19 Where Do I Exist?
Jen had lived her whole life without really considering what living a life meant. But then some things happened to her and around her that somehow made her step back to try to see where she actually stood in this mysterious thing of living her life. Jen began to want to know where she was and why she was. Jen felt that discovering something about her existence, or her time, place, and purpose, might make her life better or make herself whole in some peculiar but heartening sense. Jen wasn’t sure of any answer. She even feared that the answer might burden her or even undo her in some way, driving her over a hidden cliff. Yet Jen still wanted to discover what she could. Doing so seemed somehow a deep and rich opportunity, perhaps even a duty or imperative in life.
Structure
Our psyche, spirit, and soul exist within a cosmic structure, referring to the nature or order of the universe or world. Developing your awareness of that cosmic order can give you solid ground from which to deepen, integrate, and stabilize your psyche, soul, and spirit. We are, for instance, set in time and place. We are somewhere, conscious of our having a location or place. And we are temporal beings, conscious of things constantly changing, which we interpret as indicating that we exist at a specific but steadily moving point in time. We are also aware that we exist in relation to an elsewhere, represented by our consciousness abstracting reality into a mysterious inner space that somehow connects with higher or idealized principles and forms. Those higher ideals and archetypes lend meaning and purpose to our lives, which are figuratively and quite close to literally the breath of life. Having a sense of our place in the cosmic structure instantly elevates us from unthinking brutes to supernatural beings, standing both in and over creation. Grasp your place in the cosmic structure, and you’ll lift a part of yourself out of the muck and mire of life.
Intermediaries
You may find it useful to think of this cosmic structure in three material dimensions, in spatial terms, keeping in mind that the cosmic structure is deeper than the material dimension, more like a mathematical formula, geometrical pattern, set of principles, and divine creator governing the universe. The cosmic structure places our thinking heads in heaven, from which we receive our meaning and purpose, but with our moving feet firmly planted on the earth, from which we receive our material dimension. We are thus intermediaries between heaven and earth. In spiritual terms, God created us out of the earth’s material but then breathed heaven’s Spirit into our nostrils bringing reason and rationality into our mind. God thus made us in his image. God made us, and we are thus earthly material unlike him, but yet made us in his image, and we are thus like him in consciousness. If you prefer philosophical phrasing over spiritual terms, concealing with passive language the creator’s obvious role, we have evolved to marry meaning with material, to bring consciousness to the universe. Grasping your peculiar and extraordinarily privileged intermediary role in the universe should help you lift a part of yourself above the peculiarly patterned chaos of life.
Symbolism
The cosmic structure illustrates the fundamentally symbolic nature of consciousness and existence. Everything is representational. The universe isn’t detritus scattered randomly across a vast dark canvas. Creation is instead a finely woven fabric, where every strand relates to every other strand. Patterns in one part of the cosmic fabric are very like patterns in other parts and like the grand pattern of the whole fabric. When you see the whole pattern of the cosmos, you also see the pattern in every cosmic fiber and strand. One thing picks up the pattern of another thing. Things fall naturally into categories, with categories relating to one another within the grand pattern, just as each part of each thing relates to other parts of the thing. Nothing exists apart from its symbolic nature. A chair is a chair only because it represents a seat of rest, in relation to the person who would sit in it. Without its relation to the person who would sit in it, the chair would not exist because a chair symbolizes the function of rest. Develop your symbolic and representational sense, and you will better grasp meaning, purpose, and their relationship in the material, embodied, and meaningful world. You will also give yourself a stable ground for your soul, spirit, and psyche to ponder.
Integration
The further you develop your symbolic sense, the more clearly you will awaken to purpose, meaning, and their primary role in the universe. As the above chair example just illustrated, purpose lends meaning to material objects. Meaning and purpose give the material reality of objects their symbolic stance. Reciprocally, the existence of material objects in the universe gives purpose and meaning their material representation. Meaning, purpose, and material objects all go continuously around in an exquisite and grand cosmic dance. See the universe in this symbolic structure, and you begin to give everything its relational purpose, meaning, and place. Abandon your modern materialist sense of everything being only dissipating stardust toward a dark and cold entropic end. Replace modernity’s dead and deceptive materialism with the reality that everything in the universe has its purpose and meaning in a representational and symbolic fabric so exquisite as to be endlessly profound and astonishing.
Primacy
Grasp your life’s meaning from your place in the cosmic structure. As intermediaries of meaning and material, humankind peculiarly embodies this grand cosmic structure, giving us an extraordinary primacy. We may not represent that primacy well. Doing so may not be especially easy. Yet no other object or entity comes close to humankind in marrying meaning and material, while also bringing consciousness and rule to the universe. We are it, like it or not. And our representation goes well beyond the embodiment of consciousness between meaning and material. We also represent cosmic procreation. A woman is a woman only in relation to a man. Both man and woman are human but differ in procreative roles. One is the rich and fertile soil, the other the dying seed and hopeful planter. We are not only the trees, reaching for the light that gives meaning while drawing material life from the soil, but also the seeds and soil. We are not cosmic accidents but instead cosmic embodiments, grand and eternal.
Fractal
Take a moment to further consider that profound point that each of us carries the pattern of the whole or, in spiritual terms, that we are each the images and representatives of God within his creation. You’ve just seen that the universe has a fractal organization. A fractal is a piece that looks and acts very like the whole. A leaf on a tree has the shape and function of the twig, which has the shape and function of the branch, which has the shape and function of the tree. The leaf is both like and composes the tree. Similarly, mole hills are both like tiny mountains and, accumulated in vast numbers into hillocks and hills, compose mountains. Once again, villages are both like tiny nations and, accumulated in vast numbers into cities, counties, and states, compose nations. We, too, as individuals are both like creation and, joined into couples, families, neighborhoods, communities, and humankind, become creation. And one can trace fractal representations the other way, down to the minute cells and even beyond to the molecules and atoms, each part both representing and, together with other parts, composing the whole. You bear these connections and relationships both to the minute and to the whole. Respect your place in the cosmic order, as a solid conceptual ground on which to rest your psyche and soul.
Space
Space, referring to physical reality, location, and dimension, also has a phenomenological structure that, if you grasp it, can inform your psyche and soul. Space or reality has both vertical and horizontal dimensions, what we call three dimensions referring to up and down, left and right, and forward and back. A sheet of paper (a geometric plane) has two dimensions, while a cube has three dimensions. We exist in the cube dimension. We have already seen that the vertical dimension involves air, heaven, or meaning above and ground, earth, or material below. The further up we go, the more rarified, concentrated, idealized, and conscious or alive we are, while the further down we go, the more grounded but also scattered, dissipated, chaotic, and asleep or even dead we are. In the horizontal dimension, the farther in we come into our core, the more we are ourselves, while the farther out we go beyond our skin and then beyond our reach or presence, the less we are ourselves. We must balance the vertical dimension to retain our humanity and sanity. We must also balance the horizontal dimension to retain our individuality and personality. Symbolically, don’t be too high-minded or low minded, and don’t be too concentrated on yourself nor too scattered. And make it the same symbolic way with your family, school, workplace, or any other organization or entity. Keep the boundaries just loose enough and yet also just tight enough for the right balance of inclusion and exclusion. Both discernment, judgment, and control on the one hand, and adventure, grace, and risk on the other hand, are necessary for a healthy soul and psyche.
Time
Time also has a function within the cosmic structure that, the better you grasp it, the more your psyche and soul may benefit. You don’t have to think of time in the conventional manner of a long line with the tiny dot of the present separating the defined past from the unknown but determinate future. Nor must you think of time as sand pouring down and running out through the narrow funnel of the hourglass. Both of those materialist conceptions of time constrain and drain the psyche, soul, and spirit. Both of those abstract conceptions of time misrepresent our phenomenological, experienced reality. Eliminate the concept of time under Occam’s razor, and what we have in its place is change. Our condition and circumstances constantly change. Indeed, when conditions oddly do not change when they generally would and should change, we say that it was as if time stood still. Your old bedroom at your parents’ house, still exactly as you left it years ago, you might regard as a time capsule. So, rather than treating time as a material-like commodity, and thinking of making good or poor uses of that time, consider instead the nature and pace of, and necessity for, change in your conditions or circumstances. The difference may be subtle but can be powerful. Time, or better said change, is an important influence on the soul and psyche.
Interaction
Space and time, or better said space and change, also interact, affecting your soul and psyche. Space is material and stable. Simply sit down or hold onto something solid, and you will naturally steady your mental state. Our bodies and senses intuitively understand space or material as stable. Indeed, we give a great deal of thought to, and expend a lot of energy, arranging our material conditions to maintain our sense of stability and security. Isn’t that what you continually do with your residence? One could almost say that space represents or is stability. Of course, time is what changes space. Or to again ignore the odd concept of time, we could simply say that change happens to spaces. Residences, for instance, grow dirty and disorganized, fall into disrepair, and even burn or flood. Through our efforts or the efforts of others, though, they also improve. Change is a continual process of material decay and regeneration, within which we are participants. We do not control stability or change but may to degrees be able to influence both. We do best when we recognize the constant interaction of space, or stability, and change, and our need to both respect that interaction while also participating appropriately within it. Too much attention or inattention in any direction, toward order or decay, change or resisting change, upsets our own alignment with reality’s patterns and interactions.
Humility
Gaining a greater appreciation of the cosmic structure and our place in it should lend us not just a sense of our profundity and primacy but also greater humility. We are each of great significance as conscious cosmic embodiments and, effectively, cosmic rulers of a sort. Yet we are also inexpertly and incompletely influential in that cosmic order. Change and the complexity, powers, and vastness of the universe all conspire to keep us humble. We place our psyche, soul, and spirit in peril when presuming that we can master this universe. We are servant rulers, not arrogant rulers. We rule best as stewards of conditions that we neither created nor control but may positively influence at times, to the extent that we align ourselves with the cosmic order and its design and patterns. Maintain a humility about your place in the cosmic order, even as you embrace your position as more profound than any other created aspect of that order.
Resonance
We thus reign and rule in this extraordinary cosmic order not primarily through our power, plans, strength, and insights but more so through our ability to align ourselves with the cosmic order in ways that allow ourselves to resonate with it. The cosmic creator remains involved, continuously tuning the cosmic order to his beneficent designs, in, through, and over its continuous decay and regeneration. His tuning continuously brings to us things that appear to be fortuities but that are instead invitations to the extent that we perceive and pursue them. Call them resonances, patterns, miracles, synchronicities, or whatever else you prefer. We do not manifest them by our wishful thinking but may perceive them by our humble prayers, when aligned with the purposes and desires of the transcendent one who creates and offers them. Consider taking that stance deep within yourself, as you dwell on whatever revelation of the cosmic order the transcendent one shares with you.
Reflection
How well developed is your understanding or discernment of the cosmic structure? How would you articulate your cosmic vision to a counselor, advisor, or other confidante who is helping you realign your spirit, retune your psyche, or restore your soul? What do you make of the revelation that you are God’s image? Do you hold the position of humankind to be above the animals or just among the animals? Do you hold the position of humankind to be above angels and demons or below and subject to angels and demons? Do you sense and see the world’s symbolic nature? Do things and events speak to you not just about themselves but also about their pattern reflected in other things and events? Do you see frequent fortuities occurring in your life that must be more than random accidents? Do you have a reasonable degree of humility as to how much you can control your circumstances? Do you have a sense of needing to align your thinking and actions to circumstances as they emerge? Or are you more one to seize the initiative to change your circumstances?
Key Points
Having a sense of the grand cosmic order can help the soul and psyche.
We are intermediaries between heaven’s meaning and earth’s material.
The cosmos is symbolic and representational in all its features.
We integrate and embody the symbolic nature of the cosmic order.
We are in that sense superior in the cosmic order to other creations.
The cosmic order is fractal in design, the small imaging the large.
The psyche regards space as material, secure, real, and substantial.
The psyche perceives time as the unsettling rate of change of space.
We do well to maintain humility as to our ability to affect conditions.
Align your thoughts and behaviors to resonate with reality.