We’re all bigger than we realize. We usually think of our size in relation to the clothes that we require to cover ourselves. But the reverend minister at the church I attend is always reminding us that our spiritual auras extend far beyond our bodies.
I’m bigger than an elephant.
This can be understood in many ways, at different levels. Even the most mundane aspects of our activities in the world involve interactions with others. If we displace a certain volume of air, and occupy a certain position on the face of the earth, nobody else can simultaneously occupy the same position and displace the same volume of air.
That, in any given situation, may or may not have obvious and immediate consequences.
Was our purchase of an orange from the Ionia Meijer what made the difference in the produce manager not getting fired? You never know. You just never know.
What size are we now? As big as the Meijer store?
Was the fact that we were trapped in position 12 in the traffic jam, which was what made the obstruction visible over the top of the hill, what gave the distracted father enough time to hit his brakes? You never know. You just never can know.
What size are we now? As big as the intersection that didn’t have an accident? As big as the area that contains all the lives of the people who helped to not allow the accident? As big as the lives of all the people who were able to carry on their activities because there was no accident at the intersection?
What size are we, NOW?
We sit at the coffee shop, writing away about Giants in our midst. We are the giants. We are the giants in our midst. Well, there is only one our, and just one giant. Just like the light that we see coming from Proxima Centauri, that took 4.244 years to get here, our size extends in both space and time, our actions, both intentional and unintentional by-products of our intentional actions, extend far beyond our specific knowledge.
What size are we now, that someone on the other side of the world has read our blog entry? Now, that we have seen the light of not only Proxima Centauri, but many other stars from far away galaxies.
The Buddhist nun Thubton Chodron says “Love is the wish for sentient beings to have happiness.”
I am very happy to have come across this definition of love. By this definition, I am very loving. I want all sentient beings to have happiness. The fact that I have given up on trying to help others have happiness no longer bothers me. I want it. Thubton Chodron seems to imply that’s what love is.
Of course Westerners think that wanting alone is not as effective as doing something to achieve the desire. We have that old saying: If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. But Easterners have more wisdom that assures us that thoughts are things. In a way, we could consider that the entire core message of Jesus was just that. Jesus’ followers eventually got rid of much of the law, the requirements for doings. They emphasized the inner thoughts. Why, if not out of an understanding, not belief, understanding, that thoughts lay the groundwork for the quality of the deeds.
Another culturally Western Buddhist teacher instructs “Don’t just do something. Sit there!”
But, as long as I have been attracted to and studied the ideas of the East, a big part of me still feels like I need to do something to make my wishes into horses. Through the tension of East and West, I’m beginning to realize that every effort I have made to truly help someone out of what I perceived as a dire situation has gone wrong. People get into dire situations for large, complex and complicated constellations of reasons, most of which are incorrect subconscious beliefs about the nature of reality. Therefore, one person can’t ever have a high chance of truly helping someone for the longterm by adjusting their outside situation. The persons incorrect, unacknowledged beliefs will continue to sabotage them.
Therefore, while my spoken statement is that I have given up on doing anything to express my love, and am happy to wish for others’ happiness, my inner desire is to have the strength to continue to work in the ways that I am allowed to help others see a way to happiness.
Now, the intent, or content, of this string of sentences is all well and good. However, it pretty much applies only to humans. Thubton Chodron says that love is the wish for sentient beings to have happiness. The Buddhists have a prayer that is often translated into English as follows: May all sentient beings have happiness, and the causes of happiness.
Ok great. But, as Lynn Sparrow Christie, a motivational speaker notes, “There’s the problem of the food chain.” The Jains have truly tried to create a system of rules / laws / habits / deeds / way of life that addresses this. Not only are they vegetarian, they don’t eat seeds, because that cuts off a life. Eating the fleshy part of the peach is ok. Garlic cloves, definitely not. Wheat not. I’m not sure about potatoes. They can produce a new plant, but the plant will make seeds if allowed. So maybe they do eat potatoes. Of course, Jains might or might not have known about potatoes when their religion was started. The coffeeshop where I am writing is getting a new internet router, so I can’t check. This is good. Lets you the reader see my stream of consciousness, and you can go look to figure it out on your own! 🙂
Anyway, to get back to the Jains, not only do they have a restricted vegetarian diet, but they wear masks, so that they do not inadvertently inhale and kill by immersion in digestive juices, any gnats or other sentient beings. Not only do they wear masks to avoid unintentional inhalation of gnats, but they sweep their paths ahead of themselves as they walk, to avoid crushing ants and worms. Every moment of the Jains’ lives are taken up in avoiding harm. I now see this as an uninterrupted meditation on laying the foundations for other sentient beings having the causes of happiness, or at least avoiding the causes of pain and suffering at a basic physical level.
Kindof like Judaism, there are so many rules and regulations, you don’t have time to get into trouble. Of course I am sure that just as there are Orthodox Jews who manage to lead truly creative lives, there are Jains who do the same. I am convinced that God has led different peoples to adopt different religious systems, not only because it was natural and expedient based on differences of environment, both natural and as responses to cultural pressures, but because having a spectrum of beliefs and ideas and cultures makes watching the human drama a more interesting prospect.
That said, getting back to all sentient beings having the causes of happiness is going to require a lot of changes to the status quo. In order for all sentient beings to have the causes of happiness, many of Nature’s beings are going to have to undergo fundamental changes. The lion must be able to lie down with the lamb in perpetuity, not only for a few minutes, after it has gorged itself on three giraffes.
It’s worth some time to look through all the winners, but this mosquito photo might be my favorite so far! Wonder what Madonna or Lady Gaga, or David Bowie or Freddie Mercury might think, for that matter!
Born of the rain, this mushroom only exists after enough rain produces the right conditions for its parent mycelium to fruit!
I think these mushrooms are good for making some kind of medicinal beverage, but am not sure. But they are well socialized, not lonely!
This was from two prompts in today’s writing group:
Pluviophile and Alone versus Lonely
In my early youth, I was no pluviophile. But in college, I bought a Totes brand umbrella that had a beautiful design of those 1920’s popular bathroom decor colors of coral and turquoise, with accents of lavender and grey. I loved the colors of that umbrella so much that I actually enjoyed walking in the rain, even if I won’t claim to have prayed for rain just for the chance of using it. Thanks to Totes lifetime warranty program, when a rib bent, I sent it back for repair. But those evil people didn’t repair it the second time. Nowadays MAYBE they would have sent me email asking my preference. Then, they trashed my beloved work of art, and sent me a smaller, new-fangled automatic opening black and boring replacement. I was crestfallen. Fortunately I kept the cover, so still have a tiny sliver of memory of the colors.
Still no true pluviophile, in early middle age, having moved to the country and acquired a small flock of geese, I tried to learn to merge my consciousness with theirs when it rained. Especially when it rained enough to turn the shallow depression outside the barn into a small pond. The geese were clearly pleased when this happened, and they provided one more step on the road to my achieving equanimity with regard to the state of the atmosphere.
In late middle age, at least according to the Hindu system of life segmentation, I was less bothered by rain, unless it seemed endless. Back in 2009, the first summer of The Great Recession, it never got warm and we saw the sun and blue skies only occasionally in Michigan. The two worst state economies were California and Michigan. Miraculously, my personal economy was saved by my being hired by a company in Tennessee which was managing an investigation in the Mojave Dessert. When we did the radiographic inspection of the steel component, everyone else sat in their air conditioned vehicles. I eschewed even the shelter of the canvas tarp the radiographers had brought along. I stood basking in the sun, trying to make up for the grey Michigan summer all in one day. That night, I had no appetite. Couldn’t even finish the salad I ordered at Denny’s. Even through the migraine, I never regretted my worship of the sun that day.
Now, in early old age, I am still no pluviophile. But my new hobby of mushroom foraging gives me a small push in that direction. These last few weeks however, have been a bit much. When at last a few hours of free time presented themselves in a time frame dried out enough for me to feel like venturing into the woods with my camera and net bag, I did find a lot of mushrooms. I MAY have even found some new edible varieties in quantity sufficient for a nice side dish. But many of the shrooms were well past their prime. Some even had fungi growing on them. Fungi on the fungi! Unfortunately, I did not find any lobster mushrooms, or aborted entolomas. If a new mycologist wannabee wants to be sure that it is an edible lobster, it is advised to only take it from a patch where both normal white and the red aborted lobster forms are found together. The red comes from another fungus that grows on the main mushroom, which changes its color, and somehow detoxifies or otherwise renders it edible. The mysteries of the mushroom are amazing.
Maybe some Russula Viriscens mushrooms
The Green Quilted Russula’s that I think I found, Russula Viriscens, were the reason I went back in the woods last Sunday, after getting attacked through half a gallon of Deep Woods Off, by hordes of mosquitos on Saturday. I had seen the green capped mushrooms and thought “those can’t be edible.” Wrong, as David Arora, master mycologist says, there is no visible trait that distinguishes toxic, inedible and edible fungi. But I am still not sure, even after looking at the spores in my scanning electron microscope at up to 18,000x (see below), whether it is an R. Viriscens or an R. Crustosa, or something else. I am fairly confident it is one of those and all are supposedly edible, although only Viriscens is supposedly choice. But keeping to the advice of smart mushroom hunters that “There are old mushroom hunters, and bold mushroom hunters, but no old bold mushroom hunters,” I have promised only to eat those I am highly confident of the identity. Maybe next year I’ll be singing with Sam, that yes I do like Green Eggs and Ham, with good Green Mushrooms and a side of Spam.
Perhaps R. Viriscens Spore Group
Single spore with presumed attachment stem at arrow
And now, to the second prompt, the beauties of aloneness. Yes, I do enjoy my aloneness. Most people are more aggravating than enlightening, so I find it easier to enjoy my aloneness when I can find friendship in the pages of a book, even if the author is dead. Mushroom foraging is a challenging hobby that takes my mind off of the fact that I am alone. The fear of painful death by organ damage, usually not starting until 24 hours after ingestion, sharpens my powers of observation. As I learn, I add new experiences to the collective consciousness. Mushrooms, unlike people, minimize my loneliness, rather than magnifying it.
Where am I going? North, south, east and west
have no meaning.
Where am I going? Up and down, out and around
are equally meaningless.
I am fenced in by my freedom. Because the
geographical direction, and distance from the
center of the earth are not the point.
The real point is that since I newly don’t know
who I am, there’s no I to go anywhere, so the
invisible, non-existent fence is all it takes to
hold me in place.
I used to think I knew who I was. Cowardly in
the outer world, powerless, I try to use the
little freedom that is my lot.
Tried to use it and thus fertilize it. Let it grow.
So who am I?
The swallowtail chrysalis appears unchanged from
last week. It had turned brown,
to match the coffee filter it was looking
at when it shed its skin, after first revealing the green of
the parsley it had consumed.
The monarch chrysalis has no such tricks up its sleeve.
It doesn’t need to. Its nature is to transmute itself in
place, on the milkweed, while the swallowtail needs to
be flexible, in case it’s caught by chill, and needs to
overwinter on dry vegetation.
My current confusion, I hope, is another step on the
road. The apparent inactivity of the chrysalis.
The swallowtail still hangs, brown, from the drying
parsley stem it chose, rather than the sturdier plastic
spoon I offered it. But the monarch chrysalis, overnight,
or at least since yesterday morning, has turned black.
That means that the chrysalis has actually clarified.
Become its namesake’s material, while the insect
within has formed, its black and orange pattern now
visible within, if you know how to look.
This year I have found BOTH a Monarch and a Swallowtail butterfly caterpillar.
I could not figure out why the Monarch mother laid her eggs on some parsley that I nearly put in the blender to make vegetable juice, before noticing the caterpillar. Lucky for both of us, I did not have extra protein in my juice!
I finally did research and realized this was NOT a Monarch, but that the dill and parsley I had planted had succeeded in attracting a Swallowtail. The next day I found a Monarch.
I had them both for about a week when they spun threads to hang their chrysalli, and then shed their skins. The Swallowtail matches its color to the surroundings, in this case an unbleached coffee filter!
Eastern Swallowtail chrysalis above the coffee filter I had used to make it easier to clean out its “frass.” But it soon stopped eating and pooping, and went into this phase.
Detail of swallowtail chrysalis. Eyes are at right. Note the threads anchoring the pupa at both the tail (left) and abdomen areas.
Early August, and I and a friend decide to take off for the north. I’ve lived in Michigan for 33 years, and never been more than a mile or so past the north end of the Mackinac Bridge. This time, we got as far north as Whitefish Point. We rode in separate cars, and I had to wait while he finished a business meeting before we hit the road. I went to the poor, rocky “private” beach advertised by the cheapest motel we could find by the time we tried to reserve for the last minute trip. And there awaited a Monarch sipping nectar from a thistle. What a beautiful site. I took some photos with my phone, as I hadn’t bothered to bring my good camera while I killed time. Slowly, I moved closer, expecting Mona to fly away at any moment. But she did not.
Monarch on a thistle, undisturbed, for the moment, by the human.
A wider view!
I think these are the “thick webbing” patterns, indicating female. But now I know what to look for. Time to sip some daisy juice!
Japanese Beetle Breathing Pore Scanning Electron Microscope Image – Original magnification 1640x
Beautiful Shadow Patterns in Leaf Canopy on the Way to Tahquamenon Falls, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
It is in the description of both the great, and the invisible, the ends of the spectrum of knowable size, that the truest model of the physical world may be constructed.
It is when you can see that the shapes of the clouds are repeated in the ripples of the surface of a lake, as well as the layers in a sedimentary rock, that you are seeing the condensed layers of the structure of reality.
It is seeing The Face in the clouds, as well as in the outline left in a leaf damaged by the Morger Beetle, that you are seeing the epistemological layers of the structure of reality.
When you walk in nature, are you hoping to see the Shapwell Alkon? Then you are likely to be disappointed. When you walk in nature and notice the interplay of sharp and rounded, smooth and rough, light and shadow, sparkling and black, red and green, near and far, then you will be storing riches, and weaving yourself into the mystical layers of the structure of reality.
When you can see that the smallest of details are not necessarily small at all, then will you truly see.
