The Principle of Participation
The Principle of Participation
The Principle of Participation
The fundamental error of modern thought is the assumption that existence is composed of separate things.
From this assumption arise all subsequent divisions:
mind and world,
self and nature,
spirit and matter,
subject and object,
inner and outer.
These distinctions possess practical usefulness, but they do not describe the deepest structure of reality.
What is primary is not separation.
What is primary is participation.
A being does not first exist and then enter into relation.
Relation is prior.
Participation is prior.
The tree participates in sunlight, soil, water, atmosphere, fungi, gravity, and time. The animal participates in landscape, instinct, climate, memory, and community. Human beings participate in language, history, culture, sensation, memory, and the living world.
Nothing exists independently.
Everything exists through participation.
Reality is therefore not a collection of objects.
Reality is an ongoing process of mutual disclosure.
The world continually enters into relation with itself.
The human being is one location where this process becomes conscious.
Consciousness is not an object.
It is not a thing hidden somewhere inside the body.
Consciousness is the event through which participation becomes self-aware.
The embodied organism receives, integrates, and responds to reality. Through this process the soul gradually matures.
The soul is not a fixed substance.
The soul is a developmental center of participation.
It deepens.
It unfolds.
It becomes.
The nervous system serves as the living vessel through which this maturation occurs.
Interiority is therefore not an isolated inner chamber.
It is the field in which participation is experienced.
The inner life is the world becoming present within a localized form.
The greater the attunement, the greater the participation.
The greater the participation, the greater the disclosure.
The greater the disclosure, the greater the realization of belonging.
This realization appears in many forms.
It appears intellectually as truth.
It appears emotionally as beauty.
It appears relationally as love.
It appears spiritually as communion.
Each is a different manifestation of the same process.
Truth is the disclosure of reality.
Beauty is the feeling of disclosure.
Love is the sharing of disclosure.
Communion is the deepening of disclosure.
None are fundamentally separate.
They are dimensions of participation.
The highest human activities are therefore those which increase participation.
Contemplation.
Friendship.
Art.
Wonder.
Poetry.
Love.
These practices do not create reality.
They deepen relation with reality.
They enlarge the capacity of the soul to receive being.
Alienation is the opposite movement.
Fragmentation.
Objectification.
Domination.
Reduction.
These diminish participation and narrow disclosure.
They do not separate the individual from reality completely, for such separation is impossible.
But they diminish awareness of belonging.
The history of humanity can therefore be understood as the history of participation becoming conscious of itself through ever more complex forms.
The future remains open because participation remains unfinished.
Reality continues its movement.
The soul continues its maturation.
Being continues its disclosure.
The task of human life is neither escape nor mastery.
It is attunement.
To participate more deeply.
To perceive more clearly.
To love more completely.
And thereby to become a fuller expression of the life to which one already belongs.