Back to the Garden
Introduction
By Robert Larsen

This is the introduction to a book Robert is currently writing. Feel free to contact Robert with your comments or questions at taichirobert@gmail.com.

The “Darwin Awards” were created to signalize acts so lacking in intelligence and common sense that the awardees are cited for their contribution to improving the gene pool -- by dying. As I look around at others and myself I am forced to wonder: Where does rampant stupidity come from? We, potential recipients of the Darwin Award all, are continuing to endanger life on this entire planet!

1) Is there a fundamental glitch in our psychology that continues to make us act with such stupidity? 2) How is it possible for so many intelligent people to continue to act so blindly? 3) Is there anything we can do about it?

I believe we need to acknowledge that we have left out something vital, so vital in fact that the very existence of our place on this planet is in jeopardy. The modern age with its technological advances has seen the advance of a of way “life” that has us all attempting to do in the span of our own short lifetimes what the earth and Her children have already perfected over Billions of years. Our hubristic approach to this “task” has a serious flaw that, unless recognized and responded to, will spell Darwin Award for us all:

We have been so severely shocked that we have lost our connection with life and are now attempting to master the task of living as if it were something that we are not born to!

Instead of sensing and responding from our ongoing communion with life, we continue to attempt to think our way out of present difficulties. Never mind that it was this attempt to figure out and master life that created the horrific nature of our current situation. This mental approach to ever birthing life has us mistrusting our inherent connection with the guidance of Heart. This produces hollowness at the core that we can no longer afford to ignore.

If we are to avoid being a recipient of the Darwin Award ourselves, we must begin by acknowledging the wisest teacher we have: The quantum life of our planet. It has been known by many names, but my favorite is “Tao”. The Quantum life of our planet is perfect. It is what is. It is the ground of Being that has given birth to us all. This Quantum field is the feminine nature of all things, feminine because She gives birth to, and receives all things. She, the Tao of Life, truly is our Mother. Intelligence would suggest that one consciously open to receiving and respecting the perfection of this Tao as it is. This is life, the source of all true intelligence. It is the bottom line and connecting thread for all sentient beings.

Recognizing this, our rightly acknowledged task in this modern age is not to figure out how to fix things, but to make an attempt to realign consciousness with Her intelligence.

This is a task very different from the mechanical attempt to control, fix or master life. This mechanistic attempt is like approaching the intricacies of a living wonder with an erector set head and attempting to make it fit the limitations of our stiff little girders. Our approach to Her needs to change to one of first receiving Her guidance. So this new approach first involves more undoing than doing:

If we are to survive the incredible demands being placed upon us at this juncture of history, we must learn to use our minds in a different way.

Not unlike aboriginal peoples who revered the earth and Her ways, we must rediscover ways of tuning our minds to Her intelligence. For it is more like tuning to Her Tao than figuring anything out. There are many other stations on the dial, many other ways of assembling consciousness to make meaning, but Hers is the only one that speaks unreservedly the Language of Life:

Where one opens in innocence to the young of any species and feels a softening move through their own body, one begins to “see” with Her eyes again. Where one mysteriously connects with the inscrutability of plant or stone and finds their body glowing with a sense of pleasure, they begin to feel Her sensibility again: Where the inner northern lights melt through one’s body like the shimmering reflection of water across the underside of leaves, this evanescent light from the bubbling surface of a freshly opening spring speaks of Her presence. Where one recognizes themselves again in the soft light of this experience, they are “tuning to Her station”.

Seriously, why would one choose any other? What makes one attempt to do something that might cause them to loose their connection with this source of deep wisdom wherein all may be known? What drives one to actually attempt to destroy this connection? Rather than attempting to change the earth or how we feel, we need to find ways to open ourselves and stay with the refreshing tonic of what is.

Joseph Campbell tells of how important it is that the great myths be retold in each generation. They need to be revivified in the language and understanding that speaks to current sensibilities. This writing is mythological in the sense that it attempts to help one see through the calcinations of habituated systems that may be stopping our evolution in consciousness. May this writing help us to partake with greater involvement and understanding the energetic shifts in life force that continue to carry us forward in our great journey into the present.