nature's zodiac

Ours is a solar system. Our sun radiates light. All children are close to the true essence of the sun. My son is four and a big fan of Super Mario Brothers. He especially loves the superstar that renders Mario invincible for a stretch. Knowing the look of this superstar quite well, he will still express it in his own way.

He draws a circle with many lines radiating from the center. 

Children are so close to the radiating nature of the star, geometry just doesn’t enter the equation.

It isn’t a matter of shape. It is a matter of energy. This energy that children are so close to is what Teilhard de Chardin described as ‘radial energy’. Radial energy “connects from center to center”. It is the “force of union, drawing elements onward and upward, and ultimately manifesting itself in love.”

As conscious creatures, we can choose to affirm such radial energy or not. This is the same thing as an amoeba choosing to move away from an unfavorable environment to a favorable one, just farther down the evolutionary line.

The human legacy is to align with nature’s evolution. We have the ability to choose to connect from center to center, in love, friendship, and caring attitudes, or let the ‘great chain of being’ fall flat on the floor. 

The warmth of radial energy is stabilizing, invigorating and renewing. It is not only affirming the love we can give but the love we can receive, to our center from another center.

This is a matter of real identity. Who are we if we are creatures of choice who are aware of being creatures of choice? Who are we ultimately? Are we negators or are we affirmers? The health of a body comes down to each cell’s potential to affirm itself, ‘who’ it is and what it does.

How do we feel inside when we know that life is worth living? How do we feel if we doubt this? 

In a day and age where robots, or ‘bots’ are among us, it becomes important to distinguish the bot that we were built to be.

We are binary by nature. We turn towards yes we turn towards no. This capacity to turn has existed for milenia and it has evolved into the deeply mysterious and ever complexifying reality of the Self. As neuroscientist Antonio Damasio puts it “It is intriguing to think that the constancy of the internal milieu is essential to maintain life and that it might be a blueprint and anchor for what will eventually becomes a self in the mind.”

It is our task to relate to this magnitude through our own private responses; our changing chemistries and our shifting moods. Sure we could ignore it. But would Mario ignore the superstar?