It seems we have choices
but if we get ahead of ourselves
with what we think is to happen,
life simply tolerates us as we get it out of our system
so we can get on with what She has in mind for us. —Skye Hirst
I’m struck at so many levels by the meaning of this theme, living without definition. As of late, I’m feeling life, feeling the essence of the Living Reality we are opening to; the chaos, the shifts, the death, creativity, forming and decaying. I’m sensing something awakening. There’s so much creativity, projects, efforts to help the shift. Each variation is an attempt to explain what is becoming, and how to make our lives and world better, and less violent and to call out peace. Then peace is questioned. Does it exist or is it a mere illusion we cling to?
In the words of the process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, I hear the voices of the many becoming one.
I hear more and more voices saying, nature, let’s turn to nature; she seems to know more than we ever noticed. Others are crying, Let’s turn to Source, to God, yet the clinging to dogma, rules or something to help control the processes we are living continues. And there is a turning, a sounding, creating, correcting, harmonizing, learning and evolving. This pulsing of life force through its life forms, each of us – organisms – nested in larger organisms, would appear to be pulling in different directions. Yet we are in the same boat mixing up the soup – stirring the energy from fixedness of centuries of holding this
or that idea, definition or rule against another.
As the Quakers say, we’re coming to the sense of the meeting. It takes time, patience, sometimes longer than is comfortable sitting in silence tuning in to our deepest levels of knowing, of listening to the development of creativity, then learning what she has in mind for us to be, to do, to form or unform. It’s not passively surrendering to the flow, it’s learning how to work with the flow, the nature, our nature, life’s nature as a unity, each entity with a vibration of its own – contributing to Life’s chord.
And when we come to the sense of the meeting, something wonderful happens. All concerns, needs, issues, differences and distinctions seem to integrate, resolve into a new way none of us could have imagined. It’s peaceful, quieting, and oh so beautiful. This Living Organism of Life beats our hearts as one and we know a new way. It will last because it’s better than any one idea or definition, it’s the many miraculously, magically becoming one. All is included and forms around a coherence that somehow each of us recognizes as such. A new manifestation of reality has formed. All life shares in the knowing. This is how the living reality as organisms co-creates, and to perceive it requires no rules, things, or definition. It requires listening deeply beyond words, from our experience, our hearts; and the sound of OMMMM unifies the details. And the shift occurs.
Beyond boundaries, opening our awareness of something deeper, higher, fuller, where peace lives, where there is no separation, where acceptance is, the nature of oneness emerges, and there we are all connected, not homogenized, but where we recognize the beauty of all forms, formlessness, even chaos can have a time, and something else is happening – a giant energy ball wraps us all up, forms us, energizes each of us in our uniqueness – each living a vital role creating the harmony like we sense in a whirlpool, the elegance of an organic dance between flowers, trees, water, wind and sun and me, you, dogs and cats, all life pulsates with giant heart beat, unifying, simplifying, singing a word sound Oommmmm, and in this sound we hear 72 octaves of overtones from all voices of life living through its diversity and what a chord it strikes over and over ever weaving its manifesting ever in this now. —Syke Hirst
A friend recently sent us this letter that seems to capture so beautifully much of what is happening.
What I Learned from Norm and Skye Hirst
And How It Changed My Life
by Rodney Plimpton
Before I met Norm and Skye I had a pretty good handle on how Life worked, or so I thought. I had a PhD in Social Psychology from Stanford, had studied Human Potential for Five years with Jean Houston, and knew all about stimulus-response and something about cybernetics. I didn’t consciously realize how much my model of life was based on a popular concoction of Darwinism, materialism, elitism, and computer science. But it all came down to this: the brain was in charge. (Except maybe for those messy outbursts of emotion, or the unconscious power of the Id; but even that was a brain function; just a hidden one.) Whatever we did or experienced was noticed by the brain, consciously or unconsciously, and got written into little programs that told us what to do and what not to do to get what we wanted. The rest of the body obeyed, unless it was sick or wounded.
If this was the model, then being smart was good, and being smarter than others was evidence of being farther along on the evolutionary scale. Having a heart and genuinely caring about others? Yes, that was very important, too; a sign of evolved consciousness; simply more evidence of being multi-dimensionally smart.
Then I met Norm and Skye at a small conference that I wasn’t even supposed to be at. They were an odd couple for sure. He had all the hallmarks of an out-on-a-limb academic, and she looked and talked and sang like someone who should have been headed for Hollywood or Broadway, instead of Bayview Avenue in Camden, Maine. And to hear them talk! According to them nobody else knew what they were talking about. Our bodies weren’t anything like computers. There were no programs inside of us. Somebody named Hartman did something brilliant about values that were really important but it was hard to understand why or how. So while that well-developed brain was saying “Maybe brilliant, but also maybe a nut case” my gut was saying, “there’s something there really worth understanding… dig deeper…" and the gut won.
I’m glad it did. I read their papers, and tried to rewrite them so that they made sense to me. I read on my own. I thought about what they were saying and began to look at the world a little bit differently. I particularly thought about their notions of autonomy and coherence. And eventually I got it…. sort of.
What I got was that yes, our brain was important; you could lose a toenail and function better than if you lost your brain. But it was only one part of some 70 trillion cells in our bodies. And those cells were, to a surprising degree, making autonomous decisions about what to do, based on awareness of themselves, combined with awareness of what was going on throughout the whole body. And they were aiming for coherence; doing what would work for them but would also either work for the rest of the body, or at the very least, not interfere with letting all the other cells do what they needed to do for themselves and for the whole body. The brain plays an important role on its own, for sure… but not in the command and control way that I previously thought.
It was a very short leap from there to a much larger understanding. There are some 70 trillion cells in our bodies, getting along pretty well in a cooperative way that enables us to live and learn. It took them some billions of years to get there from primeval slime, but every one of us is living proof of the accomplishment.
There are only about 7 billion of these collections of living cells walking around this planet at this time. It ought to be easier for 7 billion big, smart cells to figure out how to get along together than for 70 trillion sub-human ones… but that is obviously not the case… yet. But clearly that is where we need to go, even if it takes us another billion years to get there.
Now I can’t shake that notion as a fundamental insight. When I am in a room full of very diverse people, I no longer look at the ones least like me and think, “Wow, I’m glad I’m not them.” Instead, I look at them and think “Gee, here we are, a bunch of different, seemingly individual cells, living in proximity to each other, and trying to figure out how we can get it together so it works for all of us.” If you think that doesn’t lead to a change in attitude, and a change in your life, just try it.
Don’t forget the billion years part… it helps to keep from being too hard on yourself or others.
Now I’m not claiming that Norm and Skye have led me to the same understanding that they have… but they’ve led me someplace different from where I was, and I like living in the new place better. Thanks Norm and Skye. Maybe in another billion years I’ll really get it together.
But I, (Skye) think it won’t take another billion years. I think it’s happening as we speak. Let’s hear your experience of living without definition. Visit us on the Autognomics Forum. www.autognomics.org.
Skye Hirst, PhD is researcher, executive/personal coach, presentation facilitator and co-founder with Norm Hirst of Transcendental Autognomics (TA); New Field of Life-Energy and Transcendental Science/Philosophy going beyond scientific materialism to discover the emergent epi-principles within life-itself. The mystery/the miraculous/the wisdom of life-itself is revealing herself and Skye is doing presentation/discussions on latest revelations impacting us all during this time of transition. Her 30 years of experience as communication consultant, her love of the arts and nature inform her work as does her 30 years as energy medicine practitioner of Jin Shin Jyutsu. To receive Transcendental Autognomics email newsletter on how latest revelations are impacting us all, visit us www.autognomics.org or join us on Twitter @autognomics for frequent tips and insights, plus see who we are following.