“All that is, is energy.”
She started reading to me out of a ridiculously small, thin book aptly titled The Little Black Book. It had symbols on the front, but I was too foggy this morning to be interested in what they were, or what she was saying.
We had been blissfully quiet until then, perusing our individual reading material while contentedly drinking coffee. This was the plan, anyway. But I should not have been surprised when she deviated, I was in too much of a crisis for her to sit quietly while I re-read an issue of National Geographic from two years ago.
I stared at her, cocking my head slightly, and gave a sigh of resignation. She took this non-verbal signal as acceptance, smiled and continued, though this time she was reciting, not reading.
“Energy exists. It has always existed. All the energy that exists today existed at the time of the Big Bang. Energy is not created or destroyed; it is redistributed, reformed, and recycled in an ongoing ebb and flow that is self-perpetuating and eternal.”
I continued to stare at her, narrowing my eyes slightly, thinking that if I could bring her face into closer focus I could somehow make sense of where she was going. She did not seem to notice.
“All life is a manifestation of this energy, and the diversity we see on Earth is a result of the principles of natural selection at work. Prior to the introduction of human consciousness, these processes unfolded according to the laws of evolution, dictated by circumstance and environment. There is no director or conductor of the entire dance.”
She came back to the present and looked at me.
“Did you get that?” She said, smiling.
“Not really…” I shook my head and exhaled an incredulous laugh.
“Think about it,” she replied. Her verbal prodding wasn’t sitting well with me.
“I will,” I responded, returning to my magazine.
The next few weeks were challenging. As the foundations I relied on began to crack, my personal belief system was being ripped apart.
Her talk about the self-perpetuating system of the redistribution of energy and the removal of a conscious director from the evolutionary equation really had me questioning everything.
It was a sunny afternoon the next time we met.
“It’s nice to see the sky blue,” she said.
I nodded in agreement. A recent rainstorm had cleared the smoke and micro debris left by a series of wildfires that had ravaged the overgrown forests of Northern California. Prior to the period of rain, the sky maintained a general brown-grey hue and the sun, when it could shine though, was a dingy red-orange. The whole sky had an apocalyptic feel. The air was thick and heavy. People stayed inside, afraid, and those who ventured out did so wearing masks. The whole scene added to my angst over the purpose and direction of humanity and my life.
“You look tired,” she continued.
“I am.”
“You thought about it.” Her phrase was a statement rather than a question.
I nodded. In fact, I had thought a lot about it.
“It doesn’t sit right with me,” I said. Her mischievous smile set me on edge, she knew this would be the case.
“The idea that all that exists is energy – unconscious forever moving in and out of form without purpose or reason is in complete contrast to my long-held view.”
I proceeded to explain what she already knew. My intention in doing so was not to convince her, but to somehow grasp a thread of the fabric of my quickly unraveling belief system. My ideology was framed by the idea that consciousness was primary and existed as an infinitely dense singular point—Source Energy. Out of a desire to know, see, smell and touch itself, it exploded, and all the expansion and creative movement since then has been Source Energy expressing itself. I believed that by admiring and appreciating Source Energy’s creation, I was fulfilling my purpose as a human, the pinnacle of the evolutionary process set forth in the Big Bang. But my thought processes over the past week brought to light a glaring error in my belief, and this was the foundation of my crisis.
She gave me a warm smile that encouraged me to continue.
“The concept of attributing the human emotion of desire to source energy is wrong.” I shook my head, “It has to be.”
Saying this out loud, the blade of truth entered my heart as the light of clarity sparked a terrible awareness. Stripped of human emotion, I concluded that Source Energy did not have my back or anyone else’s, and did not give one emotional thought to anything created in the eternally self-perpetuating ebb and flow of energy distribution. This realization disturbed and unsettled me.
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Lynn Crocker Creative 