Along Wild and Predatory Paths

Here is a truth: The universe is wild and predatory.

Did we see how its first instant of existence was total chaos? Do we see how, across the cosmos, entropy just keeps on growing?

The unfolding of existence gave life to all that exists, and so all that exists is destined to unfold. The universe expands only by taking that space away from non-existence. A timid universe could never prevail against the infinite nothing. A timid universe would never have been born.

Big galaxies eat the small ones, time eats the stars, and worlds are conquered by the strongest. None of this is anyone's cruelty; it is simply the way forms unfold. How could you teach a lion not to kill, when not even turning it vegetarian could ever stop it?

This beautiful Earth we live on inherited the universe's most magnificent gift: Diversity. On just the thin surface we know, we can see the most varied beings, some of them moving, others not moving but growing all the same. What color escapes being portrayed? What unimaginable shape has not been played out in its most authentic expression of life? This fire of existing knows no void, and wherever there is a void, it is always filled with conscious beings.

And every form of life fulfills a cycle ordained by the nature that begot the universe. For a biological being, the law is to be born, to grow and to die. For the human being as an animal species, two processes happen at once, yet flexibly independent of each other: One brings old age to the physical body, and the other brings maturity to the spiritual body.

Our human world seems to be the wildest and most predatory one we could know. Being human, we only know how to be human, and we will never know how to experience the harmony of ants in their anthill, nor a dog's devotion to its friend (not even once we stop dreaming that we are its masters). And yes, the human being is a wild and predatory species, for it was made in the image and likeness of its father, the universe.

The human being carries the spirit of survival burning within: Eat so as not to be eaten, crush so as not to be crushed, hate so as to be hated in return. Evil is not born of malice, which makes evil innocent in its own virtue. Malice is sometimes born of evil, but it inherits from evil the purity of its purpose.

Surviving is the force that keeps us on our two feet, learning every day, and striving with all our energy to reach that ideal of physical-spiritual maturity that will make us transcend the world.

Of course, surviving is also the urge that convinces us to destroy the unknown, to run from the dark, to switch off our heart. And many times, the fear that saved us is the very one that eats us. The most primitive shape the survival instinct takes shows up in us by making us shut our eyes and throw blind punches at the wild and predatory world around us. The rule is never to let go of the spear, and by spear I mean any obtuse emotion that puts us in a fighting stance against some enemy. In the process of spiritual ripening, this is the sprout stage.

And whom shall we blame? Is it the fault of that murderer walking free of prison despite all our "longing for justice" against him? Can we really stop politicians from enjoying so much the manipulating of us with shocking lies, to drain the blood we produce in exchange for their crumbs? Wasn't Lucifer's rebellion a blessing for our world, revealing in its forms the very light of God? Isn't it right that reptiles should govern this world under the imposing force of their life-creating spirit?

All is as it should be, for we can ask nothing of a baby who doesn't yet know how to use the toilet. Getting angry at it won't help it with its individual task of deciphering the mystery it was given, and stomping furiously on its unwitting gifts won't help keep our feet clean. The diversity built into all that exists creates beings of every size, passing through every stage of ripening.

So at every moment, present or future, there will always be spiritual "babies" smearing things everywhere, just as there will always be grandparents sharing their wisdom with anyone who hears the call to tend their first blush of color and at last ripen. There will always be evil, there will always be malice. Always, always, the universe will be wild and predatory. And a mature being is one who has learned to live at peace with this truth.

Here is a detail: There is something we cannot do, and that is grow. Where am I going to get that extra cubit of height I want? Will I take it from someone else, maybe, and eat it? Will I stand on tiptoe reaching for heaven from that monumental tower of Babel I called civilization and came to know instead as babble? No. Only divine grace will make me grow. Only the sprouting of my own nature will learn to discern, without any effort of mine, the duality of good and evil. Yes, I ate the apple, but once I swallowed it, it is not I who deliberately knows how to digest it.

Is there any workable advice for surviving in the chaos of a wild and predatory world? Love, perhaps? The only one possible: Let us not pity ourselves. We will all die. We will all be eaten by some other life energy that will unfold in its turn, only to be eaten too. Who in this enormous universe could lose sleep over the fate of a tiny organism whose only priority is the impossible task of not dying?

Here is a secret: Behind that board where the game of life is laid out, we can see that we are not that human being we watch being born, growing and dying. Maturity will give the human being the understanding to see that it is not that human being, but that its consciousness of life, which is experiencing the human being, is nothing but conscious life. That is, we are not living beings. We are life, being.

Why, a grandparent would say, spend this one single instant of life we are experiencing trying to keep alive a mortal organism so fleeting that a star will never see it pass? Why run from death if we are life? Why not simply be what we already are, without ideals, enemies or goals? Why not stay in the now and be happy for as long as there is still a now?