Conscious Aging with John Robinson, Ph.D.

We humans, busy, important, and distracted, reduce the incredible, wonder-filled, miraculous diversity of nature – which still exists – to monotony every time we name it, make it cute, and then move on. Giraffe. Sea turtle. Squid. Gnat. Rose. Apple tree. Worm. Seed. On and on. Each, seen for the first time, was astonishing and breathtaking – it's colors, smell, abilities. Indeed, wherever we are, we stand at the center of Creation but fail to see or sense it. Every time we name something, we kill its magic and make it expendable.
 
It's not just pollution, agribusiness, and toxic dumps that are destroying the world, though they are surely bad enough, it's us, it's conceptual thought as well. Remember that first glimpse of your lover's face, your newborn child, or the snail you watched crawling across the garden, where did that magic go? What happened to the thrill of discovering the work you love? We witness the world behind layer after layer of thought, belief, and future worries, and miss the here-and-now majesty and perfection of being. Our being. The world's being. Stand silently before any living or none living thing, examine it closely and without thought, and you look directly into an evolutionary miracle and a literal expression of the divine. We need to be re-amazed and re-astonished by the living, radiant splendor of existence or we will distractedly replace it through our focus on "economic progress" and "GDP."
 
It comes down to this: Our careless, anxiety-driven, preoccupation with naming, conceptualizing and explaining things kills the mystery we should be defending. The mystics have been calling us to wake upfor years, but we never have time. Time is running out. As Pogo said in 2014, "We have met the enemy and he is us." Only you and I can save Creation.