We are part of the universe. Maybe just a small part. Maybe for just a short moment.
But part of it none the less.
I’ve often wondered how our ancient ancestors came to understand the universe. Before physics, biology, psychology, chemistry brought a narrow sliver of understanding, there was so little to go on. And yet, almost all of humanity’s belief systems have an origin story of how the universe came to be. Babylonian Epsu and Tiamat, Gnostic Bythos and Sig, the Mauri Rangi and Papa or Egyptian Geb and Nut etc. etc. It seems impossible that we could ever know our true origins, and yet so much time and effort has gone into defining it. Also, once established, so much suffering/hate/intolerance has been created by the strength of conviction we have for that each impossible notion is more accurate and more divine than those imagined by others. So, this post focuses not on the differences between these 'impossible notions' but in the similarities.
All ancient cultures understood they were an integral part of the universe. Part of the whole. As such, it made perfect sense to them that whatever was within them, at their core, must also be at the core to the universe. (As above, so below). They had little technology or tools to explore far beyond their own existence and place in the world, but they had all the same tools we have to explore their inner make up. They had not extricated themselves from nature in the same way that we have and so they saw their interdependence, the inter-relationships between them and their environment and they understood they were an integral part of it. By understanding the interconnectivity between their natures and the nature around them, they extrapolated the nature of the universe as a whole - the bits they directly experienced and those they could only imagine.
So, unlike our modern ideas of our origins, their cosmology (the ideas of how the universe was created) did not come from a big bang out, it came from within. Self -reflection, self-knowledge, observation of the natures of man and the nature of the physical world led to extrapolations to all of the imaginable universe. The truths from which they deduced the hierarchies of the cosmos and the order of creation were not truths of observation but truths of inner reflections. Psychological truths, existential truths that revealed our fundamental sense of being.
This is why i find these origin stories so fascinating. It's why first started studying our knowledge of human behavior with the Nockwood behavioral archetypes but also why I found the AEONs of Nag Hammadi so powerful a tool for personal development.
We are part of the universe. We are part of nature. We are not separated, not different but an element within the whole. Whether before human beings existed or after they are gone, humanity will always be part of this thing.
This expanding eternity.
From the moment when nothing became something,
when a quantum ripple formed in the universe,
we have always been part of it and will always be (or have been) a part of it.
How long we play that part in the universe is directly linked to our ability to find balance and harmony or whether we become antagonistic to it. It is bigger than us, so the more we separate ourselves from it, the shorter and less significant our presence (or participation) will be.
And this, for me, is why these origin myths feel important. The Aeons are the essences of the universe that like photons in a beam of light, shine through everything in that universe. They start with a fundamental understanding of the important energies that are within us and that are all around us. They give us guidance as to the things that need to be united, brought together to find that balance. Find unity. Find wholeness. Not just in ourselves but in the universe as a whole.
Aeonology gives us a map of our connections to our universe. It shows us how we are connected to our universe through our own sense of self. It equally shows us how, through knowing ourselves, we might know others and know now we are connected to the natural world around us. Of course we can exist independently and continue to think of ourselves as separated and independent, but this state is damaging and powerless. When brought together, when kept in balance and in unity, they give us not only a sense of wholeness in ourselves but a sense of wholeness within our environment and within the universe.
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