After a Long Day's Work...

Every once in a while, those days come along when regular daily routines just don't seem to cut it - something feels like it is missing from the day. Sometimes after I finish work I walk home under the stars (or, at this time of the year, pretty sunshine), and I feel an immense resistence to dinner (gasp!) and all the other usual options that seem available. I feel so hypnotized by the big sky, more than anything I just want to lie down in the grass and stare at it, forgetting about all of the day's petty worries and letting myself be seduced by the universe.

The sky calls to something greater within us - those huge, cosmic, universal qualities that connect us to each other and to something that transcends us all. Looking at the sky, you forget yourself and get lost in the endless blue, the glowing stars, the blazing moon...the bigness of it all. 

In the olden days, people were united by a common vision of the universe - a universe that they believed they were the very center of. No matter what kind of madness plagued the world, there was stability and comfort in this unshakeable knowledge. In this age of science and information, we don't have that kind of recognition or comfort. Everything is a bit shaky, tenuous, fragile. Rather than being united by a common vision, we are divided by conflicting outlooks or driven to apathy by the idea that there simply is no meaning - we're just floating randomly in vast, empty space. 

The latest science of cosmology and astronomy, however, is pointing towards a very different - and very meaningful - picture of the universe. They are now coming up with scientific evidence of the special, miraculous nature of conscious life and its unique role in vast space. I don't know that we've ever really needed this kind of hard proof. After a long day's work, having gotten stressed out by silly human troubles, nothing calms the mind and lifts the spirit like a long drink of the night sky. In that moment, everything is enough, and nothing is missing. In that moment, we are all as one, and we are all beautifully complete. 

"The reason why the universe is eternal is that it does not live for itself;

it gives life to others as it transforms"

~ Lao Tzu