Community – Genuinely feeling life – By Carina Ramm

To me living in community is to deeply realise other beings, their essence that connects us all – nature – myself. When I look at a cat and can’t feel the difference between that being and me, but see myself in those round eyes and feel the cat in me, then I know togetherness.

When I hug a tree and I feel the electric circuitry in my body aligning with that of the maple, or the oak, then I know community. There is no difference between us, and together we suddenly do magic things, not initiated by the tree, or by me, not for a certain purpose, but nature acting through us and as us. Yet I am still hugging a tree which is of a different form than I am and has its own ways of expressing nature, different from mine.

When I get up in the morning and I know what type of food my body and my whole being needs today – what fruit I should start that day with – and then feel to which place I need to move my body next without knowing why, then I recognise the essence of life. It is not being in the moment. It is not living based on spontaneous decisions rather than crafted plans, it is simply what happens by itself in me and through me.

The tree does not know what I should do next, neither does the cat, my mother, my friend, nor do I. The energy connects, the body moves, the electric circuitry runs, the mind catches up, the whole being knows – nature knows, not me. When we embody the essence of this universe, the sentience that makes us alive without filter and mind construct, from that deep place that really is just everything, neither deep inside, nor on the surface, but everywhere, then life is magnetic, exciting and most of the time very joyful. Even the sadness feels right and fruitful, the anger undoes what does not belong, the lostness is the realisation that nothing is the way we thought it was – let it go. The lostness is inside the knowing, the knowing always there.

That other being – my friend, the community member, or that person on the street – suddenly feels something that seems new when he or she looks at me, new and yet the only thing real. In that moment that person recognises itself. What we are is so simple. It is not something to be searched for, or to be acquired in some way. It is what we always have been in moments when thoughts subsided, when everything suddenly made sense, when imminent danger caused full alertness and silence, when deep love left no room for something else – when the body moves by itself. This is life. This is how humans function without technological interference. It is the essence of this planet and it is who and what we are. It can never be imitated, but is either embodied, or not. Everyone knows the difference – it is the difference between a cyborg and a human being.

A cyborg cannot be in community. It is separate and needs knowledge based on which to figure out how to act. It can move and feel but it is dead. A living being knows that it does not know, yet it does incredible things and deeply understands. Embodying nature is humbling because without that connection we would be nothing and with it we are everything – beyond imagination, beyond science, beyond spirituality unless spirituality is the embodiment of that essence that we already are. We are doing it all and we are doing nothing. We are living together or by ourselves, it makes no difference at all. It is a deeper type of communion, deeper than anything else and deeper than words can say. It is you.