I am inviting you to give this a try... You are sitting/standing/lying down where you are, right now. But your mind is empty, you know nothing about yourself and the world around you. You appear to have just woken up into the reality around you and you are just ‘here’...
What can be trusted in, in this moment? We can trust (even if we are unaware of it right now) that our physical entity/form is structurally designed care for itself/yourself, so you’re going to feel driven to sustain yourself off various sustenance/water at some point. [This is examined in detail, later on in the book.]
Right now, you have only your desire to make the most of the moment (what we call ‘thriving’) and NOTHING is holding you back.
Looking around you: you exist. There is the world around you and there is you.
Your mind is blank.
You are free to think for yourself: to be absolutely honest with yourself.
You already know that you are perfect (although you aren’t even aware of the concept/word) as to be ‘perfect/imperfect’ is an illusion (the idea of being ‘imperfect’ is a self deception that we humans have inflicted on ourselves for so long that it is deeply ingrained in most of our cultures: one of many).
You are only aware of what you want to do, right now.
There is nothing holding you back.
There is only the here and now. All moments of the past are gone (also, none of our memories actually count as ‘reality’ as every experience we had was entirely subjective and so only ‘true’ to us, in that moment). All hopes for the future are based only on what we think we know about the world and how it operates already: our expectations are deeply preconditioned (I will be examining this further, later on in this handbook).
You have everything to play for.
You are here ONLY to ‘be yourself’ to your maximum.
REALITY VERSUS ‘WHAT WE THINK WE KNOW’...
There is only the here and now. All moments of the past are gone (also, none of our memories actually count as ‘reality’ as every experience we had was entirely subjective and so only ‘true’ to us, in that moment). All hopes for the future are based only on what we think we know about the world and how it operates already: our expectations are deeply preconditioned.
So what is left? Just the here & now. This moment: our immediate experience.
With regards to the world/landscape that appears to exist around us, what is ‘reality’?
Reality is what exists underneath all of the labels, values & measurements that we humans have CURRENTLY placed on the world around us, to frame our interactions.
ACTUALLY, WHAT IS ‘REALITY’?
Reality is the world in front of and around me as 'I' see it. Colours, lights & shadows as 'I' see them.
Shapes in the landscape, as 'I' see them (rises and falls). Other planetary creatures: we can give them labels - sheep, grass, wildflowers - but they are OUR human labels based on our very limited anthropocentric view of our world. We might define these independent creatures in our own minds BUT they resist being defined by us: they are defined only by THEIR own idea of themselves. What we think of them doesn’t actually impact their true natures at all.
WHAT ELSE IS REALITY?
Some humans describe the world around us in terms of ‘Consciousness/Matter.’
What is real? What is the truth (a truth that is universal and cannot be debated/denied)?
Our world could be described as presenting itself TO itself, over and over again, in inifite ways. We, each of us, humans and every other creature, only has OUR own perception of the world and each of our perceptions is bespoke, to us. What I see and what you see will be different in a multitude of ways. We might be looking at the same Dandelion: I might be drawn in by the golden glow & think the tilt of the head quite majestic AND you might be impacted by what you might perceive as an awkwardness in the long stalk and think the plant to be quite foolish looking. There are 3 truths here: the truth of your experience (to you) the truth of my experience (to me) and the truth that the Dandelion does not actually require our observation/judgement and is an independent creature: undefined by us in any actual real way.
There is only how our world presents itself to each of us and, in turn, how we present ourselves outwards to the rest of the world.
We have labelled certain behaviours on ourselves and others of our planet as ‘consciousness’ but - in truth - it’s all just how we’re trying to understand the world, it’s not real: it is OUR subjective human view of the world, that some of us appear to have shaped a common language around, to be able to communicate about the topic/situation.
WHAT IS REAL?
The world we exist within just IS. It exists (or appears to exist) around us.
Our world presents itself to all who are part of it as a myriad of forms. Some of us humans label the different forms as ‘consciousness/matter’... Consciousness is defined as, “A state of being aware of and responsive to one’s surroundings.’
How do we know what this ‘awareness’ presents as, from each different planetary form? We don’t. We know how WE (you in your way and me in my way, which may be the same or just similar or actually very different kinds of ‘awareness’) are aware of and interact with the world around us but we don’t know how ANY other creature does.
‘Awareness’ cannot actually be quantified. ‘Awareness’ in humans is described most commonly in the general terms of our most commonly shared senses (sight, scent, touch, hearing etc) but they are just OUR human senses. Some other species - other what we have called ‘mammals’ - SEEM to share similar awareness but even that is impossible to quantify as we can never step into the existence of that creature. We can cut up it’s brain and carve up it's body - we can torture them to see if they respond how we think that we might respond to the same treatment - but we are unable to ever share it’s actual consciousness, even though we’re both sharing the same space. We humans can only ever perceive another being from the outside, through our own very anthropocentric awareness, as we objectify that creature in front of us (we objectify, in order to judge & try to understand the world around us but this objectification actually takes the truth of our reality away from us).
We do NOT know what other types of awareness are possible, throughout our planet. We often argue that parts of our planet without a ‘brain’ that we can recognise or a ‘heartbeat’, are therefore unable to be aware, to have consciousness.
We call them, sometimes, ‘dead matter.’ What if they have a kind of awareness that is so different to our own that we cannot even imagine it? What if the rocks we clamber over and the puddles we march through on a rainy day have an awareness all of their own, far beyond what we have ever experienced, our way?
In the world that we appear to exist within, most of us are generally encouraged by our current educational system to perceive the world around us ONLY as an anthropocentrically framed space.
We have us humans, who ‘think/act like us’ in some commonly understood manners AND then there are these other creatures, ‘mammals’, ‘who appear to think/be constructed/act similarly to us’ and then we have other creatures who we find confusing (Jellyfish for example, who ‘have no brain’) and then we have ‘dead matter.’
This is not truth. These are assumptions that we are making about the world around us and other creatures. These assumptions are undermining our own well being (I will explain how, throughout the rest of this book).
WHAT IS TRUE?
It’s true that even the sand we walk across on beaches might be self aware and interacting with our planet, as an independent entity: we just don’t know how yet. Some of us don’t even know enough to think it to be possible. How very little we know.
We don’t know that rocks and pebbles aren’t aware and thinking and feeling (in ways unique to them). We don’t know that they’re not interacting with the world in some very different way to how WE interact.
We can assume that these planetary features (boulders and beaches and lakes) are ‘dead matter’ and ‘unaware’ (and maybe we’re right) but it’s ONLY an assumption, we do NOT know. And that’s what this blog is about: looking at our actual reality and how, in being honest with ourselves, we can manifest a planetary love story around ourselves.