Perfection

 Perfection is the nature of the universe. Everything everywhere at all times is absolutely perfect. Global warming, overpopulation, pandemics, genocide, nations being taken over by religious zealots who want to take us back to the dark ages are all part of this perfection. Things are unfolding in the only way they can given the energies at work at any given moment. But how is this possible? How can so much distruction, pain and misery be understood as correct and in the way of things? How are we to make sense of a universe in which these events are perfect and necessary?

 If we have come to view life as simply the accumulation of as many desirable experiences as possible and the fewest undesireable as possible, then everything being perfect all the time will make no sense. In this reallity, perfection only exists when everything is exactly the way we think it needs to be. But this reality that is defined by our happiness being the only yardstick we have to determine how perfect a thing is, is actually is just the illusion we are caught up in as a result of our experience of ourselves as real and separate from all else in the universe. And while we truly believe in ourselves as real and separate, there is no truth in this and this belief puts us in a place where other higher realities can’t even be imagined. But the universe contains these other realities and the direction in which it’s moving that we call evolution is leading us toward these realities. But getting there requires our awakening from the illusion of separateness and this awakening requires our suffering. When we suffer, we are motivated to try and understand where this suffering originated and, in doing so, we come to understand how everything is connected to everything else. When we do this long enough, we eventually come to understand that how things unfold is totally dependent on the energies that are at work at any given moment and this then brings into question our existence as separate beings capable of altering our circumstances by an act of will.

 Accepting the perfection of things as a real possibility is useful to us because it gives us another option besides just fixing what is wrong in any given situation. If it is all perfect, then instead of trying to change how it is, we can attempt to understand how what is happening is what needs to be happening. Global warming is perfect because it is awakening us to our connection to and dependence upon the ecosystems that define our planets biosphere. Pandemics are awakening us to the natural process of limiting species numbers when they exceed the carrying capacity of an ecosystem. Genocide is awakening us to what happens when we are faced with diminishing resources and we can imagine ourselves as better than others who look different than us and desire these same resources. And suffering the consequences of allowing religious fanatics to occupy positions of power is awakening us to the consequences of pretending these belief systems can do no harm when people acting on them clearly can do enormous harm. The perfection to be found in these things is the potential, through the suffering they inflict, to awaken us from the illusion of separateness in which we are caught so that other transcendent realms can be known. It is what the universe is really about after all.