Tag Archives: acceptance

A deep image of interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS captured by the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on Gemini South at Cerro Pachón in Chile

TENUOUS: what will be?

Is tomorrow guaranteed? What will the future bring? What song should we sing?

Interstellar object I3/Atlas is currently at its perihelion, or closest point to our Sun at approximately 1.36AU. Among the anomalies associated with this comet-like object, its approach is unlikely: It has been hidden from Earth’s view by the Sun’s glare throughout October (though some scientific reports in review claim to have observed the object’s emissions despite solar glare). This occulted segment of its long trip is also its most opportune time to make orbital adjustments to its own direction or for any probes it could dispatch, using the gravity of our Sun to assist. All this and other unmentioned anomalies to say: while unlikely, there is some cautious speculation that this is a technologic object, directed by an Alien Intelligence (AI).

And I say that to ask: If an alien vessel were in our backyard today and, perhaps at this moment, sending probes our way – for what purpose, one can only speculate – what would one do? Even if that were a fact, there is still much uncertainty.

Top view of 3I/ATLAS's trajectory (blue) through the Solar System, with orbits and positions of planets shown
Image via CSS, D. Rankin; Video recorded and edited by User:Renerpho – https://neofixer.arizona.edu/css-orbit-view, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=169627869

Not commenting on likelihood, but hypothetically: If it were the case that alien intelligence was in our backyard this moment, close and unseen, then these moments would feel tenuous. What would one do? Savor, I suppose. It is risky and significant enough that squandering time would be easier to recognize as foolish. But it would be uncertain and inspiring enough to not throw one into despair and defeatism.

If one was known to have only a week to live, unlike in this uncertain scenario, then I imagine ‘savoring time’ would look uniquely scarce and conclusive: skipping chores, saying goodbyes, focusing fully on favorites. In contrast, with uncertainty of what the world two months later looks like, it is wise both to savor and also to steward. Take care of one’s future but also do not expect one’s future is guaranteed. Do the dishes, while remembering the precious ephemerality of it all. Savor, and also steward.

This kind of tenuousness, a liminal existential space, could be healthy. A reminder, a reorientation, that we only ever exist Here Now.

How will one Be when it arrives,

What’s Next

Moment by moment
Building momentum
What's the best next step?
May peace be up on you!

#BeHereNow #BreatheEasy #OneLove

A Journey About What Matters

Look around
Your immediate surroundings and select an object

What is it, how is it interacted with? By you, by others, by the ambient space, by invisible forces

Where did it come from? Before it was where it is now, where has it been over the past day? Over the past weeks and months and years?

“Here
Now”

From whence did it come?
From what origin or source?
Before it is what it is now, what was it? What would you have called it before it reached the state in which you’d call it as you do now?

What is its relationship with The Source?

This one thing, how is it divisible or degradable, and how does it aggregate, enlarge, and accumulate if at all? 

Let’s find its constituent parts and ways. Ways and means and matters…

Before this object joined you here
Before you ever met it
Where was it?
Imagine being with this object in the moments before you actually met it
Can you track its momentum backwards?
What was its path over time? Its physical steps through space en route to you? Its transformations? Its self-becoming?
What is self actualization?

Does it breathe?
Did it come from China?
How many places did its original materials come from, Earthling?
How many beings involved in its becoming?
How much love? I ask with thanks.
How much hardship? I&I ask with sorrow.

If we follow the object back, through its steps in spacetime dimensions we’re familiar with,
It probably came to us from an interaction with a human, or from itself in the wild…
Of the humans involved, the supply chain from cradle to current-condition to grave could be very short or very long, in space or in time

<4×4 table labeled distance and duration
columns=space, time; rows=short, long; examples TBD>

Step by step
What’s the best next step?

Be Here Now

===

Mission: optimize for resilient sun-to-life ratio
Minimize harm

This transmission brought to you by a mind picking up litter, detritus, debris
Wearing 3M gear to clean up toxins originating with Big Chem in the first place
Legacy legacy legacy, feeling like a disgrace
Our world sour and what’s it like to be displaced? O habitat
O the grief
O the mass extinction
O the habitat
I give thanks to the Source for the Present
For Home
I try
I participate
What’s the best next step?

Rainwater of Remembering

I remember the persecution of European spirituality and earth-based ways of life, and with that I see the universally acceptable in the revolutionary founding of the USA.

I remember the massacring and grave injustices toward the original stewards of Turtle Island, and with that I see the universally scornful and hypocritical in the colonization of the land we call the Americas.

In the middle of these pillars of past memory, one may walk toward universal realization of the USA’s mantra, “liberty and justice for all.”

–

Mamwlad is Welsh for motherland. In this song, indigenous poet Lyla June sings about the conquering of the indigenous peoples of Europe, singing with loving forgiveness; truth and compassion; and forward-looking faith.

“Great grandmothers burned at the stake for holding the earth in their hands…persecuted…these were not evil people, these were Europe’s healers. They were healers.

This old heart of mine, it weeps away. This old heart of mine, it feels the pain, of all our ceremonies going up in flames. But feeling is healing and these tears are falling like rain…and this is why we remember their names…and this is why we wash away the pain. So let it rain on this land.

My mother’s medicine lives in the Earth. Rising from the ashes as we remember. I can hear her songs running through my veins, as my brother’s blow on embers of old bards’ stories. I will place my feet in the streams to mend the tattered edges of my father’s dreams. I will see past blood and I will remember the beauty, the beauty of a people before the conquerors came. I will not choose war, I will choose peace, and honor the ancestors that live inside of me.”

With the soil of our ancestors and the seeds of future generations, we can grow a present worth gifting.

Much thanks ?

To Mediate

Deliberating debates I often find myself navigating toward a middle way.

Solve et coagula, meeting in the middle. Lest 1 forget the value of VITRIOL.

The middle often feels oddly dissatisfying, even when reached with an impressive reconciliation of differences. It can feel as if the debate is cut short, or as if a rightful winner is stuck with tie by technicality. What if it were best to keep debating, even if doing so fiercely and even if missing each other’s points?

I suppose to moderate is not to identify and insist on a fixed middle ground, but rather to remind toward and protect access to a homey middle ground. All things in moderation…including moderation.

Just as debating shouldn’t be a spending of time that could be better spent acting, moderating shouldn’t be a spending of time that could be better spent acting (?)

What is it to act of balance? To do nether? To do both?

Is a waveform up or down? Mu!

This post is inspired in part by my effort this evening to offer a middle ground in an increasingly fierce debate on a permaculture listserv’s email thread about Extinction Rebellion / “collective action” vs. Individual efforts. Both initiatives pointed toward radical mitigation and adaptation for ecological crises. To identify and push for a middle ground felt necessary in the act, but afterward I wondered if it were better to not intervene and let both sides further duke it out. Surely they will still duke it out and hopefully my intervention helps that go productively. Additionally, as I wondered second-guessingly, I also felt the burn of time ‘wasted’ as I recognized and acted on various tasks I could’ve/ would’ve/ should’ve tended to instead of email.

Alas, there are layers of life to moderate, and as usual priorities are of prime importance!

To Witness

“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.” ― Andrew Boyd

‘Be in this world but not of this world.’ ~

“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own – not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.” – Marcus Aurelius

(And in a paraphrased version of Aurelius’ statement, other people’s wrongdoings are driven not only by others’ lack of good judgement of good from evil, but also by others’ own suffering and personal history and inner environment which cannot be known but can be reached with compassion.)

Peace via Mutually Assured Destruction

Reminiscent of Dark Forest Theory, Yuval Noah Harari spoke with Sam Harris about mutually assured destruction. Humanity faces various existential threats now (nuclear war) and in the future (AI), with some threats coming from human enemies (cyber warfare) and some from a common enemy/ourselves/no enemy (climate change). Yuval pointed out how the common enemy of mutually assured destruction itself may be our salvation. When two parties recognize that it is in their best interest to avoid any potential catastrophies with nuclear war, because of the mutually assured destruction that can come with such a path, they step back from that precipice. The same applies for future potential catastrophies both parties might pursue or affect, like AI or even climate change. ‘The only way to assure I am not destroyed is to work together with them to ensure none of us get destroyed.’  By recognizing the potential for mutually assured destruction, we can work together to overcome existential risks.

Dark Forest theory is from Chinese Sci-Fi series In Remembrance of Earth’s Past, also known as Three Body Problem. It focuses on various existential threats at a bewildering set of scales, from neighboring alien civilizations’ mutually assured destruction, to the mutually assured destruction of All in the Universe.

A flower, a skull and an hourglass stand for life, death and time in this 17th-century painting by Philippe de Champaigne (via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death#/media/File:StillLifeWithASkull.jpg)

Advice on Dying

Summary of advice from Advice on Dying: And Living a Better Life by Dalai Lama

  1. If you cultivate a sense of the uncertainty of the time of death, you will make better use of your time.
  2. To prevent procrastination with regard to spiritual practice, take care not to come under the influence of the illusion of permanence.
  3. Realize that no matter how wonderful a situation may be, its nature is such that it must end.
  4. Do not think that there will be time later.
  5. Be frank about facing your own death. Skillfully encourage others to be frank about their deaths. Do not deceive each other with compliments when the time of death is near. Honesty will foster courage and joy.