Wholeness and the Navigational System

Wholeness is simply a word that points to what can’t be conveyed with words. However, I’ll do my best to point towards wholeness in this prose; however, what I am writing about can never be eternal wholeness.

Wholeness is undivided, immeasurable, and includes all. Every plant, animal, river, stream, mountain, valley, forest, desert, and you and I thread together in kaleidoscopic impermanence within an immeasurable wholeness. Even the stars, dark matter, and galaxies flow together, and everything in between lies within wholeness. In this ultimate reality, there are no distinctions, forms, you, me, or other. There is simply wholeness — an all-pervading oneness.

Stopping to see one thing, I see wholeness. This is presence. There is nothing else. There lies no good or bad, right or wrong, or expectations. There is no arriving at or getting better or worse. Even if one doesn’t see wholeness, one is still whole.

All thoughts and beliefs dissolve in awareness, with no motive or try. They are no more than mambo jumbo. The kingdom of god, or wholeness, lies within, all around, everywhere. In this presence, all manifestations are seen as an ever-flowing energy lowing as an undivided stillness. Here, love flows without a thought in the stillness of presence, the unknowable source, the immeasurable essence of wholeness. Truth and love arise when the personal ego is not.

All is wholeness, and the expression of that wholeness is nothing but love. In wholeness lies no divisions nor delusions. Wholeness is complete, silent, perfect, flowing through all.

Wholeness is presence and is truth, for it is unmovable, unchangeable, is and transcends all. There is no arrival here or progress.

Wholeness is and has always been and will always be you. In wholeness is oneself. There is only now. A presence beyond time and space for time and space is just a way of measuring.

— — -

I sit in a small park nestled in a small town in Vermont. Cars rush by. People rush by. A few people stop and also sit. The air is already warm though it is still early this mid-July morning. The summers keep getting hotter. I hear robins but few other birds. Here are my contemplations this morning. Please forgive me if, at first, the things I write go off on different tangents. In closing, I hope you see that they all come together.

The Idea of a Personalized Self getting better or improving is not True. There is No True Self. The self is a dream.

• We have adapted ourselves unknowingly to an incredibly dysfunctional cultural system. This system is thousands of years old. It now spans the entire globe. Many people think that this is the way humans are supposed to live.
• Our culture believes that human beings are naturally violent, poverty is just how things are, wars have always happened, we are supposed to compete against other people, and continual growth on a limited planet is natural. I can keep going down the list of beliefs about human beings inherent in our cultural mythology. None of these beliefs are true.
• In our cultural mythology, we are taught that there is something inherently wrong in us and that we must strive to do better or think that a God will save us.
• In our cultural mythology, we are taught that we are selves separate from the Universe.
• From the idea that we are separate selves, psychological fear enters the picture, and a need to control, manipulate, and destroy anything a threat is normalized.
• Hierarchy is not natural. Diversity is natural.
• Our culture has the belief that the world was created for human beings. The world was not made for human beings. Evolution is a flow of interrelationships changing through time. All species are essential to the great web of life. This belief that the earth is for human beings has led us to destroy the very home in which we need to survive. Saying that the world was created for human beings would be just as insane as the world was created for kangaroos.
• Our schooling system makes children compete against each other to be placed into a cog within the system — the cog being work. Also, one is taught that one has the potential to climb the class ladder to find success. One is rewarded or punished with a grading system that has nothing to do with learning but fear-based memorization. One’s authentic voice, wonder, and curiosity are institutionally pushed down, and one builds an “ego” full of defenses and urges to be better than or feel worse than other community members due to the dysfunction of how one is parented and educated.
• All species evolved in complex relationships with everything around them. There are no higher or lower species in nature. Having a larger brain doesn’t make one better than any other species, just like having wings doesn’t make one better or higher up on a human-created hierarchy of nature. That condors can fly long distances on thermals without moving their wings, peregrine falcons can fly fast while diving or penguins can fly through the water, but that doesn’t make them better than other birds or other species. They have evolved to live and thrive in their multifaceted habitat.
• Evolution has equipped all species through genetics passed down from generation to generation, mutation, relational diversity, and adaptation to thrive within the complex domains of the ecosystem in which they live. This is no different than the differences between apes in which we are another branch. Gorillas and chimpanzees have adapted to the habitats in which they live. They are no better or worse than us.
• Human Beings are interwoven with all other species within ecological systems. Every species is important to the overall health of the system. All species, from certain bacteria to certain fungi, plants, or animals, are exactly what they are supposed to be in regard to evolution. All species have evolved with all other species, and all species are deeply interwoven in a multiplicity of relationships within a larger ecological system that is also evolving.
• There is nothing wrong or sinful in human beings.
• Human beings were not always at war. In fact, for most of their history, they lived in health and relative peace in small groups across many different ecological habitats.
• Regarding evolution, we evolved to have what our culture terms the ego. A better word may be the body/mind navigational system. It is a complex system that helps us survive, live, and thrive individually and collectively with each other and the planet. This navigational system which enables us to imagine, communicate, problem solve, measure, travel, and protect ourselves from threats, is not a personalized self.
• In a healthy culture, this system will perceive itself as a self, but with flexibility and can quiet when not needed.
• When needed, it is activated. When it is not needed, it quiets. This system is no less important than the blood flowing through our veins, organs, bones, and muscles. It is not a personalized self. It helps organisms survive and live well individually, collectively, and with nature.
• This navigational system is not always on high alert in a healthy culture as it is in our culture. It doesn’t fashion a strong sense of self-identification as a separate self. It can be quiet when it is not needed. In this quiet, one can experience a union with wholeness, a universal consciousness that flows through all.
• Yet, this is still not non-dual wholeness.
• All cultures are dreaming about how to be together, which still implies duality.
• In a healthy culture, an individual is truly an individual. Individual means undivided and whole.
• In a healthy culture, there is a heaven state where one’s foundational connections feel good and light.
• There is no strong sense of a personalized self, for one is considered part of the human and ecological community. There is no becoming a better human being. There is no idea that human is flawed, just like a tiger or a gazel are not flawed.
• A healthy culture helps the individual and collective flourish and allows the navigational system to interact with intelligence and learned wisdom.
• A healthy culture sees children as whole and gives space for play, wonder, and exploration. There is no measuring a child, and learning is not graded, but each child can process the world in his or her way.
• In a healthy culture, the community helps raise the children, and people live together in openness, similar values, and helpfulness.
• In a dysfunctional hierarchal system such as ours, we have created the idea of a separate personalized self-called ego that is flawed, and we need to suppress and push down, especially unwanted feelings or thoughts. We have created the misconception that we have a personalized ego and can become better and grow into higher levels of consciousness. From this illusion, this egoic self can even have an individualized soul and go to heaven or hell based on your belief.
• In a dysfunctional hierarchal system, a human being is brought into a toxic world in which it has to fight to live well within the confines of what this society says is success. It is told through the familial and educational system that this self needs to become somebody and follow authority, not its intelligence, to find an economic role to better itself and succeed.
• In our dysfunctional hierarchal system, a human being is taught that hierarchy is natural and that mankind has always been at war and is inherently violent. We are taught that a hierarchal economic system in which only a few hold most of the wealth is the best and only system to have and that as a separate self, you need to pull up your bootstraps, no matter your situation, and rise the violent ladder of competition for your success.
• Our psychological issues reflect a toxic, dysfunctional culture perpetuating drama and trauma.
• Suppose we can understand that this personalized self is not who we are and can observe its enculturated distorted personalized thinking directly. In that case, we can see that all thoughts and feelings are not personalized self. It is a system that has been put on high alert, is scared, feels separated, and is lost in its protective programs. Seeing this, we begin to let go. Seeing this, letting the navigational system know we are okay allows it to quiet. As it quiets, truth, the underlying reality of all that emerges. Another word for the underlying reality is Wholeness.
• In the quiet, seeing becomes clear, listening becomes apparent, and the right action flows naturally. Our navigational system then arises naturally when needed and is not personalized. Here, an authentic, genuine, interconnected way of living happens spontaneously, for it is who one is.
• Instead of reacting, one acts by not doing. There is no try or becoming. There is no personalization, so one is now in flow with what is. This is waking up. This wholeness is you and has always been you. Let our navigational system relax and quiet and not personalize it. In this not doing, right action takes place.
• Not personalizing or thinking I am somebody special, important, better, or worse. I see the world as it is. I see in wonder the amazing ecological systems that I am connected with. I see all other creatures as beautiful in their unique ways and how they are all interwoven into a great earth system.
• I see that our earth system is connected to a solar system connected to a galactic system connected to other galaxies into a grand universal wholeness.
• Because I am not personalizing, I see I don’t need much. I see that joy arises in community and connection and being free.
• Everybody is whole, even if our culture says otherwise. If our culture is saying something, as it is fear-based and dysfunctional, it is most likely not true.

— — -

Enculturated thought is measurement and is built from past knowledge and experience developed out of the conditioning of a cultural belief system. Our enculturated thought is fragmented, measuring, and divisive, creating conflict within oneself and projecting dysfunction upon the world. It looks into the past and imagines itself in the future. Thought can never be present. Enculturated thinking can only point to something but is never the actuality. Only in the quiet, without the noise of thought, can wholeness be lived. The irony is that wholeness is always present, everywhere and nowhere. Our conditioned thinking imagines us away from being in wholeness.

Suffering comes from believing one is separate from what is creating a collective delusion that there is a separate ego with something wrong inherent in that self—suffering developed when we, as children, were slowly taught to suppress our wonder and awe, our curiosity and creativity, and to follow authority’s structure and curriculum. We are conditioned to fight against a perceived other and taught to believe that we are separate independent beings. Suffering comes when we construct a culture based on hierarchy and power instead of interconnectivity and community.

Yet, the beautiful thing is that at any moment, if one can stop and let go of thought and the mind quiets, one can discover the true nature of themselves, wholeness, and be free of our dysfunctional cultural conditioning. Of course, this may seem impossible, for we have become so conditioned to becoming stuck in identity, attachment, belief, and fragmented thought. And it is easier than one may think. Just stop holding onto thoughts. Listen and when a thought comes in, don’t hold onto it and keep returning to listening.

Listen to what lies underneath thought.

Instead of reacting, be in what is without motivation to get aware of what is happening within oneself without labeling it. Keep coming back to awareness. Not I am this or that, for that is not it. The awareness that is beyond the word awareness. See that every belief, identity, or thought is not you. At first, this will seem difficult as thoughts may seem all over the place and moving so fast. Just observe. Notice what arises. You may notice being uncomfortable, and fear begins to arise as you go deeper into the journey of self-exploration. As awareness sees that thought is not the I Am, the illusionary self will try to hold on for dear life. Breathe and continue in awareness, for even psychological fear is an illusion. Keep awareing until nothing is left but truth.

The paradox is that we find ourselves in truth by not trying to get to wholeness but by letting go of everything false. As Tolstoy shared, “Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.”

We are truly nobody. No-body. We are not the body nor the mind. Both of these are impermanent and will pass away. One is beyond any form, identity, or idea. Everything flows in wholeness. One can’t escape wholeness, for how can one escape the true nature of oneself?

Wholeness can’t be described or contained in language, science, or mathematics. Wholeness is another word, such as God, Tao, Wanka Tonka, Allah, or Buddha nature. They are simply pointers. Wholeness removes the distortions that have become those words used to describe what can’t be measured.

Wholeness has nothing to do with personal growth or being better or worse. It has nothing to do with spiritual development. All those ideologies are illusions.

Positive “self” thinking takes you away from wholeness

just as much as negative “self” thinking does.

All is present. All is wholeness. Wholeness is all. Wholeness is presence. That is all there is. All else is an illusion.

All are included, one is all, and all is one.

Here one sees that in the immeasurable, time can’t exist for time is measurement.

There is no fear nor ideas of power or conquering, for there is no separation.

All species, including humans, are seen not in hierarchy but in an interdependent co-arising flow. Love is — not forced or even tried.

Here, one can’t help but love, for love flows in isness.

And here in that flow, life is seen fully, and suffering falls away like mist.

i sit and listen

i see that wholeness is

even if one doesn’t see it

one is whole

here a quiet

melts into quiet

and I am alone with it all

yet nothing exists in isolation

and senses and forms

dance in an interdependent

co-arising that flows

wholeness is there

and yet beyond it

fragmentation happens

when we think we are separate

yet

one can never separate from presence

separation is an illusion

Photo by Callum Shaw on Unsplash

“The Tao is that from which one cannot deviate; that from which one can deviate is not the Tao.” Chung Yung

Paradoxes within Paradoxes