One of the pitfalls of our era is the tendency to regard only the individual self - and collections of individual selves - as ultimately real. This belief corresponds to a profound disconnection from any divine reality that is deeper, vaster, or broader - a ground of being or open sky of awareness or vast lake of love or infinite web of life that is the ultimate reason for our existence here on Earth. This reality may take the form of God or Goddess or Consciousness or Love or Bliss, or any of the other innumerable ways of envisioning it. But it is precisely the reality of this spiritual Ultimate that is being denied. Philosophy calls this position "nominalism," the belief that universals - like God or Goddess or Divinity or Consciousness - exist in "name" only and thus have no true reality. In a nominalistic view, only individuals exist. Here, for example, meditation or yoga become simply an experience of "me and my mind," or "me and my body," with no real tie to a divine Self to which all individual selves are ultimately transparent. I find that Nature, however, is amazingly effective in keeping a person in touch with this Ultimate Reality. Perhaps as increasing numbers of people spend time in the Great Outdoors, we as a society will one day return to a more balanced perspective that grounds all of the particulars of life in a deep Lake of divinity.
Photo: Lookout Lake, Snowy Range, WY; June 7, 2013
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