This is part six of a six-part series between Nathan Davila, author & narrator for Cloud Grounding Publications, and me. Nathan is writing letters 1, 3, and 5, and I am responsible for letters 2, 4, and 6. Links to the letters will be updated as we go: Letter 1, Letter 2, Letter 3, Letter 4, Letter 5, and Letter 6.
Dear Nathan,
Thank you for proposing this conversation. This is not something I would’ve ever done on my own, and it has been a wonderful experience working through this stuff with you.
My first response to you was that I didn’t know what consciousness was.
I still don’t.
As an adolescent, I felt caught at the center of a tug-of-war between my mystic romanticism and my logical rationalism. Later in life, that struggle went from a game of tug-of-war to what felt like an actual war.
On what I hope is just barely on the other side of middle age, I’m still torn by this duality.
I think humans are too eager to excuse nasty and brutish behavior as being in service to some greater power. But I have also experienced fleeting moments where I touched the divine—never enough to comprehend, but enough to make fully rational atheism an impossible step for me to take.
What I’m left with is hope.
I hope that we are connected by a cosmic flow. I hope that there is such a thing as universal consciousness that may allow our bold, clever, stupid species to transcend our divisions.
After all, why not hope? If there is no higher connection, isn’t life a little brighter for me and those I manage to help if I act as if we are all connected?
I’d rather risk being a fool for hope than for being right and living a life of hopelessness.
I am still skeptical of attempts to make the idea of flow or consciousness too grandiose. I think if we act as if this state is far removed from our common experience, we only gatekeep who has access to it.
I believe in finding the sublime in the mundane.
And this leads me back to your talk of love.
Does anything do more than love to show the sublime in the mundane?
Maybe the Beatles were right, maybe all we need is love.
Another musical formulation of this idea that moves me to tears in my unguarded moments is the song That Would Be Enough in Hamilton, written by Lin-Manuel Miranda.
I will end this letter with the last words from that song:
And I could be enough
And we could be enough
That would be enough
Cheers,
Jason
I love it Jason! What you’re getting at reminds me of the saying, “be here now”. One of my first projects for music was called “Here Right Now”. I painted the words on my acoustic guitar and played it everywhere. The mantra served as a reminder to me that I was terrible at staying in the moment, but I had hope that in order to grow and be well grounded in this life - you have to be in the moment. The most calm and peaceful moments of my life are when I let go of the cool ideas and rabbit holes that leave me pondering thoughts for hours- days even. I guess the name, “Cloud Grounding Publications” speaks to that duality within myself. My head is always in the clouds gathering information from - everywhere - but I walk barefoot through the neighborhood with my kid and try to maintain a healthy balance; in other words, gathering thoughts from the clouds, grounding them to the moment, and publishing them for anyone and everyone :) Happy holidays to you and yours Jason