The “One Law” of Universal Expansion
by Woods Elliott
One of my favorite subjects of thought is what I call cosmopsychology, or the study of how staggering it is to the human being to have such an ungraspably infinite setting for one’s home. I mean our location here in the universe is breath-taking, even crazy making. Is this not the most awe inspiring universe on hand as could ever be imagined? For most of my life I haven’t really felt at home in this vast cosmos. I was never sure what little me had to do with big IT. What meaning could there be behind such an unspeakable enormity? While finite, we’re at the same time in conjunction with, well, infinity! Bewildering. You get the picture?
In my book, Dazzlephrenia, I try to feel more at home in the cosmos. This is not an easy achievement as my title implies. Surely how we look upon the infinite cosmos, and ourselves in relation to it, deeply impacts us emotionally and psychologically and will, into the future, influence our way of being in the world and living our lives. There is more identical connection between pinprick stars and us than appears at first glance. That’s the thing. There must be a plausible correlation. It behooves us to perceive ourselves as more cosmic beings, integrating the cosmos, its central themes, patterns, and features, into our view of ourselves.
The cosmos is now generally regarded to be in an extravagant act of some kind of ever-evolving energy; this is its evolutionary property. I had a thinking buddy in Colorado, when I was organizing a small local philosopher’s club, one of many intriguing thinkers who were drawn in. His single, nearly obsessional contention was what he called The One Law of Universal Expansion. He believed everything in reality was subject to this primary cosmic law. And he believed that the human condition needed to be primarily understood in relation to this one basic driving principle. I recall he objected fiercely to deism, because it had stopped expansion beyond the concept of God. He thought the invention of God had put a cap on our imagination. I was immediately attracted to the novelty of his viewpoint. I had never heard anyone before him posit such an obvious notation, and at the same time, had never heard anyone bridge astrophysics to human psychology so uniquely. Why don’t people more readily see themselves as needing to expand like their cosmos? This got me thinking about universal expansion and what that had to do with me and my life.
When I try to get down to my own deepest needs and strivings, what grabs at me the most, is my unstoppable need to delve more deeply into what existence is: to learn more. Now, when you think of it, isn’t learning just a subtle way to self expand? So when I’ve achieved something in life, I’ve moved on to something new. Kept growing, extending, deepening. Are we not mostly evolution or expansion-in-action? One way to look at expansion is visual.
When I ponder the tie between cosmic expansion and love of freedom, I find myself remembering my first adventures out west, my first airplane flight from sea level Long Island to Salt Lake City, Utah in 1965, when I awoke after a night flight to see snow-capped mountains outside the hotel window as if they were on a big billboard of some kind. Wow! My eyes delighted by all the “extra” space the distant mountains created.
Then I keenly remember a euphoria of perception when first to Denver, in the mid 70’s. Mountains have a powerful presence on people. There’s a geospiritual correlation between mountains and humans, a literal uplifting of some kind you can directly experience. I went around smiling for months just because I had daily visual beauty and depth of field all about me. My eyes drank in expansive views in an almost sensual manner. There was a sense of being visually grateful, even privileged, just to be there. The setting had enhanced the quality of my life in some unclear but real way. My dear geologist friend, Hal Proska coined the phrase “geospiritual”, he too was a great believer in the energetic nature of unknown forces at work beneath the surface nature of the ordinary world.
I lived below majestic Pikes Peak in Manitou Springs and in other wonderful sites in Colorado for nearly twenty years. Felt free as a bird. So much room to move around in! You can even find actual remote places where there are no other people around for miles. That can be very relaxing. I felt more fully alive there than I do now in visually-hemmed in Williamsburg, VA, where a large nearby highway intersection opens up enough clearance to take in the sky. That’s sad and sorrowful to say, but true. Are my eyes less free than they were in Manitou? Can our eyes be confined?
We need to see how the law of expansion bears on us and the lives we lead. Is it possible that what people refer to when they use this familiar word, freedom, is simply referring to that cosmic aspect in people which corresponds to the need to be free to expand like the cosmos?
This is why I sometimes feel a quick fury at the slow driver holding me up, getting in my way, not letting me be on my way! But the truth of this is really driven home if you remind yourself how we punish people for wrong-doing. We put them in jails, restrict their movements, imprison them. Don’t we mostly prize freedom very highly? Is there anything else that grieves us more than to be caught in a traffic jam, or in some other way be restricted, trapped, crowded, confined, overpowered, or held against our will?
You can see how easily the cosmic and human need to expand conforms with one of Eckhart Tolle’s teachings about “space consciousness”, relearning a more spacious recognition of the larger “container” of awareness out of which all else arises. He teaches the importance of bringing more space and stillness into our experiences and relationships with others. It does seem that consciousness wants to keep expanding and enlarging, doesn’t it? Don’t we feel more present, peaceful, and relaxed when we feel expanded, enlarged, and freed? Eckhart urges us to remember the deep ground of awareness that underpins and enables the world of forms.
I’ve been doing some expansive work with my equally reflective soul friend, Rose Diamond, during the past three years. We refer to it as our Consciousness Practice. It represents our joint wish to experiment with bringing more conscious awareness into our relationships. In this practice, we set aside a regular time to be very present and transparent, co-create a sacred space, and enter into a very strong witness-centered form of awakening more completely into the present moment. This practice came quite naturally to us; both introspective types, trained psychotherapists, analytical and intuitive, and prone to self reflection and deeper types of exchanges. She and I will be talking more about our practice over time, but for now I just wanted to make a point about the importance of us learning how to expand into more open states of receptivity than we usually do, and what gifts and blessings this gives rise to. Most people would agree that there is a very special energy, intense higher forms of consciousness have. Surely this unnamed enlivening power is of an energetic nature; you can feel it as an entraining vibration moving throughout the whole body, in every cell so to speak.
Many days I feel like an expanding cosmic being. How about you?
To learn more about Dazzlephrenia, go to: http://www.awholenewworld.net/books.htm
Photo by Braveheart: www.illusionsbybraveheart.photoreflect.com
