Oneness

Having built a whale, we decided to make a movie on the topic “all life is one.”  

Having finished the short film, I sought funds from the Maine Arts Commission.  

Having to substantiate my body of work as an artist, I referenced “An Art Farm.” 

Whereupon, I realized our art farm had been mostly inactive since 2015 and so on 31 March 2024 I wrote “Crossing the Rubicon” about delivering the Whale north to the Wabanaki nation.  I did not win the grant, but I did continue to write, and for 94 continuous weeks now I have posted short essays. 

In a sense these are weekly postcards to my Mother, a chance to share thoughts that otherwise would not come up in our occasional phone conversations.  More importantly, they allow me to mine thoughts that arise at 2am, to chase down loose threads and weave them, as if into tapestries, at best like those of the Renaissance rich in detail and color, telling stories of this strange and troubling moment in time.  

An overarching theme seems to be Spiritual Ecology, a field of inquiry of which I only recently became aware.  Rudolf Steiner is considered a visionary, having described a “co-evolution of spirituality and nature.”  I learned of Steiner back in my Chicago days from a Gaia-centric friend at the vanguard.  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, also considered a founder, almost one century ago, wrote of a ”consciousness of the divinity within every particle of life, even the most dense material.”  In “The Phenomenon of Man” he foresaw that “Science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole.”  

My Mother actively discussed de Chardin in her college days, and within the social circle of her childhood in Clifton of the Queen City, Cincinnati, Ohio, as well as at our dinner table.  Father Sullivan, elder of Holy Cross Parish, once described my Mother as a “pantheist;” I suspect he meant that as a criticism but which she rightly took as a compliment!  Perhaps, what the Father actually meant was panentheist (God in all things) not pantheist (God is all things), but regardless, since my childhood the tenets of Spiritual Ecology have been laid down as plain common sense.  

On a family road trip west to the Grand Tetons, my Mother handed me a copy of John Muir’s biography.  I was enthralled, in the backseat, while crossing the endless great plains.  Decades ago I read Thomas Berry, also considered at the vanguard, who emphasized “returning to a sense of wonder and reverence for the natural world.”  More than my share of Thoreau and Wendell Berry have I read, as well as David Abrams’ “The Spell of the Sensuous.”  Joanna Macy has been celebrated among the Wise Women here at the art farm, while Emergence magazine is on my subscription list, the product of Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, a Sufi trained multi-media maven on topics of a collective evolutionary expansion toward oneness.  

But what would be this consciousness of oneness?  The Renaissance is an historic example of a shift in consciousness, the “awakening” or “rebirth” of Europe, away from the Church-dominated Medieval era to embrace humanism, scientific inquiry, individualism, a flourishing of arts and culture.  Rene Descartes, living at the end of the Renaissance, is considered foundational to modernity, his “cogito, ergo sum” defining the thinking rational self.  But “cogito” is only one part of the whole self, and it can easily fall into the binary, mono-dimensional thinking of either-or, rather than both-and.  

Newton’s Laws of Physics state an object is either at rest or in motion, but quantum mechanics allows an object to inhabit two states at once.  Our logic has lead to AI which is a massive accomplishment, but it might either destroy us or bring far-reaching benefits.  The “us versus them” is endlessly argued by politicians, the strongman’s lever using fear to divide and conquer.  A spiritual ecology pursued only through the rational seems destined to failure.  An expansive and inclusive approach is needed to embrace the breadth, depth and interconnectedness of both the natural world and ourselves.  

“Creative Meditation and Multi-Dimensional Consciousness,” by Lama Anagarika Govinda, is insightful toward this life-affirming goal.  He describes the “one-dimensional logic which…cuts the world apart with the knife of its ‘Either-Or,’” and then introduces “…a new way of thinking, an extended multi-dimensional logic which is as different from the classical Aristotelian logic as Euclidian geometry is from Einstein’s theory of relativity.”  He presents this using the coordinates of an x-y axis.  “If we regard the horizontal as the direction of our time-space development (unfolding), then the vertical is the direction of our going within, toward the universal center of our being and thus the realization of the timeless presence of all potentialities of existence in the organic structure of the whole of the living universe.  This is what the poets call the ‘eternity of the moment’ which can be experienced in the state of complete inwardness…such as happens during meditation and creative inspiration.”

It is no small undertaking, a 21st century renaissance awakening to multi-dimensional consciousness not among the few, but ultimately we, the people, of the planet. Small-minded politicians and capitalists will pursue their goals of domination, and so this seems a necessary path out of the madness, deeper within.  It is beyond the scope of one short essay to speak to such fullness, but this seems a direction for our art farm to pursue in the new year.

…and here is a link to the short film on the topic that we are part of the ecosystem, that all life is one, which set this ship – which is an art farm – to sail on this oceanic odyssey:

https://www.picdrop.com/claytonsimoncic/C39UK57ncx

The short film was produced with Anna Dibble. Clayton Simoncic was the photographer and editor.

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Since it is written “the last shall be first,” I shall end this post and honor the Benham Family tradition, that good things come to those who begin a new month, on the first day with the first words: “Rabbit, Rabbit.”

May good things come to all people in the new year.