At our birth we emerge from the root mystery of the cosmos, a deep and silent mystery into which we will one day be reabsorbed. Our own lives are a spiral pattern of creative unfolding, death, and regeneration. Fashioned out of the creative power of starlight and the fecund body of the Earth, we are the children of Earth and starry heaven caught up in the timeless rhythms of the celestial dance.
Human consciousness, then, should not be
what utterly separates us from the rest of
"nature." Rather, consciousness is where this
dance of energy organizes itself in increasingly
unified ways, until it reflects back on itself in
self-awareness. Consciousness is and must be
where we recognize our kinship with all other
beings. The dancing void from which the
tiniest energy events of atomic structures flicker
in and out of existence and self-aware thoughts
are kin along a continuum of organized
life-energy...