Peace is the True Nature of Life

I was walking today feeling nature and looking at it with fresh eyes. The trees are beings that have been here a long time. Can you believe over 3,000 million years the first living organism resembling a plant appeared, it is known as blue green algae. The atmosphere at this time was carbon dioxide which is deadly to humans, yet overtime photosynthesis occurred and the atmosphere filled with oxygen which made life on earth possible. Refer http://www.saskschools.ca/~pvsd/vsfprojects/foodforlife/foodforlife/www.simplydivinecatering.com/history_of_plants.htm for more details.

So I am walking and marvelling at the tall trees and feeling the peace emanating from them. I see them as supporting my life and all oxygen breathing organisms. I feel a sense of peace in the world. I have two dogs running around me and beside me. I notice them true to their nature and peace coming from them. I recall how they sit around the house so patient, yet the moment you rattle the lead they go crazy for a walk. I note the peace in which they wait. I start to notice every bird, insect, blade of grass is at peace and I see that the essence of the planet is peace.

I think of all the associations with the word ‘peace’ and how some see it as the absence of stress, noise, children, distractions whilst others may perceive it has happiness and joy when things are going well. Another group may see it as the quiet in the mind, the silence between the thoughts living in the moment. Others claim they fight for it or see the absence of violence as it. I am understanding that peace is actually our true nature. It is not anti-anything, in fact it is embracing of life as it shows up. To connect to the idea that there is a silent intelligence operating here. It is not hard to connect to that when you look closely at plants and animals and the genetic blueprints they carry. It is easy to identify an intelligence in the way populations have been both created and evolved through natural selection. To imagine the DNA as coding for traits, instincts, body types, life spans, thinking, feeling and so on. The complexity of life is truly astounding and what amazes me most is how it is so sensitive to changes. How life forms are either favoured by the current environmental context or they become extinct. I marvel at the depth of diversity and the fact I barely know 0.0001 of those life forms. That so many life forms are harvested for human consumption. That we live in a Garden, some call it the Garden of Eden. That need not be biblical it can be just a silent realisation of beauty that is breath taking, that moves all we poets to write something magnificent to barely grasp the significance of such brilliance, so many take for granted and call life on earth.

I can see David Attenborough, the famous British naturalist and his joy and enthusiasm expressed by his programs on Life on Earth. Those who have studied biology, earth sciences, genetics and disciplines that bring them in to contact with the intelligence of nature. David Suzuki comes to mind and his tireless work to educate people as to the value of this natural system that has evolved over 4.6 billion years.

I feel intuitively the different language the earth speaks to the way we compartmentalise what we see as the natural world. We have language and education which teaches us to see differently from the reality of nature. Imagine you never learned how to read or write and just grew up in nature. I wonder what you would see. I am certain it would not look the way we see it. Is that hard to conceive? That what we see may not be what is? The reason I can grasp this notion is because I am a clown. As a clown I see the world differently as I move through crowds of people with a loving heart. Now some may see that as very nice and good on you, but the love aspect of the heart enables you to see more. Some call this emotional intelligence, it expands upon IQ (Intelligence quotient). The important aspect to note about heart based intelligence is that it is the part of our intelligence that responds to nature and that word permeates all life. It is not an intellectual exercise where one is thinking, breaking down, comparing, contrasting, analysing and hence seeing the world in a form of structured thinking. The emotional intelligence has a feeling component, an intuitive vibration (I would call it), sensing beauty which is sometimes very hard to put into words, tears well up and you get a sense of the connection. In fact you are the beauty you see. Women are particularly sensitive here, as we are less identified with the mind. Often women have been perceived as over emotional, but it is a sensitivity to feeling life that some have perceived as fragility. In truth it is a deep feeling of the surroundings, the emotional landscape, the feelings of animals and plants. Some may say that is imagination, I can assure you it is not. The intuitive and mystical are closely linked and you will find 3/4 of mind, body and spirit festival patrons are women, as they feel the natural world and sense an expanded mystical world around it. You could call it the feminine, within which both men and women do have naturally. In some it is developed in others less so. Some men are very feeling, others very rational, depending on their role models. The mystical world is another language that many are trained not to feel or it is dismissed as fantasy. Historically it has existed with the emergence of early tribal communities. I wish to bring this up as it connects to peace or another word would be harmony. A sense of all being well in the world, that even in tragic circumstances, growth occurs. Good emerges, like the little plant breaking through the tough earth. Negative events may bring a desire for the opposite, this would be an example of how yin and yang works. As we grow, you can envisage a spiral here, awareness shifts and expands, essentially you see more. The little plant realising it is no longer a seed in a cocoon opens its tendrils to the light (awareness) as the central sun becons it to awaken to life on time to its full potential. This would be analogous to a person shining their potential in life. They have broken through restrictions.

The oneness within or through which we are all in existence is another element taken for granted. The earth is the only place the majority of us have known. From childhood we took advantage of the air we breathe, the wind blowing against our faces and bodies, the food stuffs available wild or through agriculture and abundant water supplies. The many resources seemed endless as we converted raw materials into tools and objects that give us pleasure in one way or another. It has seemed as if a playground with endless possibility. The earth has been an abundant and generous host. The vastness of its wealth appeared infinite, yet in truth, it is indeed finite. A point we have traversed in the present time.

The oneness also extends to our physical appearance, how many animals have you seen with noses, eyes, languages, who eat through the mouth, defecate, live in families and communities, feeling love and pain, as we do. It is easy to see we are related. There is much in this global commons. You only have to look at chimpanzees to know we share 99.6% of the DNA. We are an intricate part of this ecosystem and the other organisms are relatives to us. All have emerged from the origin of life. I think of Darwin’s Origin of Species as the dawning of humanity’s realisation of the intelligence of natural selection, for which Darwin was famous for discovering. How animals and plants adapted to change which was constant. Change is simply DNA codes expressed and favoured a wide range of environmental contexts to ensure optimum survival. So looking at humans, instead of maximising profit, what if, we made our central policy, one of optimising survival in harmony with natural systems. Learning to design sustainability to ensure we are in balance with our nature. The real meaning of sustainability is stewardship. Discussions on sustainability raise issues such as balance, healthy environments, carrying capacity (population), ecological footprints, restoring environments and behaviour change etc. The Brundtland Report was commissioned in 1987 coined the term Sustainable Development and stated it “…meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs…”. Future generations one would hope includes all life forms on the planet. As we are one with them. Sustainability or adaptation requires a deep understanding of how the whole system works and how interrelated all life on earth is. I see it similarly to the human body, you could see the body as the earth and all life on the surface and within. It is a system intricately linked and fully aware of all parts as the whole. Chaos theory comes in here which evokes the idea of self replicating systems or blueprints of complex geometry which has inherent within it, symmetry or balance. Self regulating evokes Edward de Bono’s techniques and how he approached parallel thinking, synchronicity, spontaneity, humour and allowing the human intelligence to be provoked into new ways rather than structured approaches that are not compatible with nature (operating as separate which mirrors our belief). Another perspective of self regulating systems would be the process of homeostasis, that is, self regulation of the system to ensure stability of temperatures, all changes returning to balance or what could be termed zero point. This is the point before movement. It is the stillness, it is potential energy.

In spiritual circles it would be felt as presence, which is the intelligence that cannot be recorded or seen, it simply is awareness on ever expanding spirals. Sometimes people feel this in meditation or they may be in a car accident, everything slows down or becomes moment to moment, or frozen in time, that is when consciousness is heightened and completely present in the moment. Hence time and space changes, again another apparition of the mind. I recall a parachute jump I did where I had no thought in my mind and the sense of not being in control was like a peak moment for me. I saw myself falling (or indeed not falling), I simply felt the forces of nature rushing up in effect. When you fall from 10,000 feet there is nothing to compare to you, so you get no sense of up and down, bit like space. So you don’t feel you are falling. Shows you that sensation is created by what the mind believes. Instead what I felt was forces rushing up and a realisation that life was in control, not me and I was here for the ride. I realised that no-thought was the presence, or the present moment many speak of. So thoughts cannot be believed becomes the conclusion, they frame what we see and believe. What is interesting about this is people define themselves by their thoughts, they identify as this or that, and that is connected to their existence. If the reality of no mind is introduced people shift uneasily as if on shifting sand, nothing feels real or familiar. Just imagine if you step out of beliefs and become open to seeing differently, do you think our world would change? That brings us back full circle to the idea had we no education or conditioning, what world would we indeed see? Certainly a different world you cannot imagine. If we were a differently configured species, our world would be different again. Yet putting aside the mis-perception of our belief systems, we (or I) still is one with our world. The ‘I’ is beyond belief and when that occurs, the idea of being one with the ocean arises, the individual is no more. Our presence or life is born into the physical world and then our life moves on, and our physical body dies to it. The body, our identity, breaks down in the dirt (or spread the ashes) and returns to the earth, some call the mother. As our culture (western) doesn’t talk about death, we keep it to one side as something scary, tragic and what we must avoid, we are unable to embrace the whole life experience with wonder and love. Death is also a life experience, particularly if it is accepted we are presence beyond thought. In the present mindset we fear death and we think it is a dark empty void beyond. Some people recall Kerry Packer referring to his near death experience as that. I’ve spoken to a wide range of others who described an incredibly beautiful world beyond life and one they recognised and desired to go toward, away from life on earth. They even described meeting deceased relatives (a common statement) and that they were shown their lives by loving beings and experienced expanded awareness. Many describe being surrounded by an indescribable light. For those still alive there are too many stories which tell us that people see their beloved ones as apparitions, others receive messages or signs, visits in dreams, or somehow their lives have changed because of the death. I have done a short stint of near death research and I was amazed at how interesting near death is. Indeed all who come back to life express they have a renewed understanding they are here to love others, they all realise they are here to remember or learn some lesson. So love of course is that sense of oneness and unity I often bring up in this blog in a myriad of ways. When you love, you feel the other as yourself, many would die for the loved other, so that barrier of death disappears when loves only thought is to give life to another. I think of the soldiers who give their lives to save others, I think of the mother who jumps in front of the car to save a child, the man who lifts a car to pick a child up from under a wheel. The super human strength we gain, when the mind steps out of the way, and we follow the heart. That is the power of the heart. It is not something you can fake. A good analogy would be faking love is like threading a needle with a camel. Of course this idea was mentioned by Jesus in respect of a rich man entering heaven. I see it more as those who have not understood love and peace as those who cannot experience heaven (harmony) here on the planet. That is why some people see heaven and some see hell, it is their beliefs that make it so.

In truth the planet is peace and was from ancient origins. Some perceive the universe as violent but it is really dynamic and competing forces creating the physical world we see today. Those competing forces, in my view, are polarities of attraction and repulsion which create the kinetic world we live in. The north and south poles give oscillations to the planet and formulate the magnetic grids that encompass the earth and protect the earth from damaging cosmic rays from the sun and other moving bodies. Even the protection of earth is clear evidence of an intelligence aware of the natural processes and it gives an indication that life is meant to be on earth.

So peace (harmony) is the very essence of life itself. So when we say we are seeking peace or fighting for it, we do not understand its essential nature. It already exists, it is simply a shift in awareness that notices. Peace (harmony) arises from no thought as presence which gives direct connection to the intelligence of life. Those who have had awakened experiences often speak of being in bliss for years, tears running down their faces and the realisation that there is no fear or separation. They experience directly the oneness and hence the presence of life itself. As they see themselves integrated into this presence, there is no fear of death. The awakening is really a nice metaphor for realisation of the truth, which is life. Truth cannot be articulated, it is lost in the next moment we retrospectively try to analyse it, it feels to me more as the clarity of love in the moment. So it goes well beyond negative and positive or what some term duality, it transcends as the true reality from which we were birthed or a reality (experience) to which we return. Some refer to human existence as the droplet of water and call ‘home’ the ocean of oneness from which all life emerged. It is beautiful to contemplate this. For some non-existence is the fear, but fear is simply duality and if you don’t believe your thoughts, you won’t feel the fear, you will feel delight at the notion that we are one with our true nature. That nature is life or some scientists would say energy. That energy moves in particles and waves, the play between the two is indeed the magic.

We live in a magical world full of love and wellbeing. It is humans doing rather than being who have forgotten the root of this true existence, there is no blame there. It is a human story that has unfolded in the way it was meant to and the yin/yang of this experience was to help us to see contrasting fields of perception. Contrasting experiences when embraced illuminate or expand awareness and evolution. Life as a living intelligence experiences the many facets of its diamond through all life forms and is constantly evolving. So we are indeed one with the life force, we are that life force. Some say go with the flow, that is the same as not resisting life as it flows. Following the heart is a way to align with the life force, in that your feelings are linked to the flow of life. When you are clear you will notice it takes you to where you need to go. That is why so many wise people were able to cut loose from society and follow a rhythm fearlessly, they trusted the flow of life and knew they were one with the life pattern, they discovered when they were in harmony it became effortless. They experienced a sense of peace that was unspeakable and a love for the world that was immeasurable. That is what the peace of our true nature feels like, it is a joy, as if every cell remembers the ocean.

I have moments of this joy and I cannot stop smiling. I am learning to stop resisting life and what turns up. Occasionally I get frustrated then I laugh at my own beliefs. Fortunately I am at a point where my beliefs are becoming less relevant and the heart is becoming my guide and teacher. As a clown I can easily step into this beauty, and realise it is the real world I see. I only see beauty.

Perhaps you will consider this stream of consciousness, I just wrote it spontaneously to share with you. I send love to you, for you are in this stream whether you realise is or not. You came to this page because you were meant to. I don’t mind if you are a tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich one, poor one, beggar or thief. There are no mistakes in the universe and your presence is the true beauty I feel. 