Fall Months, 2025

Being who we are, where we are, when we are, how we are is integrity, being expressing/exhibiting being.

Integrity comes easy with rocks and oceans and things that have  no choice in the matter. A bumble bee just is. The universe is crammed with things that are what they are and can't help it or do anything about it. And then we come along. Consciousness does it. We live in a world of things that are not aware of themselves. A world of not-knowing anything. Then there is life.

Life is the capacity to know something. The more we know, the more alive we are capable of being. Knowing without knowing that we know, or what we know, is basic life. Cells, for instance, know how and when to divide, but the cells have no say in the operations, and they are no better off for being alive without knowing what and how they know. The more conscious life is of being conscious, the "higher" we say the life forms are that know what they know. They become capable of introspection and wondering where knowing comes from and toward what end knowing knows. And, along with that, comes the process of "projection," wherein the knowing knower has the possibility of making things up, and not-knowing where experience stops and imagination starts. And "God," for instance is born out of nowhere and no one knows whether "God" is real of imaginary, but everything we "know" about "God" comes right out of our own imagination, and we tell ourselves things about "God" that become "true" but we are only making them up and they cannot be verified beyond the common agreement among those who are complicit in imagining what the group imagines to be so, unable to discern where "outside" and "inside" part ways, and they live in a world that is imagined to be real with no way of knowing what is real and what is imagined to be real. And here we are.