An unconditional offering.
There are a series of views and perceptions of reality that might be useful within certain involvements in which this individual is actively engaged. This is an attempt to transmit a very tiny portion of such perceptions, and is intended as an offering towards the facilitation of those engagements. It is based upon living and working with that which is herein contained over a period of 33-34 years. That the style of presentation and language may seem odd, unconventional or overly formal is understood, but necessary in order to avoid generalisms, for there is no established language for the task at hand.

An example of the difficulties
As an example, were the term 'religion' employed it would mean different things to different people, so an alternative choice is to state the following: There is no such thing as religion in this world. There is only the celebration of once religious events, and a history of manipulation of those events to allow small elites such as politicians and priests (often people occupying both said roles) to control others, even unto the entire population over which they have sought to have and succeeded in holding dominion.

In other more colloquial terms the idea of religion has become discredited particularly in the Western European world because it has a long history of domination, abuse, manipulation, economic advantage or other forms of resource control, murder, mass-murder, torture, indifference to the plight of the disadvantaged, destruction of established ways of life and the disruption of natural social evolution, particularly upon the southern Hemisphere, through the activities of various European Empires in which no nation that has exercised such power can claim innocence.

Thus were the term 'new religion' introduced it would be like a red rag to the bull of historical understandings. There are many side-issues to this, but as this is being given as an example of the difficulties of language, and thus the importance of using language mindfully, it is not necessary to make all the little side-journeys for the present purpose.

Essence and Personality
There is a very important distinction that can shed light on the perceptions described within this offering: that between essence and personality.

By analogy the personality of, for example, a marigold is the flower, the bright orange or yellow petals in a ring around the centre which contains stamens and pollen for fertilisation. The essence of the marigold is the seed which is produced as a result of this experience and which contains all that is necessary, both genetic blueprint and the wherewithal to produce roots and shoot so that the blueprint can accumulate matter and energy of various kinds in order to give it form and growth possibility, thus to continue the species.

At a human level, therefore, it is possible to apply the analogy thus: a human essence is contained in the moment of the successful meeting of a sperm and an ovum, thus a fertilised egg. Everything else that occurs between that tiny instant and full physical maturity, ageing, decline and 'death' is an extension of that instant. It may therefore be asserted that the only 'time' a human has is that tiny moment of union and that the rest of its existence is just an extension of that time.

This does not mean, however, that that tiny moment of time is finite. In one sense its very smallness can be perceived as being infinite, not in the sense of never-to-end, but in the sense of ever-present to be connected with whilst in existence.

This is being proposed as an essence view of a human life. There are, however, other processes that occur during the life of both the marigold and the human that can be separated into essence and personality, which is the thrust of this proposition. Neither marigold nor human exist in isolation. Both are part of a planetary, a galactic, inter-galactic and universal ecology. Thus there is more to a human life than (to quote T.S. Eliot) "birth, copulation and death".

It is these processes and manifestations that can be divided into essence and personality engagements, portrayals, actions and connections. In the case of the human the possibility of perception and cognisance throughout its existence as an essence engagement is the most critical. [Please re-read the last sentence with sensitivity and dwelling - its essence is enfolded within and behind the words as no words can contain it.] However, because of succeeding cultures over thousands and even possibly tens of thousands of years which have become dominated by personality, wrongfully dubbed 'human nature', the moments of essence engagement in the vast majority of human lives became increasingly more rare up to and including the last century.

During this century, as it is perceived by many that humans are at a threshold of either cataclysmic or future-transformational change, depending upon which side of the 'event horizon' of that change the viewer stands, the stimulus to more moments of essence perception has increased. [This will become clearer if you read the examples below.] There are, therefore, a series of arisings, in individuals mostly, but also possibly within groups, which are reaching, if only instinctually, towards an essence perception and therefore hopefully in time towards essence engagement and processes.

To give greater range of description to this simple understanding, which is the purpose of this piece, a few examples might be of use. Most people, to date, have the following essence experiences during adulthood (infants have more, but they tend to become curtailed by cultural contamination, even prior to the learning of language): traumatic experiences, such as severe accidents, attacks or medical threats, particularly where the perception of having narrowly escaped death is a factor; living for extended periods at the brink of personal extinction whether through starvation, torture, the processes of war or some form of extreme sensory deprivation; ecstatic experiences, including sexual, visionary or drug-induced, although many of these can be contaminated by circumstance and/or subjectivity and thus not incorporated permanently into the psyche as anything other than hallucinations or temporary aberrations.

The rest of human experience has been mostly a generality. Not to say that people have not had and do not continue to have special moments in which the self is temporarily lost by being projected into reality, but these experiences are rare.

The Proposition
The proposition of this tiny fragment on offer can now hopefully be more clearly understood, having laid the above framework of reference. If the above has not registered, then this offering will be of little value, so either stop reading for the moment or perhaps make time to re-read at a later date.

In order for any group to be able to share their heart and their soul in any progressive endeavour it will eventually become necessary to devise ways and means in which to distinguish between essence and personality engagements. That this is possible is already known. The ways and means exist. It has been said that a person cannot exist in reality and in the self at the same time. This is difficult to disprove and is offered as a simple one-sentence explanation of all the above.

Within this proposition, therefore, is the suggestion that comparison, possession (as in fear of loss and desire for gain), opinion (as opposed to unconditioned perception) and all other trappings known as ego, or sense of self, need to be set aside. It is not difficult, but it does require, in the experience of many, the never-ending personal development and continual refinement of certain qualities which can be expressed in the following nine words:

Care - Patience - Understanding - Hope - Belief - Humility - Charity- Radiation - Life;

and in their clear intended definitions as some of them can be misinterpreted according to cultural bias:

Care to mean the continual anticipation of the needs of another;
Patience to mean the quality that any person can experience, as an example, when physically contemplating the vastness of the night sky (clear of light pollution) - referred to by the Kalahari Bushman as their internal "tapping";
Understanding: expressed at three levels: 1. "Please pick up that bucket", the person obliges;
2. 'Standing Under' the banner of a commitment without conditions or reservations;
3. Being 'host' to an essence;
Hope to mean not specific empty anticipation or desire but the positive quality that negates despair;
Belief to mean a lightness of heart - (original modern English "be lief" or be willing to allow for);
Humility: the ability to manufacture in oneself an essence to match that which approaches;
Charity: in the fullest sense i.e. lack of judgement and criticism of another, part of compassion, giving the benefit of the doubt, but not stupidly;
Radiation: the free transmission of the best of oneself to all others without condition, other than that of sensible self-protection;
Life: Living with a capital 'L', not in a small, petty, self-constricted or mono-dimensional sense, but in a truly courageous Universal Engagement.

These nine qualities are in fact nine facets of one integrated reality which has many names. The reader is invited to ponder and dwell upon them.

END