"It is above, it is below,
it is, in fact, this entire world.
When one knows this, one knows bliss
in the world and in all worlds is free."
-Hindu Upanishad
"All creatures shout God" Meister Eckhart
Nature has two primary definitions:
1. Nature as creature: the birds, bees, land forms, planets, stars and the space comprising this wonderful universe.
2. Nature as Essence.
Nature as Essence is Brahmin, the Self in Hindu while in the Judea-Christian-Muslim tradition, She is Yahweh. Yahweh and Brahmin are Unmanifest and, ultimately, are nameless for there is no point of reference in Infinity. Prior to existence becoming manifest, Desire arises. The desire is to know, to create. Any artist probably knows something of this when she feels a deep yearning in her gut, a not quite formed idea, that eventually becomes manifest in a piece of work. Creativity is the way in which we see ourselves reflected. As an author of fiction, I see myself in my writings.
Desire in the creation myths is often seen as the Father of creation. Thus, Eros, the Lover of the Psyche or Soul, is the first born of the Mother's depths (Tehom in Hebrew, the primordial Waters, or Marie (meaning Ocean)). The whole process of creation is inherent in the term m-other. For God to be known, there has to an other. God has to become manifest, otherwise He/She is limited or not complete. Infinity is limited in that it needs the Finite to complete itself. If there is nothing within you except you within yourself, then how can you be known? You need a mirror image. Thus God creates humanity (and all the creatures) in His image, "male and female created He them." Genesis 1:27.
Thus, creation is sacred, for as Eckhart puts it, "all creatures shout God!." And, I would add, that all creatures mirror each other and contain each other in potential. For example, the radical, self-righteous Christian, Muslim and Atheist all mirror one another in their arrogance. Similarly, if evolutionary theory is correct, inherent in the dinosaur is the bird since it is postulated that the dinosaur morphed into the lovely creatures we have dancing through the trees and flying overhead.
Many people believe that when books such as the Bible begin with lines such as "And the Earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the Deep (Female, Tehom)" they are talking about times past. No, they are talking about the place from which this writing and your reading originate. You can get to this place in meditation. Physicist David Bohm calls this the Unmanifest. The Unmanifest is simply the place before creation. It is the place of infinite potential.
It's our conditioned minds that have us stuck. Even in us liberals, there is an arrogant self-righteousness about our views in relationship to the "other's" views. Maintaining this orientation, we stay stuck. Us vs Them whereas the arrogance of the liberal is a mirror to the arrogance of the conservative. Opposites are mirror images. Go to a mirror and look at yourself. In a mirror, the right is seen on the left and vice versa. Likewise, the female inward pointing genitals (vagina to ovaries) mirrors the male outward (penis and testicles).
It is in the same way that the arrogant atheist mirrors the born again Christian who mirrors the radical Muslim. Thus, it is said to love thy enemy as thyself. What you hate is what you disown in yourself. It is there, within ourselves, that we must move forward.
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