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The nerve cell body has extensions called axons and dendrites. This capability enables the cell to bring information to it from other cells and transmit information to the other cells with which it has made a connection. In the macro human sense we function in these two ways and we are conscious our own existence and functioning. We could call this ability the capability of the synapse, the tiny space between the end of a dendrite or axon and the other cell it is exchanging information with. It is the space between that allows consciousness which allows choice.
The dominant cultural influences of our times, Christianity, Science, and Capitalism, define a range of human identity that leaves us collectively with a vision of personhood as being separate from our deeper experience of spirituality in religious terms, being an objective material observer of experience in scientific terms, and being a private engine of material acquisition in an industrially powered social economy of monetized exchange.
My original idea of how to define Love as an organizing principal for human systems was formed like this; Love = consciousness of mutually beneficial exchange across semi-permeable boundaries. I thought that would be a good systems oriented working definition. Now I want to change the systems definition of Love to; Love = Consciousness of existing and potential mutually beneficial exchange across semi-permeable boundaries.
In his books, Guns, Germs & Steel, and Collapse, Jared Diamond makes it clear that sustainable production of excess food in any society is the key to development and the long-term ability to thrive. For an economic system to sustain our natural foundation, as opposed to destroy it, our way of relating with the environment needs to be mindful of our dependence on the ability of the earth to provide us with abundant food. Jared Diamond, in Collapse, How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, identifies five factors involved in the collapse of civilizations throughout history.
The individual is irrevocably interconnected with the environment. We are literally made of the environment on the physical level; water, air, and soil are us. When our individuality is experienced with little acknowledgement of our non-separate self it seems as if the earth is our garden. The earth then becomes something like an extension of our needs, something related to primarily from the perspective of being something useful to us.
Examining the relationship between water and life is the easiest way to see that we have to respect the non-separate nature of our individuality as co-occurring and interdependent with the separate nature of our individuality. What type of relationship do we have to soil, water, and the atmosphere? How individual or alone are we? One of the primary signals that we are separate and alone is the fact that we have physical boundaries like skin and cell walls.
Today while meditating I came upon some ideas that pull together several themes in the form of a series of areas around which I want to develop rituals and processes that facilitate identity transformation.
Intouchness:
Start with strengthening intouchness as a foundation for other more specific explorations of self as nature. Identify persistent themes that emerge in the process of strengthening the ability to stay in touch with the ever changing totality of our experience and let that begin to define my path of action.
I have been meditating recently in an attempt to provide a ritual, some time and attention, to nourish my transition from an identity that confines self to the separate sense of self abstracted from nature to a sense of self that is not separate from nature. What has made sense to me is to focus on the sense of being in a relationship of touch with all of my experience whether traditionally viewed as inner or outer. Intouchness isn’t a real word as far as I know but it is the word that comes to mind when I try to capture the sense of holding all of my life as the experience of nature.
My first attempt at unifying the personal and the environmental in a single identity and then embarking on a unified clean up of self within and without the skin self boundary has failed the first week plan. I have gained weight, not meditated and have mostly lost sense of unified identity I was experiencing earlier.
Failure is a relief, failure is interesting, failure can be a path to follow into something new. So where new? Where, in what direction? Am I looking at this process with new inspiration and insight but with old eyes.
Since I am nature I am going to start where I can do the most immediate good, my non-extended small personal body. My body is polluted both within the boundary of my skin and outside my skin boundary. Rivers are clogged with the excess and toxic byproducts of industrial consumption, so I am sure are my arteries, blood and tissues. There is excess, fat, silt, trash, that is interfering with my living in a way that contributes to the good of all in a stable way that healthy living systems grow.