Uncut: Taoism and the Infinite Majestic (Patreon)

An audio essay about Taoism and infinity.

We are a widening narrative that narrows back to a source, and through our interpretation of this lineage, we also create the poet. It is co-creation. God created us, and we created God. And when I say God, I am not using the specific personal God. I am using the universal ambiguous God. The God of philosophers and scientists. The beautiful truth. The underlying majesty that binds the infinite unknown.

We fixate on images of a Heavenly Father in the sky or, alternatively, the Big Bang. Yet what was before? Some scientists believe before the Big Bang that created our known universe, there were other big bangs. An infinite number of big bangs. However, what was before the before?

Human nature has difficulty with the abstract. It's either a quantifiable physical event like an original Big Bang, or it's a person—the original poet.

Some wonder if this is all a simulation. That raises the question: who is the creator? Is the creator also a simulation? Then who created the creator? And what if there is no original architect, only infinite regression.

With our animal minds, we idolize originality. We worship the one initial source. But what if there is no initial? Would that hinder the grandeur? It may be the absence of a beginning is the grandeur.

Perhaps there once was a version of the universe which resembled a celestial body that moved in some deliberate way. Perhaps there was more than once.

In an infinite amount of time and space, everything is possible, yet who could make this conclusion? And does it matter? When there were things before, and there are things after? That is the nature of infinity. It does not have a first or a last. Our minds cannot fathom what was before infinity.

How did all that we know come to be? And that is the majesty of life. We could very well have not existed. There could have been nothing and stayed nothing. How did it come to be that something came from nothing? Though it does not seem possible for matter to just appear, we are proof that it did. Or perhaps matter was always there.

We are then so fortunate to exist. What a beautiful existence to be alive when the alternative was nothingness. Not even death but a lack of existence.

But here we are, light, love, and music.

And what's more, life endures here. It's a cycle. The infinite majestic.

If we are from stardust, we are a small but important part of the cycle of rebirth, giving rise to wondrous things, forming new bodies that didn't have a chance to exist before, just as old matter converted to our being. Our being will one day form new matter. We will one day form new stars or perhaps a butterfly. We are the system. But we also create the system then. It is not a metaphor when I say we are eternal.

I cannot prove in any scientific way that life is beautiful. I cannot say with any certainty that the infinite majestic is nothing more than poetic language, yet poetry exists. We have the capacity to find profoundness in the ordinary.

The universe is too vast to comprehend. It's infinite, in fact, yet I know that it is splendid. My meaningful grasp comes from my awareness. I am no less than the moon and no more than dust in the moonlight.

Without basic assumptions, nothing makes sense. Not even science. We cannot define the science of why anything matters. We take it on good faith. Faith in our value, value in our faith. The majesty of life is poetry. We find order in nature and artistry in the random. We find awe in how things came to be.

Other animals see the world as it is through one layer of reality. The Sun, the river, and the trees. We view the world in its multiple layers, the Sun, river, and trees, but also science, magic, and radiance.

A sun that provides life. Trees that provide shade. And a river, which we can see through, drink from, and immerse ourselves in. These natural joys are not lost on us.

The importance of the source, God or science, speaks to our gratitude for being alive. We want to understand the cause of our existence. We shape the unimaginable, the non-linear, into stories our minds can comprehend. So that we may appreciate it. So that there may be a recipient for our thanks. Because literal words cannot express how much we value being here, so we create grand narratives. Or perhaps it was a grand narrative that created us.

We are co-creators. Existence needs a witness, and a witness needs existence. Yet what came first? And does it matter?

Would anything change tomorrow? Would the lack of knowledge of how anything came to be make the Sun and the moon, and the stars any less bright? Or does mystery create more awe?

My search is not for my maker or what cosmic events led to me. I exist, therefore I belong. That is all I need to know.

In the everyday, from star to butterfly gazing, I seek the splendor of living. Not how we are here, not why we are here, or when this will end, but to enjoy being.

I am inspired and thankful just to be here. Just to be.

Many of the questions that keep us awake arise from a desire to control. And we lose that awe. We lose that value.

We think we know. Our grand narratives themselves are a form of control. Control over the narrative, a command over happenings. But if you take infinity and cut it in half, what do you get? Infinity. If you were to count only the even numbers within infinity, what would you get? Still Infinity.

Our obsessive human minds want to control, and for there to be, there must be limits. The sizes of ideas must be reigned in. It needs borders. But the absence of scale is what makes the infinite amazing. And once we give it borders, it is just big. No longer infinite. No longer awesome.

We now live in an OCD world with endless control and limited wonder. Every question paired with its answer. Everyone knows, and no one is inspired. But wonder begins with: I don't know.

Even out of my hands, I have faith that the infinite unknown will remain unknowable yet just as majestic. The mystery is the majesty. You are a child of the universe, and you exist to form the universe. Have faith in your existence. We're glad to have you.

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