Adam Blatner

We are all living in a time when the full logical impact of our present situation for humanity is that we now seem to be part of the culmination of four billion years of planetary evolution within a cosmos four and a half times older than that. I just realized this: It is truly mind-blowing also because I know the names for the numbers I therefore know how long it’s been going on! I’m vaguely aware that talking in terms of billions of years in only the most general and feeble way communicates what I really cannot conceive of!

Nor are we the summit of evolution or consciousness, although it is difficult—no, impossible— to know, to take for granted, stuff that people will take for granted a thousand years in the future! —No, even a hundred years.  For all we know we’re only half-way there!

I wonder how many people are aware of it? Perhaps 1% know the age of the cosmos as we know it, and many times fewer sense the implications of this fact. Indeed, this fact is actually a myriad of facts each of which consists of myriads of facts! Contemplating any tiny part, such my fingers typing on the keyboard, opens up myriads of facts, theories of how it works in any part, and mysteries yet unsolved. Wowsie-woozy!

We are part of this story, our collective emergence into being aware of this great story—really quite recent and in general quite unknown, or only superficially acknowledged. Our limited capacity to notice our own many facets—some of which are unconscious—is yet another facet of our being.

I don’t claim to see all this clearly, other than I can peek at our place in the “ladder” of consciousness. Of course this affronts our sense of status—we may not be the smartest thing around. We are of course the smartest beings we know of, but that doesn’t mean we are the smartest things around. It there are smarter beings, we just don’t know. (I hold out the intuition that there are smarter beings.)

About “Wowsie-Woozie!”

I am of the opinion that were we to penetrate our veneer of sophistication and the illusion that we know what’s going on, we would be so very amazed by our perceptions of what is that we would be in a state of childlike wonder or god-intoxication. I try to open to my inner child and at times flash on this emotional response to my perception of how things are, how much we don’t know, and the child-like trust that we are graced by ultimately generous gifts. This is actually strengthened by all that I’ve learned (a lot), which only leads me to wonder even more strongly and again with the mind of a child!