Recent developments in the neuroscience of consciousness have shown that the world we experience (i.e. everything we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste) is a combination of two things: Incoming sensory information from the environment (photons of light, vibrations of air, etc). And our brain’s best predictions about what caused those signals. This means we don’t see the world as it is. Instead, we receive sensory information from the environment (photons, vibrations, etc.,) and then our brain uses our past experiences to predict what that particular configuration of stimuli mean. Then, it puts these two things together (stimuli and predictions) to create a 3D mental representation of the world around us. And we call this reality. Alan Watts put it succinctly when he said:“In a world where there are no eyes, the sun would not be light, and in a world where there were no soft skins, rocks would not be hard, nor in a world where there were no muscles would they be heavy. Existence is relationship, and you are smack in the middle of it.”Niall McKeever, MSc
Change me Divine into one who searches for and sees delight everyday rather than dwelling upon my perceived and often made up troubles, terribleness or thanklessness. All around me are things that can “kill” me with delight and help me to lose myself in wonder. I think of this Spring – am I noticing the buds coming, the growing landscape of increasing green, the new and fresh green of young lives on a tree – a green that shimmers and looks so fresh and new and that only comes each spring? And to just see and feel the grass – the green grass I have been longing to see all winter and here it is sprouting up everywhere becoming lush and thick and I fail to notice? May my prayers be made out of grass – may I see the extraordinary in the ordinary and know it’s all extraordinary – all the wonders, I take for granted that surround me constantly and through which I can see your love pouring forth into the world and into my life. May I instruct myself in joy rather than sorrow. May I simply look, listen and lose myself in wonder, rather than my made up thoughts of misery. May the beauty of the world around me remind me what is true. O Divine, make me mindful as well in order to be well. Mary Oliver
In a very real sense, no person is alone, no man is an island. We are not isolated atoms, each jostling and competing against the rest in a Darwinian struggle for survival of the fittest. Instead, each of us is supported and constituted, ultimately, by all there is in the universe. We are at home in the universe. In this entangled universe, we cannot do violence to our fellow human beings or our fellow inhabitants of the Earth without doing violence to ourselves. And the most effective way to benefit oneself may be to benefit others. Most of all we are not impotent observers outside nature, subject to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Instead, we are participants in the creation drama that is constantly unfolding. We are constantly co-creating and re-creating ourselves and other organisms in the universe, shaping our common futures, making our dreams come true, and realizing our potentials and our ideals. Mae Wan Ho
We are all Interconnected even with the Universe 