Pull me out from inside

Potential lies in an apple seed... the potential to evolve into an apple tree and produce apples, which will fall and produce more apple trees.

The apple tree silenty evolves year after year, expressing more dynamic and beautiful parts of itself, like leaves and blossoms until eventually, after some sufficient epoch, if conditions are favorable, it 'evolves' what seems a quantum leap forward into supporting an entirely new and excitingly delicious kind of life... an APPLE!

The apple is special and knows it. It feels superior to the rest of the tree, as the latest and fullest expression of life itself. With an increasing sense of self-imporantce, it does its best to separate from the tree and do its own thing, even looking sideways at the other apples with a sort of competitive scorn. It marvels at how different it is from the tree and the other fruits in the orchard. It grows vain, admiring its shiny red skin and divine round shape. It is worldly and beautiful and unique- delicious and revered.

Eventually, after what seems a lifetime, it feels its skin shiver ever so slightly with the premonition of an approaching coldness. It feels its acidic meat mellowing and sweetening.

Then it happens. In a wind storm, it finally achieves the separation from the limitations of the tree. It falls ceremoniously toward the ground, elated at this chance for freedom... for this chance to use its divine roundness to roll anywhere it wants to go. But upon landing, however, it feels strangely ill at ease. After a few short rolls from the momentum of the fall, it is not able to move at all! It struggles with this mighty limitation, until, by chance, it looks to the spot where another apple had fallen long ago. Suddenly a flash of insight fills the apple with peace. Decomposing in the grass, gazing at the miraculous tree sprouting from the other apple's resting place, it finally sees its true nature. It feels its fruity flesh melt away, beautifully overmatched by the solvent effects of time. Its dying mind flashes back to an image of mother tree. At that humblest of moments, it recognizes itself as none other than the tree itself, united in cause and effect.

If you strip away everything… all the life and all the matter, there is still the potential for life and matter, which can never go away. Creation is possible. This is proven by the letters reaching your mind and slicing your moment right now. If we step beyond language and meditate, this is ‘evident’.

This creative power, potential or actualized, is the life energy and it shines through if we let it. Read the last sentence one more time.

Our task is to remove the barriers we have constructed and let the light shine. The barriers are constancy and stagnancy and dogma of any sort. An ego is ok, as long as that ego is forever willing to change or disintegrate. Any truly functional sense of self must evolve with the situation, which is forever changing in time. And then the self must realize that it is infinite in its potential to evolve and to connect to the energy and wisdom of life. And then the self can see past itself. It sees that, at least theoretically, it is, by association with and in terms of its potential manifestations… infinite. The self is infinitely connected to cause and effect, as a cause and an effect. Time opens up infinite possible situations and mutations of the self in space, in thought, in relationship. Ready, set, dance!

I suspect that perfect logic self-destructs. Perfect logic would see that it is a closed circle of premises and would therefore rest itself. I would guess that perfect feeling would do the same. It would find its uninhibited selfish hedonism meaningless without a language to describe it or any sustainable structure, so it would settle back into the void united with logic. I suspect that logic and feeling and all the other possible ways to experience this dimension are sides of the same infinite-sided coin, their connections playfully concealed for the sake of the game we’re playing.

The same could be said for existence and non-existence. They may try to separate from each other, but always, the other follows, its mystery and novelty becoming increasingly attractive. Life cannot exist without death. There is no eternal life. There is eternal life and death… Yin and yang… Call it what you like, but it bends around on itself in a conceptual sphere… always curved. What you witness and experience depends where you are on the sphere… which is where you are in time and space. Cycling through… circling through… spiraling through. Always a new path from one extreme to the other and back. Spirals, baby, forever connected in contiguous infinity. Forget about straight lines. Fool's gold!