Cosmic Citizenship
I'm at a neighbourhood cafe, a new one--one I haven't been to before. It's one of those hipster cafes that have been sprouting up everywhere. This particular one is not exactly my cup of tea, (or coffee) for it tries too much to make a statement: we only welcome real coffee aficionados, not laptop warriors. Not a single power outlet is in sight and seating is just stools and banquettes.
But I'm never reliant on the power and Wifi provided by the establishment anywhere. I have a power-bank that could drive my laptop for hours and a good 4G connection for internet. I can actually blog anywhere. I'm just going to relax in this air-conditioned sanctuary for a short while, taking refuge from the madness of cars outside.
It's state polling day for Selangor and a few other states in Malaysia and that is why all the roads are congested. One of the advantages of not being married and having a family is that I have the freedom to look at the world from a wider perspective. I don't have to worry about my children's future. I don't really care too much about the fate of the human species or the planet for all other lifeforms are of no lesser importance.
The universe will do what it's supposed to do--evolve and create life everywhere. My allegiance is to life in the universe, in the limited way that I with my human brain can understand what life is. We on earth are the momentary flowering of this universal life force that finds expression in myriad ways across the cosmos. This of course sounds new agey and woo woo-ish but I can't help it.
Why not use the word 'God' instead of 'universal life force'. The problem with words is that they carry baggages. The meaning of words evolve over time and even get bastardised. The challenge of writing is to convey thoughts in a fresh new way. Every now and then a spiritual teacher arises and gathers a new generation of followers, not because they are preaching a new religion but simply because they have found a new vocabulary for expressing something that's universal.
Eckart Tolle tries to avoid using the word 'God' because it comes with a lot of dogmatic connotations. Stillness, Presence and the 'pain body' are part of his new lexicon for expressing his spirituality. Someone who's disillusioned with the doctrines of monotheistic religions will find his language appealing. We will all find our own music of spirituality. Even the traditional religions have mutated and evolved with the culture and times of the people who practise them.
And that to me is also part of that universal expression of life. We are always seeking--for truth and understanding. Life means resisting entropy. To do so, we have to find the optimum way of perpetuating ourselves through a mastery of the environment. The substrate can die but the information has to be preserved: in the genes of our offsprings or in machines that we've ingeniously assembled from the raw materials of the universe. And that, in a nutshell is life.
In future, we could 'live' beyond the confines of our fragile carbon-based bodies--by offloading our thoughts and feelings into more resilient substrates. Biological lifeforms are just one phase in this evolving fugue of life. Each one of us is a small motif in this polyphony of voices. When we have developed our senses to be able to listen this cosmic music, only then would we be admitted into its grand cosmic citizenship.
