Natural Proposition
Proposition I:
This world is far more beautiful than our hearts can perceive.
Proposition II:
We are the world.
Proposition III:
All is Beauty, coming to Be,
even through the stony walls of tragedy,
and through the opening of our heartbreak.
As I open to the sky, the vast statement of the Universe’s grandeur leaves me rudderless against waves of wonder and hope.
If Beauty such as this so clearly is, then what are we as humans doing, when we could so clearly be tending this beauty, partaking in the unfolding of life rather than its destruction?
Yet, we are the world. Are we, somehow, part of the unfolding beauty of the cosmos, regardless of our conscious participation? Is this some undeniable part of a natural cascading of ordered events, as lawful as the water’s movement to the Sea?
What I’m speaking of is our place in the Cosmos, so seemingly disrupted by our own pursuit of comfort and pleasure that we have forgotten what true contentment is. And so we seek perfection, a state of idyllic being where there is only comfort, only a dullness to the world we live in—but there is control, or the semblance of it.
You see, humanity still lives, to a large extent, in an omnipotent fantasy. As intelligent and powerful beings, we have allowed ourselves to pursue knowledge and power immodestly, rather than to deepen our relationship to what is.
Perhaps it is too much to say we believe we are omnipotent—but we are certainly striving for it. It would be our insurance against the turbidity of life, in all its mystery—dangerous, beautiful, alluring mystery. And, as soft, vulnerable creatures, our search for this knowledge is natural.
It is natural because fear is natural. It is natural because love dictates our wish to protect. But it is also misguided in the sense that it never truly protects or insulates us from the world. Instead, it puts us at odds with it, seeking subjugation and control instead of relating, listening, co-creating.
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Leaves are patterned. Water falls in forms that indicate a profound mystery. Clouds form and roll across the sky.
When we pay attention, Order is revealed. It is only birthed, however, from the Chaos we fear. A Mystery runs beneath Chaos; an intelligence, a soul-like point of brilliance, more primal than chance.
Is this, perhaps, why nature is so healing? We find our longing for sense, for intelligence, for Order out of Chaos, met in the way trees shimmer with wind and sunlight—only chaotic beauty at first, but we soon sense its Truth.
I would say it is poetically true. It reaches us in a way, a space, beyond the constantly problem-solving mind that seeks comfort and safety. Light trickling down the forest onto skin, dappled like the night sky, is chaos that makes sense. It feels right.
Likewise, perhaps, from some higher vantage point (a perspective I cannot always attain), our human struggles make a beautiful sort of sense—even the ones where we are causing our illness, and the planet's destruction.
But I am human, and my vantage point is only as high as the mountains I can summit, and the quality of my sight is only as clear as my heart.
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For Oceans will rise and fall, and our Earth has been formed and re-formed, like the minds of those who seek to love more fully, more skillfully, more beautifully. And perhaps our death is not a thing to fear, but that which we must embrace.
It could be said that our pursuit of comfort, of safety, of security, is all insurance against death. Against a lack of control. And so we seek omnipotence in that light. To create something perfect, where we will finally have freedom.
But to do so, we must be able to meet our endless desires. That is the requirement for perfection. For humans, we constantly crave something new, and so we must live in infinite possibility, an omnipotent fantasy.
Heidegger said, “Death is the possibility of absolute impossibility.”
And we are afraid to die.
So lies the crux of our current cultural malaise. I know it well within myself, too. We cannot choose. Every choice is a commitment that necessitates the death of all other possibilities. In our desire for insurance against the uncertainty of existence, and to live in perfect comfort, we do not feel we can shut the door on any potential path. We want it all.
But wooded paths must eventually part. Our choice to try not to choose is just that: a choice. While those paths may meet again, far along, they travel vastly different territories—those who walk them are shaped differently.
Nature feels beautiful, right, resplendent, because it knows the direction in which it travels: wholeness, life. It chooses, again and again, to accept its conditions and adapt to them.
Importantly, adaptation is not control. It is relationship—harmony with mystery. That is our medicine, but it can be a bitter pill to swallow.
And so we find ourselves here, with our propositions in hand. You see, don’t you? This world is more beautiful than our hearts can perceive. We cannot know it. It is a mystery.
We are that mystery. You can’t separate us from the world.
And when you get that, when you really, truly get that, you see that all is Beauty, coming to Be.
Because there is freedom. There is choice. The world is wide open! It is just that often, in our thinking we are creating more possibilities, we don’t see the trap we are setting for ourselves. This too, though, is a strange sort of beauty.
And we do not know where it will lead. That is our first principle, after all.
I leave you with a poem that I feel encapsulates the endeavor I am on, and many other brave souls:
What is required of us in our time
is that we go down
into uncertainty
where what is new is old as every morning
and what is well known is not known as well.
That we go down
into the most human
where living men have vanished
and the music of their meaning
has been trapped and sealed.
What is asked of us in our time
is that we break open
our blocked caves
and find each other.
Nothing less will heal the anguished spirit,
nor release the heart to act in love.
—From The Sound of Silence, by John Baughan