This is a repost of a post I made 2 years ago. If you're fair dinkum, you mightl identify with it:
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There is something undefinable.
Christians tend to personify it and call it God. Buddhists talk of Karma - a kind of cosmic law of cause and effect. You can call it the Universe or nature or even a set of numerical constants that define something about the way things are, but as soon as you attach a label, it devalues it to a system of preconceptions, semantics and prejudices.
Taoists don't dare define it, although the Tao has been translated as the way, or just how things are, or the natural harmony of the universe. All words create ripples in the Tao that just add confusion, and hamper true understanding.
Something very cool happened last night. People went outside and looked at the night sky. Now in the past, I have had some of my greatest insights while observing the night sky, including meteor showers. Pick a secluded bush location without lights or noises and you suddenly become aware of being just a part of the cosmos.
It's a strange feeling - very peaceful with little ripples of emotions such as awe accompanied with an almost unworldly clarity of thought. You lose track of time and things that are otherwise inscrutable just click into place. The grand scale and emptiness of the cosmos becomes something that is a comfort, not a threat, because you become part of that greater whole.
- and no - I don't do drugs. My drug is life.
So I don't know whether to call it God or Gaia, but even to express it in words is to cheapen the experience. Sacred books and their authors through the years have probably tried to capture that which is wild and magnificent.
I've seen Elk and deer on moutainsides in remote parts of Canada, I've heard Pitjinjara people speaking in excited tones in their native language about one rocky landmark or another in the middle of the Tanami desert. I've seen wild whales plying their way through the ocean.
I can read about it of course, but spirituality is to sacred books as wild deer on a mountain top is to 25 year old canned venison. It's a bit stale and non vital.
Somehow there is something missing.
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Some of the regulars will get sick of me recycling this verse from the prologue to the Diamond Sutra, but for me, it says it all. I see the emptiness of the universe to be somehow peaceful and wonderful. Some see it (and death) as a threat.
Quote:Everything changes, everything passes,
Things appearing, things disappearing.
But when all is over - everything having appeared and disappeared,
Being and extinction both transcended.
Still the basic emptiness and silence abides,
And that is blissful peace