The Story

Life Is Holistic

THE MICROCOSM REFLECTS THE MACROCOSM.

As Above, So Below

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Nature is the key to understanding everything. Life, living systems, nature, the cosmos….Through an interdependent, complex, coherent, intelligent, self-organizing, cooperative, participatory and highly creative dynamic exchange, transformations and transmutations emerge in living systems at multiple levels in every moment. It is ever-alchemic. In addition, every manifestation is a “story”: form, imbuing qualities, living out patterns and cycles, on an evolutionary trajectory. Everything is a story, including you.

THE CRUX OF THE STORY:

1. Life operates holistically and Nature exemplifies all answers.

2. Every entity embodies a unique story and trajectory.

3. Every entity is connected and evolves through relationship.

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Nature operates alchemically because every system interrelates with every other and, through these relationships, emergent phenomena occur. This is key to understanding HOLISM. What is holism? Watch these two very different shorts to get a glimpse.

The wolves here serve the whole ecosystem – physically, concretely. The breadth of impact from one species – scientific and undeniable.

The birds here serve the whole story – numinously, ambiguously. Through co-participatory relationship and process, an awakened and holistically-oriented mind sees the patterning of blackbirds, gets curious if meaning (beautiful-sounding music) is being reflected, and creates what Nature has presented. The correlation observed by an open mind – creative and unbounded.

The Web of Life

Whether in the form of a universe or galaxy, a planet or an ecosystem, a human or an animal, a mineral or a microbe, thought processes or consciousness, every living system – whether material or immaterial – is dynamic, complex and creatively ignited by way of our immense relational web.

With every relationship, life engages, pulses and flows, in rhythm and pattern, in a paradoxical dance between maximal individual freedom and maximal collective order. When allowed, this self-organizing non-linear ebb and flow maintains and nurtures the conditions for life… to thrive.

When dominated, the dance adjusts, becomes extreme, as Nature re-establishes balance in the flow. We experience this extremity with a multitude of life systems: climatic, ecological, financial (also a living system), the physical body, and – most critically, as it sits at the foundation of all external manifestations – the human psyche.

It all comes down to relationships.

Relationships

Life equals Relationships. Every material and non-material expression of life intersects with innumerable others within every moment. Entities and energies come into contact with one another and forever alter both themselves and the Other.

It is the nature of relationships: it is the nature of Nature. Transmutation. Awakening to the multiplicity, quantity and quality of the continual convergence helps us understand the profound, deep, broad and complex Web we live in, within, from and to.

The In-between

At the point of intersection between every single relationing event is the mysterious and ineffable “In-between”: the potentiality border – fuzzy, non-distinct, present moment, fluid. There is a merging that happens where no clear boundaries exist. This is because they don’t. Like a fractal that has no end and no distinct border: it is infinity. Here lives the fertile ground for symbiosis, unspoken communications and creative unfolding. The Whole is found here, whether we are conscious of the experience or choose to remain numbed to the numinous nature of Life at every turn (literally) – it exists. The “In-between” is Unity within the structure of polarity.

Holistic Wisdom

Our modern Science-Education-Social story denies “the in-between”. There is no validity in it, as it cannot be seen. It is non-material. It consists of experiences and qualities and inner responses. And these invisible uncountable un-thing things are invalid, at least according to those who are attached solely to the Cartesian mechanism-focus and the Galilean quantities-focus and the Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest and competition constructs.

What this last 400 year story is now bringing to great clarity for us is how fundamentally insane (mentally deranged or irregular) that view is. It is insane because it is incomplete. It is a partial reality. Assessing life simply through reduction, analysis and material quantities is not reflective of Reality. Before the science story, at at the foundation, sits the organized religion story: this began the Self and Other separation, and in extreme hierarchical relationship. Humans, now left separate from and ‘lower’ than the Divine, were now powerless. This unnatural non-equanimous imbalance birthed the need to dominate and control. This was the understandable response for humans, as Nature (humans are Nature) always seeks equanimity and balance in its dynamic flow.

Well before this narrowing of the human relationship to Life, and its fullness and sensual essence, we understood and lived very differently. We lived communally and closer to Nature; and these direct relationships reflected Nature itself. Life was seen, experienced, and understood as connected. We lived in a way that was non-distracted. There was clarity and full perception as to what was so; what was Real. Importantly too, how we understood the world was whole: we analyzed alongside intuiting, we sensed our environment alongside the allowance of our emotional guidance tool. We were participants in the life experience. All was allowed to be and flow.

This more intimate connected relationship to Nature-Cosmos is evidenced by the intricacies, stories and developments within ancient wisdom traditions from all over the planet. Great insights and profound discoveries were gained by being connected, understanding the Whole, and mindfully observing Nature. Over thousands of years, from oral societies to written, and without advanced technology, substantial and accurate knowledge was accessed about the nature of Life and our role in it.

It is this whole knowing, this holistic wisdom, that is the future of The Self.

Nature – Take a Dive

These images were created by the award-winning German microscopy team Eye of Science, comprising photographer Oliver Meckes and biologist Nicole Ottawa.

A Primula Petal