Service: The Womb of Existence

One day, I was meditating outside. Nature teamed around me, everything in flow, beauty in all directions. I looked up at the sky and the thought came that “everything is still inside the womb of Mother Earth.” The flash of awareness that swept through me was profound: everything seen, perceived, and related to; all in existence, even the view of the starry night sky, is all the perception of creation from within Her womb. And, furthermore, if this stunning wondrous expression of life is a gestational state, then what will birth at the time of fulfillment? That exploded and expanded sense of Earth-based reality has never left me and I believe it to be metaphysically and spiritually correct.

“We are pregnant with the Earth, and the Earth is pregnant with us.” (from Womb of Existence meditation)

Everything evolves, including continents, weather, the inner geological processes of the planet, as well as biological entities and kingdoms such as animal or plant or human. I do not think that human beings evolved from apes. Instead, as a species of spiritual Beings, we looked around a long, long time ago and determined that walking upright would serve our aeonal purpose for being part of Earth’s evolutionary processes, and so we created an upright form.

One can observe that all human beings are in a constant state of becoming. There is likely no end state, not as a human being. (Even within Buddhism, though there is an ultimate state: buddhahood, that state of purest Being is ceaselessly dynamic and perpetually beneficent, thus there seems no end state of that state as well.) We will always refine our capacity for creative genius and it will always and perpetually be for the good of others. When anyone acts otherwise, only degradation, disease, and death result in environment, in the lives of others, and in the Earth. So, then, observationally thus by logical deduction, human beings are in gestation (becoming) and the fulfillment that can be reached (thus producing true birth) is beyond anything that anyone can imagine or conceive.

One can wonder: Is Mother Gaia the original source of the pervasive archetype of “mother?” Mother: the generative point from which life ensues, as well as the source of that which sustains an existence. Mother, as an archetype also includes protection: starting in the womb or nestled in the husk of a seed, but then producing the knowing of necessity for security (nest, burrow, hive, home) and for sacrifice (the very substance of the body of the female produces the body of the young), and for courage (which is gender neutral).

For two consecutive Sundays, the World Service meditation has contemplated some of these considerations. The intention is the same as all other World Service meditations: to generative awe and appreciation for Mother Earth such that we live an increasingly inspired harmonious life with all creatures and beings who share this Earth. Both meditations stretch the imagination of the practitioner. Womb of Existence is especially refined and sublime.