Know your Nature

This above all: To thine own self be true,
for it must follow as dost the night the day,
that canst not then be false to any man.
- Shakespeare (Hamlet) inspired by Socrates (Know thyself).

Some observers suggest that humans make up themselves “from a tool kit of options made available by our culture and society ... We do make choices but we don't determine the options among which we choose.” Well, yes and no. As psychologists, like George Kelly has suggested, experience is not just what happens to us, it is also about what we do with what happens to us. And, a significant component of the what we do with what happens to us is programmed into our genetic profile.

Humans are part of the natural world. Consequently, our options also come from some innate forces. Walt Disney may have been the first media mogul in the last century to capture this in his iconic characters. Although we recognized many of his characters as animals, their innate selves were clearly visible, whether duck, mouse, rat, dog, or cat. Our various individual behaviors, too, can be found in animals, which is to say that a particular type of animal behavior can be found in all humans, some with more than one. For example, I may think of myself as a bird with the following profile: do not like chatter; a hunter, who can sit quietly for hours; domestic, preferring the nest (home) to roaming; can live alone or with others; and, enjoy certain aspects of childrearing. What type of bird am I?

Why is it important to relate to yourself as an animal? Because humans are animals! And, the type of animal you are determines many things: the type of mate you need to be looking for or why certain social and business relationships do not work for you. There can be a relationship of tragic consequences formed between two persons whose innate natures are that of a bird and a cat. Everyone needs to know the inner animal of potential mates early on so that when faced with relationships of choice, we can select with wisdom.

Most of us move through life looking for a "soul mate," expecting some "chemistry" to let us know if someone is "the one." That chemistry may only be a primordial feeling. Any two humans can get it on up to a point, but it takes a special person that can and will commit to a single person to help them get on with life and derive satisfaction from that commitment for a lifetime.

Another reason for better understanding the animal in you is that by doing so you can become a better judge of the animal in others: the predator (hawk, lion, shark, or dog), the scavenger (hyena, rat, or chicken), the hunted (gazelle, deer, or bison), the gatherers (bees, squirrels, bears), the colonizers (ants, bees, termites, mammal), royalty (elephant, rhinoceros, giraffe, lion, whale), the solitary (panda, tiger, snake), the spirits (ravens, horses, bats, spiders), the migrators (birds, sea turtles, whales, seals) There is an animal group that correlates to any human emotion; a flavor for every taste.

Gaining an understanding of the kind of being you are can lead to less self-esteem problems and a greater conviction in the value of your being and that of others. If you find your animal among the negative categories, just remember that human beings have the capacity to change just as some wild animals can be domesticated; whether we do change or not is not an easy thing to do, but we know that it can be done.

At any rate, avoiding criticism is impossible. Do not try to please everyone. To do so, will cause you to forget who you are or to become much that you should not. A story from the Arab world about Nasrudin, a Sufi folk character in jokes, and his attempt to avoid criticism illustrates this:

Nasrudin and his son were traveling with their donkey. Nasrudin preferred to walk while his son rode the donkey. But then they passed a group of bystanders, and one scoffed, “Look—that selfish boy is riding on a donkey while his poor old father is forced to walk alongside. That is so disrespectful. What a horrible and spoiled child!”

Nasrudin and his son felt embarrassed, so they switched spots—this time Nasrudin rode the donkey while his son walked.

Soon they passed another group of people. “Oh, that’s detestable!” one of them exclaimed. “That poor young boy has to walk while his abusive father rides the donkey! That horrible man should be ashamed of himself for the way he is treating his son. What a heartless parent!”

Nasrudin was upset to hear this. He wanted to avoid anybody else’s scorn, so he decided to have both himself and his son ride the donkey at the same time.

As they both rode, they passed another group of people. “That man and his son are so cruel,” one bystander said. “Just look at how they are forcing that poor donkey to bear the weight if two people. They should be put in jail for their despicable act. What scoundrels!”

Nasrudin heard this and told his son, “I guess the only way we can avoid the criticism of others is to both walk.”

“I suppose you are right,” the son replied.

So they got off the donkey and continued on foot. But as they passed another group of people, they heard them laughing. “Ha, ha, ha,” the group jeered. “Look at those two fools. They are so stupid that both of them are walking under this scorching hot sun and neither of them is riding the donkey! What morons!”

Stand for something because some people have the innate nature always to find fault. If you find yourself in such a relationship or in a bevy of quail, my advice is to get a passport and find a new home.

Value Intellectual Curiosity

"The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind." – William Blake (1757-1827)

In general we learn, and even recognize at the perceptual level, what has value or significance to us. As used here, intellectual curiosity refers to a healthy, insatiable appetite for purposeful knowledge by inquiring minds. An individual with such a mind will not say “I don’t need to know that.” How does one know when some specific knowledge will be useful? No, the inquiring mind asks: "Why is this knowledge valued and what meaning does it have for me, for my community?" It is only through intimacy that one knows something whether it is knowledge or another human being. Get intimate with learning as one would any other natural thing. For all learning is organic and needs to be cultivated as a farmer does his crops. The better the care given the crops, the greater the harvests.

Yet, one should not study just for self – which is important, for knowledge takes on a greater importance when we look at it not only in terms of how it can enrich one's own life, but in how one can use that knowledge to enrich one's community. This is the difference between information and knowledge. One is passing and the other is lasting, shared by generations into the future. Gossip is information, but its life cycle usually is finite. Knowlege has universal application, gossip is situational and does not.

One exemplary example of an inquiring mind is that of W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt) DuBois (1868-1963), a graduate of Harvard University in the late 19th century and one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century, and a man who made purposeful learning his life-long mission:

Night – grand and wonderful. I am glad I am living. I rejoice as a strong man to win a race, and I am strong – is it egotism – is it assurance – or is it the silent call of the world spirit that makes me feel that I am and that beneath my scepter a world of kings shall bow[?] The hot dark blood of a black forefather is beating at my heart, and I know that I am either a genius or a fool. O, I wander what I am – I wonder what the world is – I wonder if life is worth the Strum. I do not know – perhaps I shall never know: But this I do know: be the truth what it may I will seek it on the pure assumption that it is worth seeking – and Heaven nor hell, God nor Devil shall turn me from my purpose till I die . . . I therefore take the world that the unknown lay in my hands and work for the rise of the [African-American], taking for granted that their best development means the best development of the world . . . .[1]

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1. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Autobiography of W. E. B. Dubois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century. International Publishers, 1968. p. 171.

Nurture the God in You

"Experience is not what happens to us, experience is what we do with what happens to us." — George Kelly

I have often returned mentally to a trip I was taking by car from northern Minnesota to the east coast of the United States back in 1969. We were four college students in the car – owned by the parents of one of them–who were traveling east that Christmas holiday intersession each for a different reason. As a senior in college that year, my purpose for the trip was to visit several college campuses in the Northeast in order to make a decision later about where I wished to attend graduate school.

However, before we even arrived, the trip almost ended. Here’s why. It was my turn to drive and we were on the Pennsylvania Turnpike heading toward New York City. The weather was horrible. Growing up as a teenager in Minnesota and learning to drive there, I was not unaccustomed to bad winter weather. In Minnesota, however, the cold is usually a dry cold. In Pennsylvania, the weather that evening was a mix of rain and snow, making the road icy slick even with the high volume of car and truck traffic along this section of the turnpike. What’s worse, it was foggy.

Our adventure begins sometime around 9:00 pm. I was driving in the passing lane. I remember some comments about the weather and we were guarded about the inclement weather conditions, especially the potential of icy roads. Then, out of nowhere seemingly, we passed a warning marker with what appeared as blinking yellow and red lights situated just over a rise instead of on its opposite side. That was the brilliance of the Pennsylvania Highway Patrol who I assumed later had family in the towing business. The usual response – and it was mine – is to slow the car so as to avoid whatever potential danger is being advertised. Therefore, I tapped the brakes as I had learned to do in Minnesota to avoid spinning on ice. Of course, the car began to spin. Usually, I was in the habit of checking my rear- and side-view mirrors to determine where I was in relation to other cars, but, at that moment, I could not remember if there was another car to my right or behind. And, I did not want to take my eyes from the impending crisis below to look.

In front I could see cars ahead straddling the road following an obvious accident, whose drivers probably did exactly what I did – tapping the brakes and losing control of their vehicles on the icy road. My traveling companions are now going bananas, but I remember time slowing down for me as a myriad of millisecond calculations was being assessed about what to do. What now was the primary question? Option one was to continue to tap the brakes and gain traction. That was clearly not working.

Finally, the time for options was closing as we neared the collision of cars in front of us, so I decided that our best option was to go off the road to the left and at worst hit a steel barrier in its middle if we had not stopped before then. I assumed that the barrier would absorb some of the shock. So, that’s what I did to the terror of my fellow passengers who were still looking ahead when I quickly turned the car to the left onto the medium. My calculations were accurate, except for one unaccounted for problem. After we hit the barrier, which did, in fact, absorb the collision as there was little impact, but instead of stopping us, the barrier acted as a rubber band and rebounded the car back across the road! This time, I looked to the left with big eyes in the night to see if any cars were barreling down on us. I remember thinking a short prayer or blasphemy–I can’t remember which–that there would not be any and was relieved to see none as the car safely crossed the road and stopped perfectly on the emergency strip to be pointed in our initial direction.

This was not, however, the end of the story. Relieved, the guys bounded from the car to check on their vitals and also to get out of the way in case another car experienced what we had just gone through. Of course, one did, and as I was walking from the car, someone yelled that another vehicle was out of control on its way directly towards us. I planted my foot to take off and slipped to the icy ground, scraping my right palm on broken glass and stone, the scars of which still remain. While down, I looked up to see the car coming right for us. At that moment, unable to get to my feet, I simply said to myself that if it’s my time, so be it, or words to that affect. As the car came within 15-20 feet of me, it veered back suddenly to the left and across the road to the other side, with the help of its driver, or not.

Later on, I would describe this incident as a miracle. Today, however, with more worldly experience, I believe that everything that occurs in life is a miracle. The whole of life, to me, is a miracle we receive from nature and shaped by the God in us. To some, this will sound blasphemous, but to many peoples not shackled by established religious beliefs, it will not. The difference between miracles and "the natural order" is only one of perception. Most humans in Western culture refer to "the natural order" as the laws of cause and effect that God set up at the creation of the universe – such as gravity and electromagnetism, things that the human eye can see or the brain can reason. In general, when these laws operate consistently, except when there is an exception, we call the outcome "a miracle."

According to Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, a noted Hebrew scholar, nature is an illusion which God created in order to give human beings free choice to recognize God or not. Once a human being has risen above the illusion of nature as an independent power, he is no longer constrained by "the laws of nature."

Respectfully, I disagree with the rabbi. Nature is not the illusion, God, as defined by established religion, is the illusion. The God in me is not the same as the God in him, you or anyone else. If this is the case, how can you believe in my God and me in yours? Because of the laws of Nature. The single most comprehensible thread that holds our gods in common is Nature. It is nature that is orderly, that has a systemic plan, and nature that established coherent fundamental laws that humans can observe and hear and touch and smell.

Well, how is it that someone else’s God is a tyrant and another person’s God is kind? It’s quite simple, humans are a reflection of their nature as is their god. A god in the body of a tyrant will be a tyrannical god. A god in the body of an altruistic person will most likely be a kind god. Each of our gods, however, will be forged by the forces of nature that began before our births, in the sperm and eggs of our parents and nature’s water that bonded them together to launch the age-old process of human procreation and natural selection.

Nonetheless, all humans live in social units and as organisms we must adjust to survival as the environment dictates. As organisms, we are not always weak, but neither are we always strong. Understanding our nature provides us with a roadmap for navigating our trials and tribulations, whether we are confronted by predator beasts or embracing angels. Most often, distinguishing between the two is not as simple as it seems. The predator may wear the garments of an angel and an angel may speak the language of a predator.

What I have found in my own life is that as soon as I connect to the God in me, I acquire a mature understanding of my environment, and if something is meant to happen, there are signs, and depending upon what I do about things I can control—mostly my own body and emotions—I wait for nature to take control of the processes that it controls and respond in ways that my nature permits. What I learned from the car hurtling toward me, catastrophe written all over its front bumper, except there was no catastrophe, only crisis resolution, was that sometimes waiting and watching is preferable to acting too quickly.

Because of these experiences I gained a fuller appreciation of both my nature and the freedom that comes with being acclimated to life by its forces. This occurred when I acknowledged that the car incident and my life had no existence independent of nature and the God in me. Although the God in me had walked with me before this event, it was not always consciously so because I did not understand cerebrally that nature walked in tandem inside me as well. But since that event, I have been more conscious about my relationship with nature within and external to me and the God in me and am thankful for their presence. More importantly, there have been numerous blessings, big and small blessings that have enriched my consciousness about life and time since that watershed moment in my evolving consciousness.

There are some for whom any god is an abomination. What's wrong with a life devoid of God? I can’t say or, perhaps, won’t say. Each person must make that declaration. What I know quite simply is that the God in you is a reflection of reality – both ultimate reality and immediate reality – but it is still only your reality until you transform that reality into universal, natural law and coexist on this planet peacefully with others irrespective of differences. As a human being, life should be an aspiration toward greater consciousness, that place that humans call wisdom.

There is a spiritual law in many human religions that says whatever humans do, God responds to them in kind – measure for measure. In other words, when we want the God in us to go beyond the laws of nature, we must first journey beyond our own nature. This is a journey not easily made, and sadly, many established religions are not true to their nature so their communicants may never know theirs. Of course there are humans who do not permit other humans to coexist. What shall one do? It's quite simple, give measure for measure and do not look back.

To live in this world oblivious to this amazing journey is like being a bird oblivious to the wind, which seems to me a good measure to take of this rite of passage. For to fully appreciate a bird – a raven or a condor for example – soaring in the sky in perfect harmony with the wind and be able to connect yourself with their flight is to know what it means to aspire beyond your limits and reach for a higher level of consciousness, spiritual and physical, feeling not only what the bird feels, but also the wind, the earth, and the heavens.