Just to be clear:
We are in this moment. Whatever we are doing, whatever we are thinking or being, we are in this moment, where we are alive-- amazingly so. Alive.
We are molecules. All around us are molecules. We are trading molecules constantly. Everything is in motion. This moment we are made of teeming molecular activity of which we are not really aware.
We are cells. All around us are cells. Living things made of cells. Our cells are constantly rebuilding, renewing. We are not the same matter. We are new, moment by moment. Yet we remain the same. We have pounds of little mindless microorganisms in our guts who are also a part of us. We share our being with them. We need them. They are the reason we can eat. They are 70% of our immune system. There are millions of them. They depend on us, we on them. Yet we are not really aware of them. The entire digestive tract from mouth to exit is really *outside* of our body, even though it is contained within our body. These small creatures live next to us, but are contained within us. The nutrients that enter our body are absorbed into our body from this tube that runs through us. The only things that actually enter into our body are broken down into their components. We take those parts, those fragments of cells, those molecules and make them into ourselves. The many single-celled creatures that pass through this existence with us help us accomplish this task. When we were infants, we did not do this. We took nutrients directly into us through the blood in the umbilical cord. Our mother's blood. We were a part of her. We were within her, constructing ourselves. She was constructing us. In some ways we were made of pieces of her-- genetically similar pieces-- and pieces of our father that were made to live within her. In other ways we are made of pieces of our ancestors. Genetic material similar to them, pieces of them, traits and features of them. The mitochondria, in particular (power plants of the cells) were passed down from our maternal line. All the women down that line shared those mitochondria. Mitochondria are also something that lives within us. They are their own thing, with their own RNA, but they live within our cells. Without them, our cells would lack the energy to live. They are similar to chloroplasts in plants. From ancient times, mitochondria established an alliance with cells, to perpetuate themselves by being a part of a larger cell. The cells have DNA of their own. The DNA tells the cells how to make an individual creature, and in each cell of that creature is a mitochondria. Something else that lives in that cell and provides energy so that the rest of the cell's work can occur. So we can exist.
We exist in this moment, but we do not know all that we are-- all the separate impulses toward existence that come together to make us what we are. Alive. In this moment. A continuance of things begun far before us. A blip in the massive arc of time and the manifestation of life in the form of self-replicating cells. Self-replicating elements of cells. So many discrete things come together to make us possible. We are not even dimly aware. We are in this moment. Alive. Amazing, really.
We are on this planet. A planet with the distance from the sun and the atmosphere necessary for our kind of life. A precise planet. A planet just exactly like we needed. A planet teeming with all sorts of life. Mind boggling, intricate, complex, fecund life. Whole classes of living things that have existed and ceased to exist. Previous versions of what we see around us today. Previous versions of us. We are possible because of an amazing synchrony of just the right things at a planetary scale. Outside of this bubble there is space. Cold and airless. Below us is a molten core, teeming with heat and energy. Both capable of squashing our existence. Both held in balance by the thin crust of earth, water and atmosphere that stands between them, in which we exist. How can this be so? Because it is. Even the most unlikely things become 100% probable once they exist. But the blobs of molten rock spinning about the young sun, the coalescence of gases around a steaming sphere suspended in the blackness of space, the collision of a fairly large celestial body and the expulsion of a blob that became our moon, tethered to our gravity, the eventual condensation of oceans and the tidal effects of the moon, the eventual emergence of single celled organisms and, down the line, down the line, plants to oxygenate the air, animals to breathe the plant waste product, oxygen, and-- in time-- animals with senses, with vision (wondrous thing), with smell, with touch, with taste and hearing-- none of this seems particularly likely to me. But it happened. It is why we are.
And we are in this moment, which we cannot fully understand. A moment of life. Life! Amazing.
And we are our conditioning. Our experience in this world has taught us to expect certain things, to see things according to norms, to perceive as we were taught to perceive. We have learned by positive example and by negative experience. We are a complex tangle of intersecting and sometimes conflicting conditioning. Conditioning of which we are not fully aware, but that colors our perception of this remarkable world in which we take part. Our conditioning also creates this moment. Our experience and perception of this moment, which we do not fully understand.
And we are members of a society and culture. We have our own subculture within that culture. We have many very human, constructed, decided-upon, customary things that make up our lives, our moments. We are not fully aware of how these things change who we are, what we experience. They help create this moment. Whether we know we are influenced or not, we are. We are marionettes in the web of our influences. All is influence. Culture and society move on inexorably, with our without us. They emerge from us, wherever humans gather together. They are us and greater than us. They are more than the sum of their parts. And yet, where the parts die they fade away. In the end, amassed power, wealth, technology and influence decide who we will be, how we will live, who will live, what our moments will be like. We are trapped in this moment, surrounded by our things and other people with their things and groupings of people in corporations and systems and their things and political bodies and their things and militaries and their things and so on and so forth and all these things influence and determine each other. They also make this moment, in which we exist, which we do not fully understand.
Societies rise and fall, cultures flower and fade, humans continue doing all the things humans do. We can live our lives as well as we can and still, terrible things will be happening everywhere, to other humans-- beings just as amazing as we are. We can seek to correct society's wrongs, but stand a good chance of adding to them. Because we are human. What do humans do? They add and add and add and act and act and act and say and say and say and the rest of the world is changed. How do we change the world? We take it apart and build new things out of it, we kill it, destroy it, replant it, alter it genetically, collect and concentrate things at levels not found in nature, redesign it, add to it, subtract from it. We do not leave it alone. If we did leave it alone, the humans who do not leave it alone will supplant us. If we attack those who despoil the world that sustains us, we will either add to these human problems or we will be destroyed. We can live good lives and benefit others on a small scale, but all those that we benefit will be subjected to unchangeable things on a grand scale. Society has become as inexorable as weather patterns. We can predict it, but we cannot prevent it. We can prepare, we can stock up, we can batten down the hatches, we can protect or own, but the storm will come. We may be spared, we may not, but the most we can do is to do as little as possible. We must not add to the things that destabilize this grand and awesome moment in which we exist-- so improbable! We must not be a part of anger or greed or exploitation or outsized desires. We also must not think to change human nature or save the world. These things are out of our hands. We have this moment-- inconceivable and wondrous. Life.
We have imaginations and ambition. We can imagine a better world. We can even fight like Che Guevara for these glimmering in our minds. We may even succeed. But in time, humans doing human things will supplant even the most perfect of societies and we will be back to the same problems. Humans doing human things, ad nauseum, ad infinitum, in every corner of the planet.
But for the fact that we seize the grandeur and grace of this moment, we would do the same thing. But we appreciate that we are a small, small part of something unimaginably huge. Beyond comprehension. We are amazed at our own existence, the privilege of breath and thought. We will not squander our time with blind human pursuits. We will be in this moment, with all living things. We will live in a deep appreciation for all beings, all people, creatures and things with whom we share this existence. Because it is beyond comprehension that we even get to be here. This is amazing. We are alive! We can think! We can be aware of our selves! What else can compare?
We are emotion. We can chart the peaks and valleys of our existence based on those swings between love and loss, comfort and want, wonder and disappointment, dream and disillusionment, connection and isolation. Sometimes there are vast feelings of unity that come upon us when faced with a beautiful view, a quality of light when the sun is just setting and all is transformed, a work of art, a song a feeling of communion with a group of like-minded people, an exquisite taste or a sublime smell. We are sensory and chemical creatures. We can be transported or dulled by our experiences. Our nerve endings crave stimulation or relief and the shift between these two extremes can cause the most memorable of our moments.
But under all of that, we are still in this moment. We are something else, something more basic. The self, or internalized point of view, that is experiencing this moment. The world moves around us, but something stays the same. If we can be that self, that still point around which all things turn, then we can be truly *of* this moment. We can intuit, beyond the reach of thought and sensation, what we truly are, what a moment truly is, how it can be perceived as unperceivable, how it can be sensed as beyond sensation, how it can transcend probability and space and time and existence and even being and be that unnameable thing at the core of all that is. Empty and yet unfathomably full. Here and now and yet nowhere and never. All we ever really have and nothing. Us and no-one. Unity and multitudinous possibility. The answer and no answer at all. The abscence of a need for an answer. The center. The everything.
Where does it all come from? We don't know.
It is amazing.
Just to be clear-- we know nothing.
