Peace In The Present

 

Mayhap the old ways were better. Yet our history certainly does not show it to be so. The struggle to get here, now, for each of us, through the long lineage of our ancestry, is replete with hardship and strife. But there was also love. And there was happiness. All of it was felt, somehow, in however small a measure. Still, it is, however, the now, for now, that is at issue.

Sunlight. Rain. A bird. A deer. An insect. A dust bunny. A dry leaf. A blossom. Each little thing can be fascinating. If catharsis be a release from the self, as well as a connection with a greater whole, then our focus on each little thing, now for now, is a release from the very struggle of chronic pain, chronic worry, chronic unfairness, chronic grief. We might else but smudge every precious remaining moment of life into dearth and despair, were we not to practice this little delight of finding pleasure, release, gratitude, or joy in the daily diurnal of our very existence.

Existing everywhere, holons are micro and macro realizations of matter, concept, and recognition. Not seeing atoms, we yet are given to understand their existence. So too for molecules. So too for quarks and quirks. So too for fractals. (And yet, once fractals are noticed, like someone pointing out a particular beetle, they are everywhere). So too for the life-gleaned theories of others that delineate our existence, that hold fascination: A rubric; a pentacle of virtues; a theory of positive disintegration; a theory of spiral dynamics; a theory of four agreements; an eight-part template of moral choices; an enneagram of personality and character; and one has choice. In a comprehensive integral theory, we comprise parts of all and everything; at issue is what our differentiating degree of habituations are. What are our small meme choices, let alone our Large Meme cohesions? In this last measure, we do indeed curtail or advance our enlightenment. It can take much courage and conviction afore one can readily commit to a new paradigm. For some, a conversion can be virtually instantaneous; a rebirth, as it were. But given that we are purported to be parts of the whole, we might deny our own entirety at the risk of misunderstanding our own role of become progressively integrative, altogether.

Which part of Everything, is not? It is an age-old question. And the societies of yore (even the smallest of groups before the Sumerians,) had slowly but surely to incorporate a larger and larger world as the inevitable amalgamation of the inclusion of others spread and spread across the globe. Yes, war and strife and opposition and genocide and horrors and travesties and mans’ inhumanity to man grew and grew. We do not easily give in to the usurper. We do not easily give in to the heretic. We do not easily give in to the despoiler. We do not easily change. We do not easily give up our gods. We do not easily go beyond our beliefs.

Yet in each moment of all that went before, there too was sunlight, rain, birds, beetles, creatures, and insects. And there was love. We best trust that our own lineage was not necessarily just the product of rape and despoilment and despair and devolution. We can conceive that there was passion and love and care and delight and hope and a sense of progress and purpose. It all brought us to this moment, this very now in which these words reach you. Yes, you. And as you look up from the page, or focus your eyes away from listening to this missive, might you not see even a dust mite, wafting in air, to be as integral a part of our universe as is some distant star?

Peace is in moments. Machines snarling; dogs barking; traffic; people arguing; worldly atrocities; and perpetual problems interfere. Censure hurts. Yet discord and distraction are but integral parts of the whole; our greater and larger sense of acceptance and inclusion can become an integration that will enlighten our days; give peace to our nights. And so, chronic despair, unrelenting pain, or great grief finds not necessarily a surcease, as much as a relevant particularization within a larger whole. And paradoxically, the smallest of things, even a bug, can indeed put one in the larger picture. Peace with the now, and our changing, or not, becomes us.