Foundations: Session Five

Nature Part 3: completes Emerson's Nature essay by exploring discipline and idealism.

Session Summary - Nature as Discipline

Paul: I think what Emerson means by Discipline is synchronicity: natural events where internal and external conditions come together in meaningful coincidences. This can be anything other than your ego. Your own efforts have little to do with it. Its the events in our life that teach us: ordinary things like shopping or buying cars. Emerson would have considered these all natural events. Another example is our buying a car last week. We desperately needed a new car, so when Bev's friend at work phone about their parent's car, we jumped at the chance. A deal for $750.00. Friends kept telling us to get it checked out before we bought, but I figured I'd been lucky with cars before, so I didn't bother. I've always had cars given to me or bought them for dirt cheap. And I pass this good fortune on. I think I started thinking that because I was faithful in this, the universe would bless me. I became Mennonite. As it turns out, when we did take it to the mechanic, after we bought it, the entire floor board was so rusted you could stick a screwdriver right through it. Lucky for us the owners took it back and ripped up our cheque. This was a little reminder to me that we don't earn our good fortune...or our bad. Its not about shame, but about the lesson that we don't control the universe.

Bev: I see so many people putting tons of effort into deals, saving money. Its very Promethean actually.

Cal: Yeah, and we seem to like to attribute good luck to our self-effort and bad luck to the universe.

Paul: We need to remove the judgement on it. Other lessons in the car episode were the kindness of people, the relief of it actually not going through (it was too good to be true, something had to go wrong).

Another aspect that Emerson stressed on Nature as Discipline is the principle that what is true of one kind of organization is true of all. The bullshit that I saw when I was a minister is the same kind of bullshit that Lorna encounters in the school system. When you look for the commonality, you start to value individuals more. You begin to recognize what doesn't matter. All organisms are actually the same, become one.

Janice: Buddhism would say that differences are illusions. The line about "if you meet Buddha on the road, kill him" is saying that if you see Buddha as other than yourself, that's an illusion you have to get rid of.

Eldon: Why have variety then?

Paul: A sense of different-ness is a step in the way. Its like the Kabbalistic myth of creation as the One Light breaking into many shards and falling into existence.

Eldon: Then there must be a value in differences. Like time. Time exists to teach us that not everything can happen at once.

Dave: Honoring variety in nature is a discipline too. It trains the rational faculties, to observe and to make classifications.

Eldon: I feel a sense of wonder at all the variety in life, not in the unity. When I hear unity I think of a big pot of stew that's been boiled too long; a brownish sludge that was once peas and potatoes and meat. I like seeing turtles and deer and how they are different. Seeing them as one takes away from the beauty of their uniqueness.

Dave: Connectedness doesn't mean weakness, or watering down.

Bev: Wonder at diversity can bring someone to unity as well. Its amazing to think about what the relationship between the deer and the turtle is. Its not over-simplication.

Paul: Its simplicity on the other side of complexity, not stupidity. Once you've moved through all the variety and complexity, you begin to see the underlying relatedness. Its a questions of context or gestalt. You don't start with a principle but a particularity. Its the circumstances that ask you questions.

Lyle: Principles can seem paradoxical. At work we're having our website redesigned. We out-sourced the work to someone who seemed to understand our goals. But when we saw the result, we realized we should have done it ourselves--eliminate the middle-man. But in the process we learned what we really want and how to cooperate towards that. It was clarifying for us.

Paul: You've learned this at watershed already. Could you have utilized this insight earlier on at the library? Maybe you could have avoided this mistake?

Lyle: I don't see it as a mistake.

Linda: I've often noticed how issues at work reflect what's going on for me at watershed and vice versa. Its as if there is one lesson in two places. Or maybe not even two places, but one big place.

Paul: All things are one. It begs the question, now what?

Bev: I think it means we have to honor each particularity or we miss the underlying diversity. You can get into ideology real easy. Or not really see what's going on because you gloss it over with a too-easy unity. Eldon's stew.

Paul: Emerson once said you see all the universe in a leaf. Life is holographic, its totality is contained in the leaf, but faintly. Reality becomes more vivid as other elements incarnate the whole. Each contains all, but together they augment the depth of life. How its all connected is very important, or else you get a funny mish mash.

Eldon: That reminds me of what I've been reading lately on Quantum Physics. They are trying to find a unifying theory that explains the very small and the very large. All these scientists, mathematicians, evolutionists, physicists, are all coming at that problem from these different angles. They have no synthetic statement yet, but are all working towards the same thing.

Cal: In the Stephen Hawkins series on PBS a few months ago, they talked about duality, that two totally different things are somehow connected.

Paul: This is sometimes called Perennial Wisdom--the interconnectedness of all things, that an underlying wisdom has always been there. If diversity is not honored, you lose the color of life, and paint everything the same. Like an idealogue. A multitude of perspectives gives a clearer picture. This seems like what these scientists Eldon mentioned are doing; honoring diversity while searching for connection.

Janice: That reminds me of a koan I recently read: A master was asked, "Are enlightened people subject to cause and effect? The Master replied, "No", and then was transformed into a fox for five hundred lifetimes. When he eventually returned to human form, he added, "But they are also not blind to causality."

Nature as Idealism


Paul: Critics tend to see Emerson as a rationalist. But his ideas were about man and his ability to elicit nature. We are powerful over nature, because our consciousness changes matter. Ralph doesn't differentiate man from consciousness. Consciousness has dominion over the material world. He believed there was a teleology in the universe--the higher evolution of all things. He also believed the universe had a personality.

Janice: How does consciousness change the material?

Paul: The origin of the universe has a point of view, has affection and personality. It moves the universe forward. Emerson is anthropomorphising nature. I differentiate between absolute and finite aspects of nature; the difference is in limitations.

Lyle: Our highest form of consciousness is similar to God.

Paul: Is it "my" consciousness" or that of a supreme being? I feel more like a channel at those times.

Linda: In relation to Janice's question, a good example happened at work a few years ago. Me and Brenda, a woman I work with, had been in conflict on a stressful project. For me the conflict was related both to work and to personal issues with her. She pushed my buttons. But during a confrontation, for some reason I had a glimpse of her human side. It moved me so much, that I anonymously gave her a white rose. Since then, her and I don't argue in the same way. A basic respect that wasn't there before remains between us. Even though she can still push my buttons. I see this as consciousness changing the material--it directly affects how we work, make things, interact with other people.

Eldon: Personality can speak through a person. Teachers can infuse personality into their teaching, so that it becomes part of their message. Their personality is so strong, they can bullshit and people believe them.

Bev: That reminds me of this workshop I went to the other day. It was on how to have a successful interview. Studies have shown that content, how you answer questions, makes up 7% of the final decision. Your personal image, how you look, talk, the impression you give, makes up 70%.

Paul: It depends on where on the spectrum of consciousness you approach that. I don't see a congruity between who I am and what I look like, but there should be. The collective approach makes judges the person by how they look, and has preconceived ideas about how people should look. But on the higher end, who you are incarnate's itself. This is makes sense; congruity respects individuality.

Bev: When you only look at the surface value, its very uncreative.

Paul: Bring faith, affection, love to analysis. I don't know a thing if I don't love it, be it. Allow yourself to enter its consciousness. If you fear existence, you'll need to affirm the objective/subjective distinction. If you're content (or have faith), you're free to love.

Eldon: When you can't enter someone's world like that, is it because you haven't differentiated enough or don't love enough?

Paul: Both. You must have the capacity to observe difference. It takes discipline, suffering, to really love something.

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