WHO ARE WE? WHAT ARE WE? WHY ARE WE?

I have asked these kinds of questions, really, for most of my life? I know at least that some others do, though many do not. Is it a luxury to ask such questions, only for those who are not burdened by the responsibilities of life? The philosophes? I personally believe that some naturally harbor such questions, regardless of class or burdens of life. In fact it may be those most burdened by the responsibilities of life that are most driven to the point of having to ask such questions. I initially wondered why I phrase it collectively, that is, as “we.” Why not “I”? Because it is “we” who are all in this human situation of living and not just “me.” “We” each have “our” life and are responsible for ourselves, yes, but we are each faced with pretty much the same or at least very similar dilemmas of existence. Though we are certainly not the same and are unique to ourselves, we share what it is to be human, though even that varies according to culture and custom.

As we get older and find ourselves unable to find answers within ourselves, many “turn to God.” I tried this when I was much younger when my daughter with autism was born. I realized the powerlessness of praying to a powerless god bolstered by tradition and corporate religion of fear and guilt, and this tradition also taught the presence of “divine love.” But I saw that such divine love is already the state of existence in itself. It is that situation of all “being in the same boat,” of all of us being human together and realizing that we are here to love each other. This is a most necessary requirement and reality of existence though it is certainly not realized and is equally not dependent upon any divine entity. My own philosophic leaning is Stoic, which can translate into Zen Buddhism that holds that each of us is possessed of a “true nature” or “suchness of being” which is seen as our “ground of being” in which everything “is as it is.” Pretty inscrutable, yes, but, to me, better than pretending that life is different than it is by using “God” as a metaphorical crutch and the Devil as a “fall guy.” This is what it has come to, though it may not have begun as such before the corporate and doctrinal religion took over. I have also studied and participated in Daoist thought and practices, especially the Yijing (or I Ching) for many years, some of them as an I Ching “consultant,” in which I counseled people through the use of the oracular advice of the ancient Yijing, which precedes the Bible by perhaps 1500 years, and presents a literal system of dealing with the challenges of living in the world. I haven’t particularly put it to use for a few years due to its complexity, however, I have recently attained a book that delves further into the details and essences of Daoist thought and practice. The Daoists see the essence of existence as energy emanating from various greater sources of energy. I will not explain these three types of energy but suffice it to say that this approach ties in with Hindu and Theosophical thought and, I have to admit, explains the energetic basis of existence and all forms that I literally saw with my own eyes when I often ingested LSD over forty years ago. I suppose I just lost all credibility with you but I trust my experience and I remember exactly what I saw. 

So now the question of who we are or what we are opens immensely. It gets so big that we can no longer “wrap our minds around it.” For instance, the Daoists also teach that the stars in our universe that have exploded over the eons were reduced to dust floating through space in the universe, came into the earth’s atmosphere, fell to earth, and became part of the soil of the earth, of which our bodies are composed. Consequently, we are literally “made of star dust,” which I’ve heard before but never quite understood.

These various topics upon which I write are brought to the fore and are often opened up enough that they are not “completed” and remain open-ended. This is probably as it should be and most certainly as it is.