The Hope in Nature's Patterns
Reasons for Hope (7 of 11)
Change is no Accident
If you are like me, going for a walk outside when you are having a bad day helps to bring you back into balance. I have written about the power of nature before (Brayko), but there is still more to nature that provides reasons for hope. In a nutshell, the universe is big and eternal and we are small and finite so we can probably safely TRUST that Mother Nature has got everything under control.
I know. I know! Climate change - or Climate Disruption as Leonardo DiCaprio describes it is a real thing. I am with you on that 100%. But when you zoom out far enough and long enough to recognize that even if the sixth extinction does overtake our planet, the planet itself will still regenerate, having already done so five previous times. This may or may not bring immediate comfort to you, but for me it does. The planet is in a constant state of change, as are our own bodies, as is the universe itself. Even cells in humans and other living organisms are always dying while others are being regenerated. Likewise plants and animals are always living and dying, decomposing and being born anew in another configuration of molecules. And even inanimate objects change. For example, what is now glass was sand, and before that, it was sandstone. Simply put: change is the name of the game. It is a necessary part of the design.
You can also think about it this way, human beings have only been around for a short amount of time in the grand scheme of things, but we have had our collective purpose while here. As philosopher Alan Watts says, the way a tree creates apples, our planet creates people. We are inseparable from our context or environment. And thus, we offer a sort of collective consciousness or “brain” to this environment, this “body,” that is our planet. We imagine. We create and solve problems. We use our curiosity. And in many ways our very presence contributes to the ever-growing awareness or enlightenment of the whole (Roberts).
Now I know you may consider that life itself is too much of an accident of nature to trust nature at all. If we have been accidentally created then we are vulnerable and all hope is lost. But what if we are anything but an accident? What if we are an aspect of an organized creative consciousness that likes to create? Science is seeing it this way more and more with each discovery, and spiritual and ancient traditions have always known this though they may express it in different words.
“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.” -Carl Sagan
Same Same, but Different
“Fractal-like patterns occur widely in nature, in phenomena as diverse as clouds, river networks, geologic fault lines, mountains, coastlines, animal coloration, snow flakes, crystals, blood vessel branching, actin cytoskeleton, and ocean waves.”
(Wikipedia “Patterns in Nature”)
Have you ever noticed how a barren tree looks an awful lot like the circulatory system? (See illustration) Click here to see the most powerful MRI of blood vessels in the human brain. Notice the similarities.
Or turn your palms up and look at the crease patterns then again at the trees pictured. Do you see what I see?
Or have you seen the research of the similarities between the cosmic network of galaxies and the network of neuronal cells in the brain? (Click here for more.) These two complex systems also appear to be eerily similar although they occur at widely different scales. In fact, there are many places where the universe almost appears to work like Russian nesting dolls - similarities pop up at different scales from the quantum to the cosmos. Such scaling up and scaling down with similar patterns suggests that nature itself is quite organized! Organized enough to create its own version of nesting dolls.
This scaling up or down of similar patterns is called fractals. To me this is one of the most mind-blowing realizations about our universe. I first learned about fractals through my interest in quantum physics. Once I understood the universe organized itself similarly at different scales, I knew four things: 1) The universe is not random but organized. 2) I might be able to look at something on one scale and scale it up or down. 3) Through scaling up or down I can learn more about my self and my world. 4) I could trust the Universe to know what it is doing. (For much more on this see the series Quantum Revolution on Gaia.com by career quantum physicist Nissam Haramein).
Another fun rabbit hole to explore is the fibonacci sequence in nature. It is yet another way of seeing patterns in nature. The fundamental mathematical pattern adds the two previous numbers to get the next number in the sequence. So: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, etc. One way the fibonacci sequence manifests is in spirals, like the spirals you see in images of spiral galaxies or nautilus shells or pineapples or sunflowers. (See image here). It also is related to the golden ratio (1.618), a proportion found in every scale from the micro to the macro.
Connectedness
Fractals, spirals, fibonacci sequences, and the golden ratio are patterns that all happen quite naturally all around us, in our universe, and in our own bodies. These patterns also serve to remind us that we are OF nature not separate from it. That means that in our natural state, we are in sync with nature. For millennia now we humans have mistakenly perceived ourselves as separate from nature, even separate from God. Certainly during Covid I suspect our sometimes painful isolation served to emphasize our recognition that connectedness is natural and disconnectedness is unnatural. Such connection happens at different scales too: economically, socially, energetically, spiritually, sub-atomically through entanglement, and cosmically as children of the Universe.
Finding Hope
If you are looking for hope, just look around you. The natural world itself is always signaling that it knows what to do and how to do it. It’s patterns are visible and comforting; its constant state of change is no accident. We can trust Mother Nature. We can recognize our inherent connection to all of the natural world. We can trust that we have a natural and creative role to play in the ever-expanding and growing collective consciousness. Now let’s get on with it.
References
Brayko, Brenda. “Let Nature Nurture You.” Me-Time: Self-Care in the Time of Covid. Life Cheat Sheets. 17 March 2022.
“Does the Human Brain Resemble the Universe?” Universita di Bologna. 16 Nov. 2020. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/855363
Quantum Revolution. Series. www.Gaia.com
Roberts, Jane. Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment, Volume One (A Seth Book). 3rd ed. Amber-Allen Publishing, 2012.
Next up: The Myth of Scarcity
You can find my other series in the archives:
Parenting 101 Coupons: A Gift from your Parents
Partnering 101: A Deep Dive into Leaving Kindly
Me-Time: Self-care in the time of Covid
If you like it, share it! Help me reach my goal of 100 subscribers.
Brenda BraykoWriter. Teacher. Gong Player.
Find more of my writing at GreenBaytoKorea.blogspot.com
Learn about my business at CelestialSoundGB.com
On Instagram @applebb09
All photos by © Brenda Brayko 2022.