With Just A Thought

This is a Comment for this blog from my *Best Friend* Judyth Vary Baker. Because it was so long, blogger wouldn't take it so I'm posting it here!

With Just A Thought
Judyth Vary Baker

The writer may assume that the universe is largely empty. That what we see is all we get. It does seem that way. But the universe is chock-full, not empty-of what we cannot sense. We know there is a black fabric, so to speak, interstitially existing. We don't know what myriads of beings speed through us,smetimes pausing: nor of how many dimensions we are split across.

Maybe it's beter that we are so sensor-limited. Certainly, human experience does have its difficlties -- spewing out religions and belief systems that can be laughable. Dangerous. Wicked. Worthless. Attempts to make sense of what some understand as utter chaos.

But even chaos theory tells us that events can occur in clusters. Cluster theory and string theory cooperate logically in our thoughts, helping us make a bit of sense out of what seems essentially inane. Human experience is what convinces many to cling to what they've been taught. Why not? It's familiar. It answers questions needing answers. We like answers. We don't like a vacuum. Humans attempt to detect patterns that make sense to them. Even if there aren't any patterns: then they will structure events. Therefore, since so much human thought is simplistic, it's easy to dismiss human experience as not valuable, rather than invauable, for it's what brought these people to conclusions that produce rounds of insane myths and weird, often bloody rituals -- and so on. But I tend to respect the reports I get, over the period of human history, that reveal so much aout our limitations and our courage, our frailties and human-ness, because these reports emerge from other sensory systems than my own, and help verify and validate my own set of experiences, thoughts, and sense of being.

My science teacher could not smell: he didn't have the ability. That didn't mean that odors didn't exist --scents -- though never a part of his experience. He was forced to acknowledge their existence, owever, because the maority of people around him had that experience. He understood that smells existed, because if he didn't bathe, his famly knew it. Food had a very different meaning for him. His associations with food included heat, texture, and a very limited sense of taste, because olfactory sensations comprise so much of what we consider 'taste.'

I cannot, therfore, utterly discount the instinctive, gut feelings and 'beliefs' so many people have -- their belief in a soul or spirit -- or that the earth has a spirit, or that there might be a God. I find no personal reasons to 'believe' what so many others do, but I have a profound respect for why people have developed this set of tools to cope with an unforgiving and often senseless world. Coping, itself, is a survival mechanism based on many things.

Many people, when they lose their ability to cope, can no longer find a reason to exist, or a universal ear to listen-- they no longer can "smell" their primeval roots and believe their existence is nothing but a chemical reaction -- such people, who lose hope, can lose the will to live. Now comes the hard part-- why do we have a will to live? WHY should it matter, to keep these chemical reactions going? Are our mitochondria that powerful an evolutonary influence, that they drive us to keep breathing and wanting to breathe, to forage, to supply those little denizens in our cells with the fuel they collectively need? THEY have a will to 'live' -- don't they? or are we haunted by our inner cellular machinery, driving us on? Just because we can describe something -- such as the physics involving a rainbow-- doesn't mean that the rainbow is not beautiful. All weepy-silly about beauty and so on -- right? My value system is not yours: I find beauty in simply being alive. I find joy in existence, even when I suffer (and I do). I've seen much death in my life, and yet, balancing that, thrill with the birth of a star, or the bloom of a flower. Worthless, slly, right? But when I see how my words and gentleness affect others, an inner peace also blooms. This experience tells me that something bigger than life exists. certainly bigger than my little spark of life.

Consider love. I've known all kinds of 'love' --but that which affects me most is unconditional love, with no concern about its return. I had that with a great man for a brief but spectacular time. I've had it from a mere dog, my constant companion for over 13 years. And that's where hman experience becomes powerful and sustaining and meaningful: nobody can tell me that the love I feel will die when I die, or that the love that filled me will have nowhere to go when I say adieu to this mortal coil. Love pulsates through the universe. I know it: I've felt it.I allow it to pass through me t everyone possible. And that's an engine, a force, an experience, that transcends religions or senses or beliefs. And I can feel it. When you know you have it, too, nothing can remove it. Love elevates the psyche and creates the soul. That may sound naive and childish, absurd, mere treacle. But I sense a power that comes from outside what we consider the universe. It is holy, in the highest sense. it is injected into our being when we yield to it. It's a power that is endless. Stars burst into being because of it. Perhaps we exist because a shaft of love traversed time and exploded into matter. Of course not, you'll say. How silly, you'll say. But maybe you were born without a sense of smell. Or without something else that words cannot describe. Maybe I was born with what you've been missing, and my deep joy is to offer it to you, without end. Go to hell, woman! I can hear it now... absurd platitudes, what a dolt! I've seen so much evil, experienced it across my life, and bear the scars of ill-use from my fellow human beings. But it seems to make no difference, because I've seen across the valley, I've heard choruses of joy across the millenia, I've walked across the room and entered Paradise with a thought.

With just a thought.

Once formed, it cannot expire, though it may only reverberate in tis earthly realm for an instant. And with thought comes the opportunity to reach other thoughts. To touch what cannot be smelled, seen or considered. What I do know, without any doubt, is that I am not alone in the universe -- because I have reached out into the emptiness and not found it wanting. Because others reached out to me. Because I love. And because I have been loved.