THE PURPOSE OF PURPOSE

A little spur from lilwave has my thoughts focused on the self induced delusion that the universally applicable metaphor, “as above, so below”, often used by both the spiritual and the scientific, may be reversed to somehow allow man to assume the status of authority over the unexplainable and the manifest destiny to recreate the universe to our purpose with a story in the image of our exceptional birthright over all the other beings such that “as we desire it below, it shall be made to be above.”

It is very natural to need to feel comfortable in ones surroundings, thus careful awareness of the proximity of predators and prey and establishment of familiar territory for homes and migration paths seems to arise in every species. Instincts, the genetic memory of the survival, thrival, mutation and development of the latest variations represented by the present arrival of life’s forms, informs each individual being at the molecular level as a sublime guide sending out impulses, intuitions, hunches as to what is going on around them at a deeper level than flight/fight, prey/predator responses requiring immediate action.

Individuals among species, and entire species among the more social varieties survive because they have achieved a life in dynamic symbiosis with the constant change that is the nature of cosmic life. Others fail to heed the signs from within and without about the reality of their environment, which, among all but humans, results in the extinction of that model, usually before it can reproduce itself or because it can’t. The evolution of communication skills extends the ability of the social species to survive by creating symbols for food and predators and leaving them as guides for future generations. Language has lead modern humans to thrive by leaving messages so minutely complex as to involve the majority of the hearers’ concentration in understanding the combined meaning of the variously defined symbols with only an afterthought, if they have them at all, about the influence on the larger picture by the authors’ attitude toward the truth in representing its intentions. Only personal experience to the contrary or doubt that truth can be contained in even honest words can bridge the eons some messages have held sway over the scope of reality permitted to their believers … or never having heard that story in the first place.

We all have our own story with paragraphs describing our experience of the world to ourselves and chapters containing periods of rather constant outlook in the shower of diverse events as maturity forces amendments to the reality tunnels of the open minded and walls of indisputable conclusions in the most impatient to consider themselves right. The purpose of our stories is to feel the comfort of understanding our relationship to the constantly changing world about us. Some feel comfortable just being involved in the process of feeding their curiosity as each step along the path becomes more symbiotic with what they grow to understand. Others, unable or afraid to generate their own ideas about their experience, come to rely on constant attention to the stories others tell to guide their thoughts, requiring that they always refer to such authority for the comfort of correctness as a way of belonging, at least among the other devotees. There exists a genre of stories whose purpose is to influence the timid minded to believe their entire existence is beholden to a creator, the gratitude for which their duty is unquestioning belief and unthinking behavior. Nature is a state of being with others as they would be with us. Civilization is a state of doing to others before they do to us. This is the purpose of proposing god has a purpose for us ——— a preemptive strike of WMDs (Wishes of Mass Delusion) upon the messages of our experience that nature is purposeless.

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Cinnamon commented on the last post, “I am interested to know what you believe about the existence of a soul- do we continue to exist in other form beyond physical death?”

To which I replied in the comments, “One has but to observe this year's crops build their bodies from the soil infused with the composted matter from last year's crops as the soil level diminishes to comprehend the continuance of life. The probability of a coherent being making such transitions is about the same as the chances that an idea will remain unchanged through many translations. Nature makes variations, not clones.”

This question about souls remaining coherent entities beyond their obvious corporeal containment of observable life struck me at such an angle it peeled up an intuition that the transition may be like the communication of an idea from one to another. Does the idea exist anywhere but the minds of its holders and in the manifestations so inspired? Do ideas, like floating clouds of coherent mental energy, light those bulbs whose minds are tuned in to their frequency as they drift by?. Do we get messages from beyond the grave from loved ones whose jokes we sometimes didn’t catch ‘til weeks after they told them? The memory of a person in the minds of those he/she touched in life is still alive to them and quite possibly becoming better understood than there was time for in life. Each memory of an individual is a different facet of what might be called a spiritual hologram, might be called her/his soul. The mind of each individual could be considered a facet in a larger hologram, the gestalt of humankind, a collective memory some have dubbed the soul plane.

All I know for sure is that all I have to do to be as close to departed loved ones as I was during their lifetime is to think of them.