They say where there is a will there is a way. But it is not the way you think. Like an artist you strive towards ideals but you can never reach them. If you willfully practice art you will only be a competent imitator.
Instead, stop chasing and grasping, and start experiencing. Experience qualia. Start being; start being grateful. When you begin to appreciate the qualia that reveals itself, you don’t feel you deserve these gifts, you don’t feel you have a right to them.
At that moment you realize your duty, your purpose, your meaning, is toward the source of these gifts. Meaning ceases to be about right and wrong, or good and evil, but about faith, faith that the gifts will keep on coming – coming from the source: from ecosystems.
At this moment – a moment of contentment, of oneness and interconnectedness – you can look at the human landscape with new eyes and understand. We can forgive the transgressions of our violent landscapes.
Few of us can ever let human ideals go. Ideals of any sort are unattainable, and only the journey matters. Ideals, at best, only act as guiding stars, and if we are falling off course we can be sure we are falling back toward the human landscape – and even if we are growing, focusing on the ideal, we are still delusional.
The delusion is ownership. Enlightenment is sharing. Qualia is yours to be nurtured, cultivated, and then passed on – and here’s the rub – it never ceases to be yours. If you only take a little of the Sweetgrass you can still make a braid to give away, and there is still plenty more where that came from. But the gift, that grows too, it is more than matter. If nothing else a gift is love.
The way to the source, to ecosystems, can’t be spoken but you know it when you catch glimpses. You may pursue ideals but – stand by for the platitude – the journey itself is the ideal experience
You will find that ecosystems have done a planting inside you. Let it grow, and watch it decay, and see if it is shareable, though inexpressible. That is art – walking into the unknown, the deep forest, and encountering fellow travelers there. Finding Sweetgrass. Then you know you have chosen ecosystems over landscapes.