Emergence Part 6: Dreaming for Ourselves

We deserve to strive / To be the person / That we, as children / Would've been truly excited / To know they were becoming

This is the 6th essay in a series of six. If you have not read the first one, you can find it (and more information about the nature of this essay series) by reading the initial essay, linked below.

Dreaming for Ourselves

It is the very nature of being that, simply by existing, something greater than ourselves manifests. Just as from the Sun and Earth, we were born - so to do we give life to language, culture, traditions, and society. We give life to the realms of dreams, ideas, and art that could not exist without us and that, by the very essence of our being, emanate from us, just as light emanates from the Sun. We are simultaneously the children of the Universe and we are the cells that give life to something far greater than ourselves. For existence is emergent - just as we have emerged from the light and the dust, ideas and dreams emerge from us. That is why I like to think of there being a fire in our bellies, just as there is a Sun at the center of our planetary system.

Importantly, no intention is required to make this process flow - the Sun did not intend to gather the planets around it nor did the Earth intend on fostering life. All of existence is in a constant state of creation, an unceasing cycle of emergence, a ray of creation - a fractal explosion of life. By existing we are a part of this cycle.¹ As long as a fire burns in our bellies, new life will flow from its light.

We, however, have been given the gift (or curse) of bearing witness to this cycle. From our very existence emerges the realm of ideas, dreams, thoughts, and intentions. These dreams, like rivers carving grand, majestic canyons through the Earth, have the power to mold and change the physical world - made manifest through our actions. And so, dreams,² in themselves possess a great power to shape the future course of existence. These dreams manifest through us, through our actions, through our ways of being.

Ideas and dreams come naturally to (from, through) us - one must only witness the imaginative child to understand this. But, ideas and dreams may also be planted within us by other people, like seeds. Within the soil of ourselves, these seeds may blossom. We often refer to this process of sowing seeds as tradition, as ancestral knowledge. This is not special to humans, all conscious species do this - birds learn migration patterns from other birds, pups learn the art of hunting by first playing with their parents, monkeys show their children what foods are best to eat.

Humans, as farmers, have long had a deep connection with literal seeds. We would, year-after-year, take seeds from the most prolific and delicious plants to sow the following year. There would be variations in produce and animal products across family, village, and region, as each community cultivated their own seeds in this way. These foods, cultivated across generations, would’ve been a defining aspect of our lives prior to this modern era. Today, our food is largely homogenized - there is one kind of tomato, one kind of corn, eggs all look the same, milk all tastes the same. Many of us have completely lost connection with the ancestral passage of seeds and food.

Likewise, the spiritual seeds passed down across generations - ideas and dreams of who we are, practices for existing in this world, stories for understanding the world - have been cultivated in the same ways. Year-after-year of people harvesting the most fruitful ideas and practices, stories and dreams, songs and dances and passing them along to the next generation. Culture, tradition, religion have all been born from this never-ending passage of seeds, with each generation tending to their own gardens - both literal and metaphorical - and selecting the best seeds to pass on down to the next generation.

Implied in this great passage of knowledge and tradition is that a parent can provide their children with seeds, but their children must, in the end, tend to their own gardens. For, if the children are to one day become parents, passing seeds down to their children, they must come into their own wisdom of being. Ancestors can record the shadow of their experience, but their descendants must discover the reality behind the shadows for themselves. A beautiful game of intergenerational telephone playing out.³

Cultures and traditions have never been static, stationary, but dynamic, emergent, ever-evolving entities just like us, just like the Universe. Just as a child is born in the likeness of their parents, the child is not and never will be a clone of their parents. Just as the wisdom of a child will be nurtured by their parent, the child will come into their own wisdom of being. No two gardens will look exactly the same, but all gardens are made more beautiful when gardeners share the seeds and practices they have cultivated.

Of importance, every thing is born from its parents and also distinctly becomes themselves. The Earth could have never come to be without the Sun and, at the same time, the Earth is distinct from the Sun - the Earth emerged from the Sun. Humans could have never come to be without the Sun, the Earth, and life on Earth before us. Children can not come in being without their parents. A child’s life is shaped by what their parents provide to them. A child’s ability to flourish is shaped by their relationship with their parents⁴ - if the Sun shone less bright, would Earth be such a wonderful host for life?

As I have discussed, our society actively tries to keep our soul fractured from our body. We are raised on shadow-words and the false illusions that they portend. These false illusions are used in an effort to homogenize us all and, “ideally”, transform us into well-behaved worker-consumers. We live in a society of false illusions and a child who develops their own wisdom of being, outside of these illusions, is a threat to the illusion itself.⁵ Such children are punished until they submit - just as Winston Smith did - or they are excommunicated.

This is why our global society has become so effective at destroying culture and traditional ways of being. Ancestral knowledge, the passage of seeds from parent to child, the individual process of developing a wisdom of being and becoming – if this process were allowed to flow naturally, our society would radically change. A person whose soul and body are unified cannot be exploited. A person who has developed their own wisdom of being cannot be manipulated by false illusions. When a person is unified, they can accept reality as it is. And, while each of us will come into our own, unique wisdom of being - when we are unified, we are able to see the shadowy nature of false illusions and we are able to dismiss them. Unified, we cannot be controlled by false illusions.

And so, we live in a world where the passage of wisdom from parent-to-child has been severed. We can easily witness this severance by understanding that the lives of our grandparents looked nothing like the lives of our parents and, likewise, that our lives look nothing like theirs. Instead of receiving seeds of wisdom from our parents, we are indoctrinated to shadow-words and false illusions via school, television, and the media. We receive our ideas of the world, not from our kin, but from state and corporate media. Immersed in false illusions, we come to believe that this shadow realm is reality itself. We become adults dependent on the false illusions of society. We become adults with no seeds of wisdom to pass on to our children – we become adults who can only teach our children to submit to the false illusions.

However, the body is always grounded in reality, for the body is of this physical realm. There is always a fire burning in our bellies – only death can snuff this fire out. As long as this light shines, ideas and dreams will have a conduit through which they may flow and manifest themselves. This is why the powers that seek to exploit us work to keep our soul and body severed, for they can then manipulate us to adopt their ideas and dreams. When our soul and body is unified, we are able to intentionally cultivate our ideas and dreams and allow them to become manifest through our beings. Fractured, we are willing to cling to ideas and dreams that we are told will ease our pain – we are willing to give the fires in our bellies to the ideas and dreams of people, states, and corporations that do not care about our well-being.

In school, at work, on television, through the news, we are constantly being indoctrinated to the ideas and dreams of our collective society. This is, after all, why they call it television “programming” – each lesson, tidbit, soundbite, newsclip is another update to our collective software. We are implanted with the dream of being a “good person” – though the specifics of this dream are ever-evolving to match the times. A “good person” follows the rules, finds work at a respectable job from a list of pre-selected respectable jobs, and provides the money needed to support their family.

We are each implanted with versions of the shadow-dream of being a “good person”. Enough variations on this dream are provided, through a long-list of approved “good” professions and life purposes, that many people find a fit they enjoy quite well. From an early age, we indoctrinate children to these dreams, dreams of becoming firefighters, scientists, doctors, lawyers, of being a “good” father, a “good” mother, et cetera, et cetera. Society feeds us these dreams and, in return, we follow the rules and offer up the fire in our bellies. It is the fire in our bellies that make this society function, even as we suffer from the fractures of our souls and bodies.

Our efforts to be a “good” person tear us apart. We become desperate to be perceived as a “good” person. Yet, the notion of “good” is a mere shadow, a false illusion implanted in our minds by the world around us. Our bodies are grounded in reality and, as such, we can never feel with our bodies that we are “good”. Indoctrinated to the idea that we must be “good”, we are constantly insecure as we lack the ability to ever feel that we are, in fact, “good”. We dedicate our lives to being perceived as “good”. We spin our own false illusions on top of the false illusions of society to further evoke the perception that we are “good”, our souls shattering and fracturing into smaller and smaller pieces with each new shadow we conceive of.

This is the crux of it all – most of us were fed the ideas and dreams of a state that does not care about our well-being. We did not receive the seeds of wisdom from unified elders who accepted reality. We did not receive the seeds of our ideas and dreams from self-actualized ancestors from whom a beautiful wisdom of being had emerged. As such, many of us have torn ourselves to pieces to uphold the ideas and dreams of this society. We have become disconnected from our bodies, our bodies that are equipped with all the systems for perceiving reality and telling us when we are unwell. We have come to fear our bodies because our bodies are ill and hurting. By extension, we fear reality, for it is only accessed through our bodies we are alienated from.

In order to heal the fractures of our soul and our body, we must first un-weave ourselves from the ideas and dreams of this society. This process of “unbecoming” can be scary, painful, and lonesome, but it must be done if we wish to re-unify our souls with our bodies. Unified, we can accept ourselves as we are and we can accept reality as it is. We can say what we mean and mean what we say. We can do what we dream of and dream of what we will do.

We can become like the Sun and the Earth - present, dynamic, emergent. From the fire in our bellies, our own ideas and dreams can become manifest. In our children we can plant the seeds of our wisdom and, just as the Sun cannot dictate our fates, we cannot dictate how those seeds blossom in our children. Like the Sun, we can shine light on their gardens, but it is only through developing our own wisdom of being that we can offer any seeds and any light to aid them in their journey. Our society is a controlling parent – it tries to mold its children (us) to its exact desires and specifications. Yet, it is not our nature to be controlled in this way, so society must fracture us if it is to have its way with us.⁶

Like I said early on, I once loved reading books. When my desire to read fell away, I became insecure under the false illusion that a “good” person would read more. With hindsight, I have seen that I was searching for seeds of wisdom and I found them. I put books down when it was apparent I needed to plant these seeds for myself and tend to them so that I too could come into my own wisdom of being. I received the shadow of this idea reading Hesse’s Siddhartha, but I had to come into this wisdom through my own being – the words on the page were just a shadow of the reality I have begun to uncover.

Many of us have not received seeds of wisdom from our parents. That does not mean they did not try their best or what they felt was the right thing to do. Hardly! Many of our parents had to navigate this society without receiving seeds of wisdom from their own parents or from books or wherever else – many of our parents had to find ways to take care of us, even as they could not ease their own suffering. Part of healing the fracture between our souls and our bodies is forgiving our parents for what they could not provide for themselves and, by extension, for us. I received the shadow of this idea reading hooks’ all about love, but I had to come into this wisdom through my own being.

Once we have unwoven ourselves from the ideas and dreams of society, we can cultivate our own. There are countless ideas and dreams that have been spun and even more that have yet to be. Unified in our soul and body, we can plant seeds of wisdom we discover and we can tend to our own emergent gardens. We can develop our own ideas and dream our own dreams. Unified, the things that emerge from each of us will be as unique and beautiful as every solar system in the Universe -  a celestial body formed by the mere existence of the fire in our bellies.

Unwoven from the false illusions of society, we can accept ourselves for who we are and accept reality for what it is. We can accept that we are as vibrant and dynamic as the Sun itself and that we have the gift for fostering life and beauty just as the Earth does. We can weave our own ideas and dreams.

While all of our ideas and dreams will be individual, grounded in reality, we will all be unified. We will recognize the true nature of reality and ourselves in the ideas and dreams of each unified person that we meet. We do not need to know everything to know of everything. Vasudeva, the ferryman in Hesse’s Siddhartha, knows of little more than the river he shepherds people across – yet, he has learned of and accepted the nature of reality because, unified, he listened to the river and was open to accepting it.

The Universe is both infinite and infinitesimal. It is singular and it is emergent. Just as all before us came from a single moment, a big bang so-to-speak, so to does an entire Universe spring forth from the fire in our bellies. The Universe is vast, beautiful, terrifying, magnificent, and incomprehensible and so to are we. When we accept the nature of reality as it is, we are able to experience it. When we experience reality, we experience ourselves. When we experience ourselves, we are able to accept ourselves.

From this place of acceptance, we become conduits for ideas and dreams that can resonate through our bodies. Athletes, musicians, and artists will recognize this phenomenon as the “flow state”. This state of dynamic acceptance, where we let an idea, a dream manifest itself through our bodies – it is this state in which we step into the wisdom of being. It is in this state that we actualize our potential as children of the Sun and the Earth.

When we come into true wisdom of being, we are then able to pass the seeds of this wisdom down to our children. They may or may not choose to plant these seeds in their own garden. It is likely though, that if we grow beautiful gardens for our children to walk in, they will wish to grow beautiful gardens for themselves. They will see in our gardens, the dreams and ideas that have made themselves manifest through our beings. They will plant the seeds of the fruit they enjoyed best and they will likely discover new seeds, new methods of gardening that make the fruit taste even sweeter.

Unified and healed, we are able to accept and become ourselves. The fire in our bellies will shine as bright as the Sun and will coalesce and illuminate all the ideas and dreams that find a home within our personal solar system. We are but one moment in the emergent expansion of the Universe. Just as we have emerged, so to will more emerge from us. Through acceptance, we will not only find peace in this ephemeral life, but we will find that we are, ourselves, dreams made manifest by the Universe.

1. I think it is worth noting that this rather esoteric conversation is not so different than the conversations happening in the temples of the physical sciences, especially in grappling with the challenges of understanding reality presented within quantum mechanics. When we try to measure, categorize, and define reality we are simply taking a low-resolution image of a tiny aspect of a unified, emergent reality. Not only does a new layer of reality emerge in the form of our ideas, thoughts, and observations - but our ability to observe a singular instance of the Universe is limited by the fact that the Universe is an ever-flowing, dynamic, emergent entity that, by its very nature, resists being confined to a cross-sectional snapshot. Importantly, there has never been a scientific model of the Universe that has explained the true nature of reality - for even Ptolemy, who believed the Earth to be at the center of the Universe, correctly predicted the path of the planets across the night sky with astonishing precision. Science represents a powerful (and emergent) set of methods and framework for understanding the Universe - but, that does not mean science has uncovered the truth, only that its stewards and clergy have developed powerful, mighty tools for modeling how the Universe is expected to function. We have many false illusions about science in our society, perhaps best highlighted by the Neil DeGrasse Tyson quote that “the good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it”. The truth is, that reality is reality whether we can comprehend it or not and, even with the power of the scientific method, scientists and spiritualists alike can do no better than to accept the nature of reality and hope to describe it in lower resolution. As Gödel proved mathematically, the true nature of the Universe can never be rigorously defined by our words, equations, or ideas.

2. Here, I mean “dream” as being an idea or vision of something that could come to be, often with the connotation that we are drawn to make the vision or idea a reality.

3. Many of us live with the “false illusion” that traditional ways of living were static, unmoving, and rigid. One only need to (and should) watch Fiddler on the Roof to see this dynamic play out. The father, Tevye, wants to pass down the Jewish tradition (TRADITION!) to his children, but each of his children seems to defy his efforts to mold them in his exact likeness. As the story progresses, Tevye releases his expectation that his children’s lives will be identical to his - for as culturally rich as his own life had become, his life remained full of ills and troubles he could not overcome. It was, in fact, the nature of his children to take the seeds he passed to them and tend to their own garden - their lives made richer by the tradition Tevye provided to them, and made richer as they, in their owns way, set out into the world to tend to their own gardens.

4. I think it is important to note here that “parent” is a fluid word and could be literal biological parents, or simply anyone or anything that is responsible in someway for tending to the birth, the well-being and the growth of the child.

5. This pretty much the plot of The Matrix - admittedly, I find it frustrating that so many people see that movie as about the threat of AI and robots in some potential future, and not about the current state of societal indoctrination and false illusions we currently live within.

6. The image of a broken horse is apt. Perhaps, instead of reading this essay collection, you could instead just watch Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.