On the Wings of a Bee: Ecce Homo Naturalis

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Talking about online time with Dave as if it was a product, or even an event, seems like a bit of a dead-end. For example, I could say that last Sunday’s Meeting Truth in the Mystical Realm was one of the most essential Oshana events I have attended in over ten years. I could say that but—don’t quote me Dave—although true enough, these words do what words so often do, and obscure a deeper, richer truth.

If there is only a sound in the forest if I hear it, what I am really praising now is an experience. And that experience belongs to me, not to Dave. And, by same token, it will only mean anything as and when it belongs to you.

Though you can book a replay (there is one today), Dave’s thing is not a product that can be passed around, like a song, a movie, or a book.

Central to my experience here (of what Dave calls the Enlightenment Transmission, though it feels presumptuous for me to call it that) is that the mind cannot quite compute it. My mind works by categorization, and the context it’s accustomed to using is that of cultural artifacts, books, movies, songs, podcasts, things that are judged by their efficacy and excellence as products. (I used to be a movie critic, remember.)

In this context, it doesn’t really make sense to keep saying of an author’s books or a filmmaker’s films— “His best ever!” This is partly because that never happens: artists always peak eventually, at best they are hit and miss (which admittedly is true of Dave up to a point; but I digress).

Saying “Best online event ever!” repeatedly, as Dave does in his newsletter (based on the feedback he gets), starts to seem silly and meaningless after a while , at least to a mind that categorizes experiences into artifacts, and thereby creates a Hierarchy of Attainment. It seems like hyperbole—the boy who cried masterpiece—and in the context of culture, hype loses meaning the more frequently it is repeated.

While culture doesn’t and maybe can’t get progressively more vital, however, nature has its cycles of growth. Fruit ripens, and as fruit ripens it gets tastier with every bite. With culture, everything goes to seed; culture is a fungal overlay on Nature, and its very progress is a form of rot. In Nature, by contrast, everything moves towards a harvest, a blossoming (until winter, that is).

Dave’s thing (the ET) is here to provide us with a glimpse of Nature—human nature, the hardest view of all to find a room with; and he does it, improbably enough, via the cultural machinery of online events and language (at least until retreats can happen again).

Dave is a natural man. One participant described him to me as the only adult he has ever met. And although he is getting older (winter is coming), like other natural beings (trees, say)—or like wine, which is a natural product that requires a bare minimum of culture, and has been around since Jesus’ time (or vine)—Dave improves with age. We should assume nothing less from the enlightened life.

We may not recognize a natural man easily, however, because we are bred on cultural counterfeits: false Hollywood heroes with their conquests and cacophonies. The feats of a natural man are neither epic nor thunderous; they aren’t monuments or monoliths, rocket ships or supernovas. They are like pollen on the wings of a bee—only by its fruit (or honey) can we ever know it.

Now I will let you in on a secret: To know Dave’s goodness, you must first imbibe it, and then exude it yourself.

If, like me, you have wondered or rolled your inner eyes each time Dave writes “Best online event ever!”—wonder no more. Dave, the ET, the participant-morphogenetic-love field that congregates around these Happenings, is coming to bloom. Naturally, it gets sweeter, richer, brighter, and more concentrated in its essential flavor as it does so. But only if you drink it in deep enough that it seeps into your bones.

Natural systems move towards maximum balance, optimization and harmonization: goodness. So it is that “Dave” gets better as the instruments (the nervous and all the other systems) tune into one another and get more in tune with themselves, with their essential nature.

The symphony progresses, the bees bustle. They start to create out of their bodies the wax they need to build the honeycomb that will soon be filled with sweetness. And meantime, as if incidentally, the flowers cross-pollinate and proliferate. Symbiosis happens, happily for all.

Spring is coming. And whether or not we are ready to return to Nature, Nature is coming back to us—and coming back through us.

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If this blogpost seems a little . . . unlike my usual blogposts, a little sunnier and sweeter perhaps, since Nature abhors a vacuum and is nothing if not fearfully symmetric, check out Dave’s most recent online article, Confused yet?, for some darker, more cutting commentary such as (I imagine) you may be accustomed to seeking here. Sample:

The spectre of “1984” has crept in the backdoor to achieve mass acceptance and now is boldly kicking in the front door. Those who have eyes to see it are witnessing an unreported coup that takes away the right to think and live freely – a perennial problem that worsens.

This is all confusing, divisive and crazy-making. But you don’t have to accept it. There is something you can do, as the crazed farmer cuts down the field in a spiral to trap the remaining bunnies in a small central island.

There is a replay of the last Dave happening today, Tuesday, at noon UK time. To attend this, request a replay at a different time, or sign up for the next live happening, contact Dave here.