When you look at a stream, it is pure. It merely does what a stream does. It has a source, somewhere, and it goes, as gravity directs, towards the sea. It creates its path.
When we note how rocks and dirt, trees and animals, and most especially humans, divert a stream from its natural path, it doesn’t make the stream less pure. The stream still does what it does; it’s essential being is not changed. The stream erodes the matter, the dirt, wearing away the tree roots and even the rocks, eventually washing away every dam, whether built by mother nature or the army corps of engineers.
As the stream is pure, so is our own, essential nature. Our is not to build dams to block streams, nor anything else that we call “civilization.” All humanity has built will eventually fall prey to the elements. Our essential nature, our qualiadelic nature, is to be mindful of ecosystems. Ecosystems are to us what gravity is to streams, pulling us towards awareness of our connection to all beings.
Essentially, our lives are filled with dams, simply because our material focus gets in the way of our enlightenment. Just as an addict’s tolerance eventually prevents his addiction from providing any contentment (much less happiness), so it has gone with human progress, which, like addiction, leaves only withering traumas in its wake.
As surely as a stream flows downhill, and is eventually reborn as fog, cloud, mist, rain and snow, so we too will rise again, as wise and compassionate; our consciousness (indeed, all consciousness) thrives on the awareness that ecosystems’ health is none other than our own.
Be qualiadelic!
P.S. Meditatively, our thoughts may give way as easily as a twig or push us aside like boulders. All we need do is acknowledge them as we pass by, perhaps never to see them again; or honor them, that we will return to them later, when we have reached the ocean, shunyata.