You Are a Self-Conscious Flower
It may be impossible to know what the conscious experiences of other species are really like, but it does seem as though there is something unique to human consciousness relative to other animals, plants, and “inanimate” objects. And while it is an incredible gift to be conscious, to be awake and alive and to know that I am awake and alive standing on this world spinning amidst this vast universe, I think the gift can also turn into a curse of psychological suffering. To be aware of my existence, and to have the ability to contemplate the nature of my existence, is inevitably to ask the questions of why I exist, what the meaning of this life really is, and what is beyond this life.
Consider the nature of a flower. The flower naturally arises from the soil and unfolds in the direction of the sun in an effortless slow-dance-like movement that ultimately returns to the soil without resistance, when the time is right. I’ve been thinking recently that, to be human, is like being a flower that has been given self-consciousness. Inevitably, the consciousness-endowed flower may begin to ponder the above questions, and may consequently identify, through this self-consciousness, as something separate from the world and the universe. I wonder if this flower may resist the natural dance of opening toward the sun, due to the knowledge that doing so will ultimately result in both its return to the soil and possibly the loss of this gift of awareness it has received. It may pull away, flexing with all of its might to stay close to the ground, and exerting much cognitive effort to figure out why it is here and how it should best spend its limited time on the earth.
I also wonder if all of this effort may actually be costing the flower its only real chance to be alive, that is happening all the while, in each moment, and that the other flowers are naturally unfolding into. The self-conscious flower, trying to figure out the whos, whats, whens, wheres, and whys, of life, may be missing the Ultimate Point that the other flowers just get automatically. To me, the “spiritual” path, whatever that means and however that looks to you, is the realignment with this ineffable Ultimate Point; the noticing of our habitual pulling away from the “Sun” (my guess is this pulling away is just an inherent part of the human process), and remembering again (and again, and again…) how to naturally unfold in its direction to receive all of its free life-giving energy. In this analogy, what does the “Sun” mean to you? How do you pull away from it and how to you re-open in its direction, letting go of figuring things out and accepting its gifts that are only ever available Right Now?
I’ll finish here with a related quote from Rilke:
”Be patient
toward all that is unsolved in your heart
and try to love the questions themselves,
like locked rooms and like books
that are now written in a very foreign tongue.
Do not now seek the answers,
which cannot be given you
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then gradually,
without noticing it,
live along some distant day into the answer.”