Beauty Dwells Within

As well as surrounding us. We are but a reflection of the divine. Perhaps our apparatus for reflecting creator's love for us has tarnished, perhaps it has a fog or a few pits and cracks. Perhaps all of the above! It is amazing to me that we do as well as we do acknowledging the divine. Some call the force Creator, Great Mother Father God (in Aramaic), Om(in Sanskrit), I'm Partial to Lord and Lady. Whatever this enigmatic "force" is, we can say that it is perhaps just a tendency toward cohesion. Certain atoms and molecules interact with one another based on affiliation (valence), attraction and subtle fluctuations in temperature, pressure and/or electrical conditions. The reflection of this primeval attractive relationship, when we allow ourselves to slip into aesthetic perception, not only comprehends the external beauty, but reflects the inward balance that resonates with the sights, the sounds, the moment of experience.

Once reached, this plane of existence can be recalled in a moment and seemingly forever in a very strong a sense. The feeling of oneness with all that is has the power to transform every moment, however our ego tends to disallow that sort of transcendence. The best description that I can make of this level of beauty pales in comparison to the way you would describe the same thing, because you have your terms. Saying we are stardust, is not enough for some people. Turn on, Tune in, Drop out that might lose people in translation, The Universe is unfolding as it should is one way I heard it said. My hero, for many years, along my particular path said, I don't have to talk, you don't even have to listen, we just need to BE together and it will all happen. It will all happen. This is the inherent beauty that we all contain, we all can retreat back to and to which we will ultimately have to make our peace with. We are, will be and forever continue to embody the unfolding lotus blossom.

Even after our death, our atoms will go out to the soil, feed organisms and begin the process of reorganization just as we have been created from atoms that were in our ancestors back through millennea. This next bit is courtesy of and should help build great street cred for Bumpy's Avatar. In The Ancestors Tale Richard Dawkins gives an estimate of how many generations have gone between each branch point concerning the human line (which turns into the 'ape line' then the 'mammal line' then... etc.) to us modern day humans (there are about forty such branch points on our line - surprising no?). So the fisrt branch point is between us and chimps, 250 thousand generations ago (which spans 6 million years). Reptiles and birds branched off at 310 million years ago, 170 million generations ago. Of course, the average generation time for a human is something like 20 years, whilst mouse might be only about 2 years - so that has to be factored in (and since we are dealing with long extinct animals, some guesswork is required).

Anyway, the last branch point, which Dawkins ventures a guess at the amount of generations past, is at the branch point between humans and protostomes (worms, molluscs, insects and crustaceans etc.) This is a little after 'phylems to be' such as plants, animals and fungi have appeared. Dawkins estimates about 310 million genertions have passed in that 600 million year(!) gap.

So Dawkins deosn't even try to guess at how many generations have gone between us and our single celled ancestors. Were are probably talking anywhere between 1 and 4 billion years of single celled life. Some single celled animals today have a geration time of a few hours. How many generations can you pack into a few billion years, given a generation time as short as that?

Hell if I know, but the margin of error would be collosal.

Addition: Assuming two and half billion years of single celled life, with an average generation time of 6 hours. There would have been 3'650'000'000'000 (3.65 trillion) generations before you even start with multicellular life.

And back to my own words...It has all been a beautiful thing.