It is the small things we usually give little attention or importance to that keep our mind settled and tuned to our highest thoughts and consciousness. We are to think and act of living in the presence of this aspiration of our greatest good. Not only ourselves, but for those we are responsible for and to. Why it is thought that meditation and prayer take us to places that exemplify the embodiment of wisdom. To a place where when we speak others listen as we listen as well, and when we act in keeping with nature’s teachings.

We become successful by surrounding ourselves with what takes us there. Every living creature in nature does this as it matures over time to its highest self; however, it is what guides us that determines our fate.

From where is it that our innermost DNA, or thoughts derive and how we learn to express this innate wisdom through what we already know but may have forgotten. It is these vibrations from the universe and our heart/mind that always tell us the next step. It is that the first step always conveys the next… and the next step… etc., etc., etc. We are to proceed fearlessly into what may appear as the unknown, but it is the path we all must take. 

Calling up the forces within ourselves we are meant to be both students and teachers. As the more we teach, the more we learn of our own inclination and innermost nature. All things found in nature have this basic universal attribute needed for survival. (Picture above from the Hubble Space Telescope)                

For thousands of years man has looked to nature, our origins, and the stars as our teacher. First symbols, then language that taught to use things found in nature as our guide (To what became known in China as the I Ching) as we moved from simply killing animals to growing grain to sustain ourselves.

Following the seasons, we learned there was a method to follow and structure that would sustain us and our environment as spirit. That there was something out there beyond us. Over time it was our attempts to complement this innateness universally that we began to see ourselves and our role as nature’s keepers. Today we know that due to global warming this balance is in peril. 

Everything found in nature has and maintains this universal spirit. Seen as mother elephants guiding and caring for their young in Africa, or trees that connect their roots underground to help sustain and nurture each other.     

Animals speaking to each other as if protecting the flock or working together as a unit. Intelligence found in nature can be seen speaking to a higher consciousness. It was this higher consciousness that taught man/us that we are guided by something greater than ourselves that makes us and them universal. Why the ancient teaching in China was so profound… that man is one of the ten thousand things. Living within the confines of what nature teaches as illustrated by Indigenous people the world over. The underlying task for man has always been that as we acknowledge this connecting spirit, how do we connect to it, and how do we sustain its and our own viability. 

For myself, this is best illustrated by what became known as the undefinable Tao, for lack of a better name, Taoism, the Te Dao Ching, and I Ching.         

An adherence to what nature teaches us and living in accordance with would we have learned. Nature is not meant to be tamed for individual benefit, but as a unity for the whole. To what Ralph Waldo Emerson taught us in the 1840’s and 1850’s about our own divinity and nature, what became known as transcendentalism that reinforces this eternal cosmos, that we are all a part of and responsible for. Emerson was conveying this universal truth that we each have a responsibility to create a world the is emblematic of what we are to create for ourselves as spirit. This becomes definable by understanding our task while we are here. 

Which brings us to the point and back to the earliest shaman thousands of years ago. If we are to live as spirit here for but a moment, then what is to become of our role? Do we live in support of this universal spirit beyond ego and self, or do we only selfishly take what we deem as ours for the taking even using spirit as our shield.                    

It is this universality of spirit that Joseph Campbell spoke of so well. That we do create our world by what we see as our place in it as the building block connecting us to universal truths tied to spirit.

I especially like his work called The Hero’s Journey. In mythology, the hero’s journey is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed. The journey we all take when we open ourselves to the unknown within us and fearlessly go there. That there can be no separating our spirit from the needs of others and nature itself. Finding comfort beneath our own skin by recognizing who we are beyond both past and present to an unknowable future we gladly go. We always hear the phrase that we are to live in the moment, it is this spirit of bliss and the Kung Fu we are here to create and emulate I spoke of a few entries ago.