Can you imagine our situation on this planet if humans lived with compassionate stewardship of our place in the great Web of living beings? If we today could draw on a spontaneous intuition of our common heritage with other species and our shared dependency on the Spirit of Life?
As fellow earthlings and offspring of Life, we would feel, think, plan and live with the whole Web in mind. Animated by the same life principle, this Spirit of Life, we would seek the collective wellbeing and promote the flourishing of our human and non-human neighbors. We would honor and preserve the delicate balance among Earth’s material, microbial, fungal, botanical, and animal species – not that they are “here for us” but rather “here with us,” sharing this planetary home.
Just as we wouldn’t pump and dump pollutants into our own water wells, food gardens and living spaces without expecting them to show up in our bodies, we would not mindlessly discard our industrial byproducts and consumer waste into the terrestrial commons.
Indeed, had we been living with reverence for the Spirit of Life all along, there’s a good chance we would have developed truly sustainable Earth-friendly economies and technologies by now.
If we lived with compassionate stewardship of our place in the great Web of living beings, the flourishing diversity of life rather than its deterioration, endangerment, and extinction would be evident all around us.
Can you imagine the situation if we lived with kindhearted goodwill towards other human beings – at home, on the street, in our workplaces, and on social networks? If we could treat others with the same respect, kindness, charity and forgiveness as we might expect from them? If the Power of Love inspired and directed our engagements with neighbors, with strangers, and even with our enemies?
The Power of Love is often regaled in poetry as, in Dante’s example, “the force that moves the sun and the other stars” – that is to say, as a cosmic principle swinging and fusing together the whole shebang.
In this context, however, Love’s power is focused more in the connection between and among human persons. While it certainly has roots in the electrochemistry of nervous systems and emotional dynamics of interest, attraction, empathy, and affiliation, the Power of Love comes (or can come) to its greatest clarity and brilliance in the interpersonal space between and among individual egos.
As individuals develop and mature, they differentiate unique centers of identity from which to look out and act on the world. Those deeper and more primitive registers of neural and emotional activation mentioned earlier eventually get channeled through this self-conscious center of identity (i.e., the ego) to another self-conscious center of identity, generating a transpersonal effect between and among us – the Power of Love – beyond and including the persons involved.
We can connect with others in this way only when we are securely centered in ourselves. If we happen to lack a secure center of personal identity, our interactions with others tend to get complicated. Unhealthy attachment, co-dependency, manipulation, power plays, intimidation and violence are various ways we work our insecurity out on others.
So, to imagine how the situation might be different today if the Power of Love were honored and practiced between and among human beings, we might have to picture something very different from our current state of affairs.
Finally, can you imagine our situation if each and every one of us was inwardly established in the Ground of Being? If we possessed the ego strength and inner freedom to drop out of our separate identities and rest in our essential nature as human manifestations of being?
To cultivate such a grounded presence, we would simply release all the roles, agreements, habits and beliefs that define us as separate and special. Because our self-conscious center of personal identity is itself a construction of such roles, agreements, habits and beliefs, dropping into Reality is a simple matter of letting go of who (we think) we are and being present again to the Now and Here – which from ego’s perspective is nowhere and utterly inaccessible.
The Ground of Being is also no thing, and therefore nothing to the separate ego.
The Ground of Being is not found by looking outside ourselves, by peeling away the layers of appearance or digging below the surface of what we see. It is within us, not something (some thing) “down there” and underneath it all, but as the generative Source and essential nature of our existence as (in descending order) self-conscious, sentient, living, and material manifestations of Reality – the energy of be-ing.
Dropping away from the inflated balloon of ego allows consciousness to descend deeper into this essence of what, rather than who, we really are. Social status and reputation are released. Personal identity and our conditioned self are released. Beliefs and the thoughts that weave our beliefs into judgment and worldview are released.
Finally, the self-conscious thinker unwinds and dissolves away. From the relaxed edge of Life’s pulsing rhythms, consciousness opens to the dark and silent mystery of Being itself. What’s left is boundless presence and a profound inner peace – a peace that surpasses all understanding.
Just imagine.
In this brief time, dear reader, we have been engaged in a post-theistic meditation. You’ll notice that we didn’t mention religion, although the meditation itself, along with the quality of intentional living it inspires and supports, is itself a kind of religion: linking our self-conscious center of identity back (Latin religare) to the Spirit of Life in our body and all around us, to the Power of Love between and among persons, and to the Ground of Being deep within and far below who we think we are or are trying so desperately to become.
We didn’t talk about god, either – at least not as a figure of mythology, a concept of theology, an article of orthodoxy, or an object of worship. And yet, in a way that is most true to the religious quest, God was the focus of our meditation all along.
Tracts of Revolution 
Hi John,
I really enjoyed this one! I look forward to the tracts as so often they expand my thinking, even if I do have to read some of them more than once. Lol I hope you are all doing well. Please say hello to LaJunta and take good care! 😊