Final Paper for Deep Ecology, Part 1: Personal Myth

Ron Khare

This is who I was:

When the imagination of the Great Unmanifest stirred and brought forth the potential for all of Creation, I came into existence. I am, or was, the expression of pure geometry, crossing lines inside a perfect circle. For a moment I simply existed, one design out of the nearly infinite possible designs. Then the Creator breathed life into the world, and I began to vibrate – I became alive.

This design is called, among other things, the “sun cross.” Like the sun, it has a radiant center that spreads energy outwards, intense and unrelenting. From a distance, or when it is small, it gives and nourishes life. Embedded in every design was motion; underlining each of my brother and sister shapes were unexpressed values of energy. Mine looks something like this:

The sun cross is a repeating design – at mathematical intervals the circle and cross reappear. Exponentially.

As I became alive, more and more alive, I expanded and grew. My power grew with me, as I began to crowd out my brother and sister designs. Each jump to a larger form expanded my vision – I started smaller than an atom, and soon grew to the size of an ant, the ocean, the planet, the sun, the solar system. My vision became cosmic as I kept growing, expressing my inherit nature, being who I was. My energy became radiant, effulgent, intense, burning. Stars became grains of sand as I hummed, burning brighter. I began to see the edges of Creation, but I grew on – growth was the only thing I knew. I was the Ever-Expanding Sun Cross, and I would destroy all darkness, and with it, Creation itself.

I was close to the Edge, a boundary I had no concept of, when Shiva appeared. He stood, dark and radiant, a terrible and serene mountain, looming like a giant before me. He stood outside of Creation, like it was hardly worth His notice.

I watched in awe – the Divine, the faint light in nothing. He raised his foot and stepped down upon me, like I was nothing more than a tiny pebble or patch of dirt. I was pressed down, down, down…. When He lifted His foot I was the size of a dinner plate. I had become this:

I was stuck! The mandala structure prevented my energy from re-forming in ever-expanding circles. I had known nothing but expressing that value of growth before, but now I simply existed, static but still alive.

I cried, shaken and horrible, and I cried. I went to Shiva and asked to be free of this horrible cage. Why had He done this? What wrong had I committed? I only expressed the potential inherit in my design – if that was wrong, then the fault lay with the Creator, not His Creation! Why should I suffer, being bound forever, for the sins of God?

Shiva sat in silence, absorbed in the Self, and did not hear my cries.

Confusion clouded my being. I no longer knew who I was, and I became muddled. I fell from that lofty realm and began getting mixed up. Who am I, then, if I cannot be who I was? Am I this? Am I that?

I fell into ignorance, and began to incarnate. I passed from rock to rock, plant to plant in what seemed like a blur of lifetimes, each one yielding just one bit of wisdom: “not this.” I lived a lifetime as every plant, and then moved through tiny bugs, ants, spiders.

Each life lived provided more insight, more wisdom: Not this, I’m not this, I’m not this. I moved through the animal kingdom like a joyous race, shedding the skins of misconception. I was not an alligator, not an ape, nor an elephant. I became human after an instant of millions of years, and progressed through humanity, from a crazy beastly person to ever-growing radiance, exploring the darkness of evil and the brightest light of goodness.

I used the last few lifetimes to pierce the veil, to look back upon myself beyond the superficiality of Creation. I explored the forms of the Circle, the Wheel of Dharma. I studied the mysteries of the Cross. I found, in different ways and manners, a way to get back to what I had lost, my Self beyond form. The mandala had prevented me from expanding, so I used my remaining freedom – I turned within.

This could be my final incarnation, as I’ve found my “true” form again. But unlike the mindless expansion when I was young, I carry with me knowledge, experience and wisdom. I have seen this Glorious Creation from every angle, and from the perspective of every living Being.

My lesson, it seemed, was to understand my place and purpose here. I could expand to absorb everything in Creation, but to what end? If Creation brings joy to the Creator, then I should dance in that purpose – I can add to this life by communicating rather than conquering, by playing instead of dominating. Within my form I hold many more, forms that I can nourish and protect inside my circle-with-lines, which is blessed inside of Shiva’s gift.

A coronation occurred when Shiva’s foot pushed me down. My prison was actually a crown, and like a crown it is a symbol, useful but not necessary. The sun cross can safely live outside those boundaries now – I take my proper place among the decorations at Shiva’s glorious Feet.

Final Paper for Deep Ecology, Part 2: Ecosophy Sun-Cross

Without knowing exactly who I am, how can I be expected to know where my place is in the cosmos? Of course, this begs the question: How can you truly know yourself as an independent entity? Arne Naess’ Deep Ecological argumentⁱ about the importance of intrinsic relations between one thing and another (to the point where, without that relationship, those two things are different) seems woefully lacking in the most basic way – that is, what is the relationship between our individual selves and the Unmanifest – the transcendental field, pure consciousness?

Answering such a question is beyond the scope of this paper, but I must insist here that my form, as the sun cross, can exist outside the boundaries of manifest relationships. Now, it does have a relationship with every manifest thing in Creation: Using Naess’ idea of identity-by-relationship, the sun cross has a nearly infinite number of things it could be. Its relationship with the unmanifest, however, shows its purity, and can be summed up thus: “the form is.”

By being confined and made ignorant, and having passed through all the levels of existence (and all the various way of experiencing), the form has matured (or expanded, if you will) into an trans-universal entity. The active memories of being all things may not be present. However, the “proof is in the pudding,” as it were – the design works within itself, radiating power and goodness in a gentle-yet-powerful manner, in harmony with Creation. The fact that such a powerful design has not destroyed the universe is testament to some form of wisdom and self-awareness.

So what does that mean for me? Where do I fit in the human world, and the “more-than-human world?”ⁱⁱ My place is to simply be – radiate light, destroy darkness, protect and nurture the forms I hold inside me, play with those outside of me. I make no real distinction between the natural world (“Nature”) and any other place – Nature is Creation. Man has influenced every bit of the natural world, to greater or lesser degrees – but even then, the sterile lab and the most remote wilderness mountaintop are still Nature, still part of the Creation. Why should I adopt a new “mode of being” between them? Should I be any less myself, or any more myself, in the human or natural worlds? Nonsense.

Understanding this brings me to the true amoral state. The circle is present, fully, in every direction – up, down, left, right, light, dark, good, evil, life, death. Kant’s “beautiful action”ⁱⁱⁱ is beautiful for the Taoist ideal of “wei wu wei”^iv – that is, flowing with the Tao, effortless action. It does not guarantee any particular action, and that is precisely why it makes a terrible basis for solving large-scale societal problems. It’s not anarchy in the truest sense – every individual is bound to the laws of their own hearts. On just the societal level, however, it is pure anarchy.

If I am only bound by my undeveloped sense of self, then I grow to consume the universe. It took an externally-imposed restriction to further my development of self. This external, objective “morality” turned out to be a great blessing, both for Nature (as I would have destroyed Nature without it) and for myself – the universe would not be enjoyable if I was the only thing in it. A similar parallel can be drawn between the undeveloped individual and those externally-imposed ethics as expressed by cultural norms and laws.

The unexpressed morality embedded in trans-personal ecology fails to address this point: some beings are designed, from the start, to kill, to dominate, to grow, to destroy. It seems to be missed on Naess, who, while speaking in Australia in 1984, said “I’m not much interested in ethics or morals. I’m interested in how we experience the world…. Ethics follows from how we experience the world. If you experience the world so and so, then you don’t kill.”^v (emphasis mine) The assumption that we can achieve anything “better” in society than what we have right now by personal “growth” willingly ignores the vast potential in humanity. That is: “I experience the world as such-and-such, and now I kill.”

This is why I agree with Murray Bookchin’s statement: “Nothing could seem more wholesome…. than this “we are all one” bumper-sticker slogan. What the reader may not notice is that this all-encompassing definition of community erases all the rich and meaningful distinctions that exist not only between animal and plant communities but above all between nonhuman and human communities.”^vi This distinction between things is the very essence of life and Creation – everything is One at the Source, so why should we try to merge things together (in a trans-personal sense)? The only reason Creation started at all was to express and explore the concept of duality, of separateness! Laws don’t drive a wedge between man and nature – they serve to highlight the differences.

I believe that we can do more for Nature by strengthening and celebrating these differences, rather than trying to merge and unify under the umbrella of goodness-through-identification. “…it’s certainly possible to provide equality while also living true to your masculine or feminine core.” writes David Deida in The Way of the Superior Man. “For sexual polarity, you need an energetic polarity, an attractive difference between masculine and feminine.”^vii To truly embrace our humanity, however, we have to embrace that destructive tendency to rule and dominate. We have to embrace our isolation, our terrible burden of being Kings and Queens of Nature, if we are to live up to our duality and celebrate Creation as enlightened beings.

Plotkin’s use of Nature as a metaphor for human development seems unfortunate – while we can try to describe an animal’s development in human terms, it always seems somewhat silly, because those descriptions seem to lack a clear understanding of what it is to be that animal. A young cat is just that, not “going through a human-teenager stage of development.” So to describe the transformation process in late adolescence as a “cocoon” may be a somewhat demeaning attempt to artificially merge humanity to the “natural world.” We can use human terms to describe human things.

Humanity is a part of Nature, as much as anything, and I believe it is a disservice to try to fill a perceived lack of connection by attempting to “merge” on a superficial level. The attempt is noble – this is ecology, after all, and we are trying to save the natural world. But moving the heart and mind to a level of identification with the natural world is throwing away our only gift – our very separate and unique individuality.

It is only once this entity we call “me” is strengthened and refined by contrast to the natural world that we come to a place where we can help preserve it. Nature naturally provides the almost endless possibilities, the Other, the vital “I’m not this, I’m not this.” We must fight to preserve the diversity of the natural world – otherwise the ever-expanding humanity will learn the lesson I learned long ago, as Shiva’s foot comes down upon us.

The best so far:

Согласен с автором по поводу информации. = I agree with the author about the information.

Может тоже себе сделать, буду думать.  = It can also make yourself, I’ll think about it.

Себе в закладки поставлю и друзьям посоветую! = Himself a bookmark and put friends advise!

Качественно все сделано, молодцы. = Qualitatively, all done, lads.

Добавляй, я уже давно так сделал и не жалею. = Do not add, I have long since made and no regrets.

Добавлю в закладки тогда, тематика то что нужно. = Add to bookmarks then, the subject thing.

Нашёл, то что искал! Отдельное спасибо за сборники! Нет слов! = Found, what I was searching for! Special thanks for the book! No words!

хороший блог, мне нравятся боевые исскуства!!! = Good blog, I like martial arts!!!

Тоже верно, хотя многие бы не согласились. = Also true, though many would not agree.

Лучше бы сделал, как все говорят. Иногда надо прислушиваться к людям. = It would be better done, as everyone says. Sometimes you listen to the people.

Да по чему бы и нет??!! просто стараться надо иногда. = Yes, on what would not??! just try to be sometimes.

That last one is profound…. just try to be sometimes. Just… try.

(most of these are in response to my “Rebellious Thought of the Day” article, but I have no idea why)

We live on a beach with a million lines drawn in, and people are stepping over them left and right. Without a clear vision of what we want or where we want to go, these lines are meaningless, and the act of stepping over is void of merit.

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