A Nucleus on a Globe, The Cosmos & Eternity

“The Chinese conceived the entire universe as activated by two principles, The Yang and the Yin, the positive and the negative. And they considered that nothing that exists, either animate or so-called inanimate, does so except by the ceaseless interplay of these two forces. Yang and Yin, Matter and Energy, Heaven and Earth are conceived as essentially One, or as two coexistant poles of one indivisible whole. It is a philosophy of the essential unity of the universe and eternal cycles, of the leveling of all differences, the relativity of standards, and the return of all to the divine Intelligence, the Source of All Things.” – Bruce Lee’s brilliant summary of Daoism

You’re never anything more than a nucleus through which a whirlpool forms from both ends, but a nucleus in all cases. Remember that next time you inflate yourself beyond your natural scope. There’s wisdom in travelling light; a whale can only move ever so slowly in the ocean, a bird could not ride the winds were it not so free of the burden of immensity, souls could not float to the horizons where the constellations meet the sea, between the Heavens and the Earth, if they cannot break from the matter that binds them. In one sense, souls are always inching ever closer to that Final Bright Light everything returns to, until we're finally released back to the One in our body’s passing. In this sense, God is transcendent, forever out of grasp and however close we may get to the Light of Reality, we always return to and are embedded in our sensuous and bodily experience. In another way our souls are already There, swimming in God's immanence, the Reality's presence in the pulse of all living beings, animate or inanimate. The Light fields the entire Cosmos, in a way bright and untethered life, in another dark and burbling colors, two sides enveloping the same Seed.

Time and Eternity coincide much like the material Body and an incorporeal Mind do. Suppose you hopped in a time machine and went back to the first second of the Big Bang, right there next to the tip of the needle this Cosmos emerged from, and froze time. Now suppose you went back two seconds, to the moment right before the beginning of time and space for that matter! What would the dial on the panel of your time hopping Delorean say? Would ‘when’ and ‘where’ even be relevant questions to ask anymore? Space is a measure of relative positionality, time is only sequential in a changing, temporal Universe that was born just as we are and that Dies just as we do. Eternity on the other hand is neither a participant experiencing the relative unfolding of Time renewing itself into something that it never was, nor a corporeal junkbox for whom directions like left and right, up and down, yesterday or tomorrow, would gain substance. Nope, Eternity or the One oversees the unification of birth and decay just as much as matter and Spirit, the Principle on which all other structures in this Universe depends on, especially Love. God, or the Reality on one hand, and our lives in the material and temporal world on the other, are coexisting in parallel, God is watching, watched and watches this Universe blink in an instant. Existing simultaneously, ‘here and now’ , except ‘here and now’ are only ways of orienting ourselves with regards to one another in this contiguous plane of causal existence and with regards to God. ‘Here and now’ don’t mean anything to an Eternal and necessary Prime Mover. While standing apart from, enveloping, and in genesis of the Universe, we can nevertheless see the Light of the Real in every day life, experience it in the living world and around the carcass of the dying worlds. Despite this, all that we can see in this World has never been what lies within the Seed; the One is the necessary and indivisible Whole on which this whole Cosmos depends on for sustenance and existence, consequently, the One that lies above the Arch, is independent of All, and the unifying Principle of All -- giving neither birth to nor being birthed by another, the One that stand apart and above All Else.

However close, however far, the choice of the living and dying worlds are within and all-around us. Our History stands a testament to that, moments of peaceful and just love, bright summer afternoons with Friends, well-lived days of communion and care; but also days of ravaging war, dehumanizing neglect and vilification, snares of iron and satin, genocidal imprints of the blind lead by the bloodthirsty. Our History is always ours to form, our individual fates are never distinct from the fate of the Collective, our choices and actions carry with our peoples, our people, but also the People, all the other souls in your community, in your territory, on the Globe and under the Sun. They all share the same Fate, all their lived experiences are in constant communication and co-creation. How we relate to this revisted notion of a relational Self, how we relate to our own soul, and to the World Soul we are in communion with, matters. We can only ever Love and Suffer so far out, trust and be brave so deep inwards; otherwise it’s just overwhelming. Nevertheless the Reality of this Global and eventually the Universal ecosystem is one of collective Love and Suffering. Of caring empathy for its inhabitants’ joy and misery. Choosing to authentically Love the souls that are like and in indivisible communion with us, all the humans, animals and environments our hearts are inclined by natural propensity to care for - also means loving those souls when they call on us for action or support when their wellbeing is being threatened. See, it's a hard truth to act on, to know very well that Their joy and misery, all of theirs, is inescapably, unavoidably and necessarily our Own. Okay 1. That’s heavy dude. Who in their right mind would commit their lives to the wellbeing of the entire living world!? Sounds more manageable when we remember we’re just a nucleus. Housed in a little self–sufficient organism of living beating flesh. My heart can only stretch so far out, and yet to live for expanding the breadth and depth of our Love is a cool purpose. We’re each responsible for our own little circles of care, our people, our parents, our brothers and sisters, the people we have chosen to relinquish our capacity to choose to Love for. We don’t have to carry all the burden of our connective and living fabric, that’s what Allah is here for! God’s Mercy and Love is so miraculous. Nevertheless acknowledging our propensity to care for the Worlds that cradle and raise Us, is also quite miraculous. This World can be polluted by the fog of human insensitivity and cruelty in the face of collective suffering, and every one of us is equipped to care for it a little bit more.

Amelia Earhart vanishes!

She was born in Atchison, Kansas in 1896. Her nickname was Pidge and loved being a tomboy; she spent the school year with her grandparents in Atchison where she used to love climbing trees and hunting. In her high school yearbook, she was referred to as “A.E.- the girl in brown who walks alone”. In 1917 she volunteered for the Red Cross as a nurse for WWI soldiers at Toronto’s Spadina Military Hospital. In 1918 she saw an airplane for the first time at a stunt exhibit show. 1921 Earhart attended a year of pre-med at Columbia University until she rode on an airplane for the first time during a vacation visiting her father. Having been struck by a love for flight, she drops out of Columbia, completes flying lessons, buys a Kinner Airster, and names her “the Canary”. Her first flying lessons were with Neta Snook, during which Earhart worked as a truck driver, photographer, and stenographer to save up for her lessons and the Canary. In 1922 Amelia set the world altitude record for female pilots at 14,000 feet. She becomes one of a handful of incredible women to receive an international pilot's license the following year. 1924 she decided to take a hiatus from aviation and worked as an English teacher and social worker for Syrian and Chinese immigrants. On June 17 and 18 of 1928 Amelia, a prominent advocate for female pilots in aviation for the Boston chapter of the National Aeronautics Association became the first female passenger on a transatlantic flight along with Wilmer Stultz and copilot and mechanic Louis Gordon. She protests receiving acclaim however for being the first woman on a transatlantic flight given that “Stultz did all the flying…I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes” and vows to do it alone one day. By 1929 Earhart helped found the 99s Club, the first organization for women aviators. That same year she organized and participated in the women’s air derby race from Santa Monica to Cleveland in a single-engine Lockheed Vega. She became the President of the 99s in 31. Between 1930 and 35 she set 7 women’s speed and distance records, including a speed record of 181.18 miles per hour. In 1931 she finally accepted George Palmer Putnam’s 7th marriage proposal under the pretense that their marriage was a “partnership…of dual control”. The following year Earhart shocked the world by being the first woman and second person ever after Charles Lindbergh to fly solo across the Atlantique. She departed from Newfoundland aiming for Paris but arrived in Northern Ireland instead where they would establish a museum at the spot of her landing. For this momentous achievement, she earned the distinguished Flying Cross from Congress, the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor from the French government, and the Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society from President Hoover. By 1933 after she visits the white house she befriends Eleanor Roosevelt. She was born to fly and in 1935 she became the first person to fly from Honolulu Hawaii to Oakland, California. On March 17, 1937, Amelia and her astral navigator Fred Noonan fly on a Lockheed Electra 10E which she calls the “flying laboratory”. This would be the day of the first leg of what would be the most daring flight known to humankind. She set out to fly along the equator of the Earth and back. She took off in Oakland and landed in Honolulu, Hawaii. By June 1st, 1937 Earhart and Noonan completed almost 22,000 miles of flight across South America, Africa, and India and landed in Loe, New Guinea. On the fated June 2nd, the pair takes off from Lao with their sights on Howland Island, a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean where they plan to refuel. A destination they weren't destined to reach. They lost radio contact with the coast guard in Itasca who received communications that they were lost, their gas was running low and they were flying at an altitude of 1000 feet. One final communication before Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan disappeared. President Roosevelt would later issue a large search and rescue mission for the daring adventurers. Earhart’s companion, George Putnam lead his own searches until October of 1937. Amelia Earhart was never found.

Amelia Earhart really was an incredible human being. So dedicated to her own freedom, everything she ever did was just to fly, up there towards the horizon, where the constellations meet the sea, where there are no borders, no cages no matter how attractive they were, where “everything was comprehensible”. After reading about her life, and watching some movies about her adventures, you could tell the courage, kindness, and unwavering dedication to freedom that propelled her life. She was the type to put a painting of a jungle or the bottom of an ocean on her bedroom wall just so she could face her fear of plummeting to her Death every day, face it straight on, stare right into its ugly mug so that her fear could lose its hold to comprehension. She knew no one could fulfill her life but herself, and yet, she allowed the world to make her who she was. She didn’t let herself be imprisoned in safety, nor in herself for that matter, she just wanted to fly; to cross the oceans every one of us has to cross. She cared more for the sight of the stars than hearing her name spoken among them. Amelia flew through the Sun to reach Heaven, to find out what essence remained once the flames lightened her load. She felt at Home amongst the clouds, among the hands she’s touched and faces she met and loved. She’s so cool.

Order of the Unified Heart

Experience of the living void isn't observant only to self-awareness's unification of the conscious and unconscious mind as the same whole, but also the unification of the Heart through the loving feat of reconciling both its halves. The first half is the pulsating propensity of naive hearts to rejoin the oneness of the Heart that contains them, the womb that surrounds them, it's our hearts counting down towards Death. The second half is the indomitable urge to protect the living flames we call love, to ensure this heart, and the hearts of our people keep beating, that we survive this fickle life, that we make it through at the end of the day above the thick mud and get to look up at the stars; it's our Hearts beating for Life. The urge to rejoin the Heart that we find our love entwined with, is an urge to burn in the forge of creation, an urge to destroy or create one's self, to fly through the Sun to reach Heaven, it is the call of our spirits for freedom through nihilation. The urge to secure our basic needs, to survive, us and our people, is most genuinely, a desire to protect whom we love from this material dunya. We have to be true to both aspects of our hearts to truly surrender to the living void, the part that wants to fade in the embrace of love, and the part that wants to survive the erasure of its individuality, to simply live.