[at-l] INTJ & What we have in common

[shane at theplacewithnoname.com (Shane Steinkamp)]

> I walked alone most of the time.

Aren't we all really alone?

> My most intense moments with the mountains were when I was
> alone.  On a few occasions I had a kind of epiphany with the
> mountains, an unexpected and overwhelming joy from
> everything I was seeing and feeling and doing at that
> moment.  I had become the woods and the place had become me,
> the sounds, the scents, the hardness, the gentleness, the
> golden light, the profligate abundance, the unseen dangers,
> the unconditional gifts, the total indifference had become
> me and I had become them.  The "I" of me ceased and I was
> made whole, larger, if just for a moment.  I was where I was
> supposed to be and life was as perfect as it gets, and it
> was good.  I seemed to soar over the landscape and into the
> endless sky.  It made me so full I broke into tears from
> happiness.  It was always a humbling, exalting experience.
> The mountains are divine.

Yeah, I'll buy that...

I'm tempted to say something like, "Everything is everything, man." and
leave it at that, because you're right - it's out there.  Maybe I just had
too many psychedelics... ;)

I think though, that it's very important to experience those things.  Most
people never make the connection that you aren't IN the universe.  That's
the problem with most people's perceptions.  They think, "I am me, and that
is a table, and that is a chair, and that is a tree, and that is a
mountain."  Everything is outside of us.  We are all ON the planet, IN the
solar system, IN the universe...

In reality, though, we aren't.  We are PART of the planet, and PART of the
solar system, and PART of the universe. We are, in a very real way, the part
of the universe that regards itself.

I hate to use movie and TV quotes to explain something, but I really like
this.  It also lets me quote someone else and not seem so weird...

"Consider the hand. Veins, capillaries, muscles, cells, moons, stars,
planets galaxies, all trapped inside a femoral translucent flesh.  The palm,
we have lines, we have signs, we have shapes, equations. All of creation in
a hang nail. ..."

"You see my friend, the universe is sentient, aware, alive. ... The truth
strengthens us, ennobles us, sets us free."

"We're all recycled you know. Just molecules and atoms born in the stars and
recycled into carbon based life. Why do you think we have spent millions of
years trying to understand the stars, the moons and the universe itself hm?
Hm? Because we are the universe, the universe made manifest. It broke itself
into pieces to examine every aspect of its being. We try to
understand it because in so doing, well, we will understand ourselves... "

"...People like you ... suffer from the fact that you do not
remember having been part of the universe. Your uh, sort of left out of the
cosmic loop so to speak. Uh you know driven mad by the silence, the terrible
isolation. But you see we, we remember, we remember the universe we feel the
connection." -Jeremiah

I am always amused by the Hippy Movement, in a sad and melancholy way.  It
amazes me that Joni Mitchell could have sang stuff like,

"We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden."

...and an entire generation still sold itself out...and now the freaks like
me don't have any chance...

Of course Smash Mouth came along and explained it to me
with "WALKIN' ON THE SUN", and so now I understand it.

It still makes me sad, because I seem to remember that I am a part of the
universe, and I know what it's like to be a mountain, and trees, and cold
ashes, and rain, and grass, and all the little creatures.  I know what it's
like to be a planet, and a sun, and a galaxy spinning lazily in the void.
I know all that, because I've been all that.  I've been a part of all that.
The atoms, molecules, and elements in my body were formed eons ago, and they
whisper to me.  Sometimes they whisper secrets, if you know how to listen.

Swapping souls with a mountain for a few hours is a lot easier for me than
trying to figure out how a giant bunny rabbit hiding painted chicken eggs in
your yard has something to do with the story of Jesus...

Man, now THAT'S freaky.

Shane