According to geologists, about 25,000 years ago the area where I live was covered with a glacier as much as a mile thick. Glaciers are the ultimate bulldozers and the last one through here, scoured the land thoroughly. It left behind lots of holes, holes that are now the state’s ten thousand lakes.
In Nature, destruction and creation are two sides of the same coin. Nature is change and with every change something is lost and something gained. This, the geological perspective clearly reveals.
Our normal perspective is not geological. What’s happening here and now is what is important to us. While the long view tells us that creation will arise from destruction – like a new forest rising from the ashes of an old one – we might not live long enough to see the creative outcome of such destruction. We are pained by the destruction of things we value, things we love.
The Buddhist call it samsara – not the world itself, but the world experienced under the aspect of attachment. It is human to care and to love – to be attached. But such attachment in a ever-changing world leads inevitably to suffering. It is also human to seek whatever wisdom can reduce or redeem suffering.
I think there is a kind of wisdom in trying to see the world from the long view, the geological perspective. I find the geological perspective to be an interesting blend of science and spirituality. The science part should be obvious, but the spiritual less so. Yet, to truly gain the geological perspective, one has to step outside of their ego, their sense of I, me, and mine. And that is something common to many spiritual traditions.
In addition, spiritual seekers often speak of the sense of timelessness found in spiritual experience. The geological perspective leaves behind the religious context, but it too is a kind of experience of timelessness. One might call the geological perspective a “god’s-eye view of things” – to achieve a sense of the timelessness within which time operates.
* * * * * *
Humans are a part of Nature. Our activity is a part of Nature’s process – change that like all Nature’s change is simultaneously destruction and creation. But it doesn’t seem that way. A glacier is a mindless bull-dozer, humans bull-doze based on some kind of plan. Mindless forces led to the climate change that brought forth the glaciers. Supposedly rational forces are behind the climate change that is currently hastening the demise of the glaciers that still linger from the last ice age. Yet, that rationality arose from and remains a part of the grand process of Nature. It is not a thing apart.
To know ourselves as fully and completely a part of Nature, is, I believe, a key insight of Spiritual Naturalism. It is a difficult insight, because Western civilization has long emphasized a disconnect between the human spirit and Nature. The geological perspective, and all the science that informs that perspective, can help us see through that disconnect.
__________
Learn about Membership in the Spiritual Naturalist Society
The Spiritual Naturalist Society works to spread awareness of spiritual naturalism as a way of life, develop its thought and practice, and help bring together like-minded practitioners in fellowship.
SNS strives to include diverse voices within the spectrum of naturalistic spirituality. Authors will vary in their opinions, terms, and outlook. The views of no single author therefore necessarily reflect those of all Spiritual Naturalists or of SNS.
__________
Great article Thomas. The long perspective is needed now more than ever.