Nature's Web: Chapter 2, Part 2
Nature's Web: Chapter 2, Part 2
Nature’s Web and True Freedom, and The Tyranny AND Liberation of the Mind
Welcome to the Birthing the Symbiotic Age Book!
NEW here? — please visit the TABLE OF CONTENTS FIRST and catch up!
You are in Chapter 2, Part 2, Nature’s Web and True Freedom, and The Tyranny AND Liberation of the Mind
Here are all Chapter 2 posts:
Chapter 2, Part 1 — Nature’s Great Chain of Being and a Unifying Principle for Human Society.
Chapter 2, Part 2 — Nature’s Web and True Freedom, and The Tyranny AND Liberation of the Mind
Chapter 2, Part 3 — Finding My Life’s Calling
Trying to figure out Where This is All Going? Read an overview of the Symbiotic Culture Strategy — embodying the Transcendent through the nodes of intersection within local, grassroots-empowered community networks.
Previously, at the end of Chapter 2, Part 1:
Studies show that 90 percent of us — whether we identify as religious, spiritual but not religious, agnostic, or even atheist — believe in a Transcendent higher power of some kind — that there is more to existence than material reality.
And yet, the Culture of Separation (and those who benefit from keeping us alienated, divided, and isolated from one another) seems hell-bent on “uniting” us under one top-down “godless religion” of global consumerism, techno-utopianism, or transhumanism.
I think it's time for leaders from religious, spiritual, agnostic, atheist, and civic-minded backgrounds who believe in reintegrating the Transcendent into ourselves and
our community life to come together in a shared purpose.
Chapter 2: Nature’s Web - Part 2
Nature’s Web and True Freedom, and The Tyranny AND Liberation of the Mind
Nature’s Web and True Freedom
Nature was the window that continued to reveal the Cosmic and Natural order to me, as it reflected the organizing pattern of harmony, coherence, and our divine impulses.
Nature showed me that freedom was not so much freedom to follow the whims of the ego but to be free of those dissonant, competing voices that we all have inside us, free to hear the voice of conscience and of the authentic self.
In contrast to being enslaved by the rulers of and demands of this world, I was now freely participating in life at its deepest level. Just as the Luminous Web experience came to me unbidden, these revelations in nature were inside out, not outside in. Think of the term we often use to describe someone on a spiritual quest: seeker. Wouldn’t that suggest that what we are looking for is “out there” and needs to be “found”?
In contrast, my luminous experience sought me, and I was immersed in it. It was inescapable. Paradoxically, the feeling and state I most associate with being immersed in the Luminous Web and encased in Nature’s Web is — freedom.
Normally, we think of freedom as being able to do whatever we want, whenever we want, work when we want to work, take vacations or travel when we are so moved, to follow our desires, most often the desires of the ego.
Freedom for me now meant being free of the push and pull of egoic desires, both my own and the 24/7 broadcasts coming from the new Tower of Babble.
The Tower of Babble, as I view it, is reinforced by social media channels, now more laser-targeted by Artificial Intelligence algorithms, that are monetizing and accelerating our division and keeping us connected to our phones 24/7.
This has led us to further fragmentation into sub-communities based on political and religious beliefs and special interests — all speaking different languages. Sound familiar?
The Tower of Babel of old has morphed into a Cell Tower of Babble, where social media memes have led to separation instead of understanding. It’s no longer about true connection but being connected tangentially without uniting around a shared reality and a shared purpose.
As I have already suggested, during this time, I developed a deeper and clearer view of freedom that comes from being aligned with the Transcendent. Being free to follow the natural order, I was no longer imprisoned by my own thoughts, feelings, and desires.
In a poem that began, “A gem of the finest quality was waiting, one day, waiting to be seen,” I wrote:
The ebb and flow of wind imprints on my mind that I am not just watching but participating with the trees in a universe of motion.
I wonder, could it be that the gem resides in the wind? I cannot see it, but it touches my ears and says, “Look at me, I’m free, I can go anywhere, following the natural order.”
Yes, that is freedom, following the natural order.
I realize that the gems are Transcendent energies, participating within all creation. Dirt and rock become precious, like jewels. The ordinary becomes miraculous.
Nature becomes sacred.
Having experienced this ultimate freedom, I realized there were ways for me to free myself further — by connecting beyond the ego-identities that I was conditioned to accept.
Little did I know that this would be the key to bringing the Transcendent Ground of Being through me (or each of us) into connecting across the silos of society — building symbiotic community networks.
I began to understand how limiting (enslaving) it is to be caught up in and only affiliating and identifying with my own narrow identity groups, tribes, and social bubbles/silos that we inhabit — based on religion, identity politics, race, gender, family, class, special interests, as well as occupation or profession.
Consider the “Who Am I?” poem from the last chapter, which offers so many ways we can differentiate ourselves.
There is no escaping identity, but we have a choice as to how we identify with that identity. In that poem, the phrase that came to me was “misdirected loyalty.”
This is the key that came to me after experiencing the unity with the Ground of Being:
You stop seeing the world as separate parts, separate groups, separate anything. It’s like you are reinhabiting your body, heart, and mind with a new consciousness. Even though I am a man, a husband, a father, a businessman, and I may have religious affiliations, a political point of view, a profession, etc. — every relationship is new.
Underneath all the seeming brokenness of the world and the fragmentation and division, I can still experience the truth that we are part of a deeper reality where we all are one, indivisible. I began to see how to bring this underlying unity into practical action in the world.
Here is the poem where I expand on “misdirected loyalty”:
We are all of the same species, separated by misdirected loyalty.
If I say that I am a child of Father God and hold this higher loyalty first, and also part of the beautiful creation, Mother Earth — and a brother to all her varied peoples and life forms, many would probably laugh and call me a naive dreamer.
Tell me, does the old way work anymore?
Short answer: No!
From the Luminous Web, which I first experienced as a 12-year-old, to Nature’s web, which revealed itself a decade later, I now recognize I was having an ongoing, unfolding experience of metanoia, a process of conversion from a superficial mind construct to one that connects with the Ground of Being, and changes our orientation in the world.
The Tyranny AND Liberation of the Mind
It was during this time of formation and integration that I first became aware of what I came to call “the tyranny of the mind” — reinforced by the “secular religion” of materialism that keeps us separated from the ordering principle I “saw” first in the Luminous Web, then in Nature’s Web.
As I wrote earlier, this universal Transcendent, which goes by many names, underlies the ongoing, emergent self-organization of reality.
Some of these names come from religious and wisdom traditions, some from evolving views of leading-edge physics, science, and biology. They all indicate that there is more to reality than meets the eye — or can be comprehended and contained by the human rational intellect alone.
Unhinged from the connection to the Luminous Web, the materialist worldview, our modern “religion” dismisses anything that cannot be proven in physical reality. Thus, the intuitive and transcendent are discounted, and modern consumer advertising has converted us into voracious consumers, overwhelming us with external choices, making it very difficult for humanity to access this luminous field.
Our phones have now become the primary, insidious delivery system, preaching the “gospel” of the world’s secular religion — further disengaging us from community life.
This is the fundamental spiritual crisis of our time: the secular religion of the Culture of Separation has denied that there is a Transcendent, objective source of Virtue — where objectively agreed-upon principles such as the Golden Rule and Love are seen as built into a universal operating system.
Over the last 500 years, human mind-generated belief systems and institutions have sought to replace the Ancient Blueprint — the universal operating system. We have only to recognize how we have woven ourselves outside the Web of Life and the Web of Love to see how successful this has been.
That “still, small voice” of conscience and connection has become still smaller. As I came to the end of this time of deeper understanding and integration, two things became clear to me about my life’s journey.
First, as a developing scientist, I would need to resolve the seeming contradiction of science vs. religion, a breach dating back nearly 400 years, when science was given dominion over the physical world, and the nonphysical, non-measurable remained in the religious realm.
This schizophrenic split, or a divorce, is like having two key aspects of our intelligence — each necessary for us to reach our individual and collective human potential — not on speaking terms. Now that’s insanity!
Looking back on my experience with the slug and mushroom in the forest, I recognized a clear path to resolve the split — combining two complementary ways of knowing: rational scientific understanding AND transcendent experience.
Of course, I could learn about the interconnection of forest ecosystems in my evolutionary biology and ecology classes — and I did. Like many other aspiring biologists, I found it exciting to learn how nature was organized — its interconnectedness, the cycles and processes, and how systems adapted and evolved.
Science offers tools to see beyond surface reality, to analyze nature and appreciate its intricacies — the How. However, the ongoing journey of direct, Transcendent experience towards a deeper, more intuitive, unitive understanding of the Universe offers meaning and purpose.
Through this non-linear lens, I saw how Nature reflects a deeper reality where things are not just connected as mental concepts but are experienced through participation.
The Transcendent Ground of Being offers an understanding of how seemingly “separate things” come together — because they never were apart.
The Transcendent can help us answer the meaning question — the Why. Albert Einstein, though not religious in the traditional sense, spoke of a “cosmic religious feeling” that permeated his scientific inquiries. For him, pursuing scientific truths was also a journey toward a deeper, mystical understanding of the universe.
Einstein famously said, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science … Everyone who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of men and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.
Einstein’s perspective as a scientist seems remarkably resonant with Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and Gandhi’s “Law of Love” and life. Obviously, this Transcendent ground of being exists across – and beyond – both religious and scientific “ways of knowing.”
There is yet another unifying idea, part of the lineage of the Ancient Blueprint, that dates back to antiquity.
Even pre-modern societies spoke about an underlying pattern that they called Natural Law, a built-in compass that tells us right from wrong. Natural Law exists across cultures as an innate sense of fairness and justice. It has nothing to do with external commandments and rules but emanates from deep inside us.
Think about it: Most folks everywhere believe stealing is wrong and helping others is right.
Natural Law inspired older Roman Laws, English Common Law, the American Revolution and the Constitution, the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and many modern constitutions.
So … the Ancient Blueprint and the Logos … Einstein’s insight that spirit is fundamental to the “scientific” laws of the Universe … a sense of Natural Law that pervades and informs every human culture.
Are we starting to see a pattern here?
And, coming from my personal immersion in Nature’s Web, I saw a definite organizational pattern that points humanity toward a truly symbiotic culture and way of being.
In time, I would call it the Symbiotic Network.
In weaving together our own web that reinforces intentional mutual benefit, humanity would find a pathway to reconnect with and be informed by the Luminous Web — following the Logos ordering principle.
I could see my own path unfolding, although it would be years before I would discover my greatest inspiration for building a real-world community, Sarvodaya — an experiment that created such a symbiotic culture and web and has sustained it for over sixty-five years.
I instinctively knew that it was somehow part of my life’s work to find it.
Stay tuned for Part 3 of Chapter 2, where I connect the Luminous Web, then through Nature’s Web, to discover how to connect the Human Web!