zen stories and Mulla Nasrudine. This current focus is on Sufi beliefs and practices, and how that intersects with history, reality and mysticism. It’s an exploration of the history of ancient humans, and the history of civilization, and how it’s working with us today, both good and bad. Looking with new eyes, perhaps, we can see if we can lift ourselves up from our morass in a new way.
Many of the things we read about spirituality are about trying to escape the Earthly realm, and trying to escape our bodies. We’re confused about why we are here. We create stories to explain our confusion. It’s tempting to believe that we came from a different place, and now we’re here. We’re here learning our lessons so we can go back to that other place with our lessons all learned.
Our confusion is deep and wide because life has been misinterpreted over generations and generations until it seems like this is what reality is. But it’s not. Reality is very simple. We belong here, and the more we explore that, the easier it’s going to be, I think, for everyone to wake up and join fully formed into the human experience. We can fully participate in the life experience on Earth with everybody else, with the rivers and the sky and the earth and the plants and the animals. We are participatory conscious beings here on this Earth… where we belong.