Heroes Not Zombies

I so admire the way John O’Donohue expressed himself. Here’s a phrase he used in his interview with Krista Tippett.

The ancient conversation between the ocean and the stone

He mentioned this in discussing the relationship between the visible and the invisible. I especially liked the way he describes

the visible world is the first shoreline of the invisible world

and how he said that human beings are THE PLACE WHERE THE INVISIBLE BECOMES VISIBLE.

In another interview, I heard David Sloan Wilson say that

Evolution only sees action. Whatever goes on in the head is invisible to evolution unless it is manifested in what people do.

But see, if John is right, and I think he is, then the human being is the place where the invisible becomes visible. Yes, that is partly through our actions, or our choices which lead to our actions, but it is also through our very bodies. Everything that occurs in that inner invisible world, and most of what occurs is not accessible to the conscious mind, changes the way our bodies and our brains function. Those changes continuously interact with the world in which we exist. Even our rate of breathing changes the gases in the air around us. As bodies warm up, so does a room, and as a room warms up, so the body responds. In countless, continuous ways, what happens inside us changes the world outside us, which in turn, changes the world inside us.

We are in continuous ancient conversation – between our invisible reality and our visible reality.

It strikes me that it is pointless to think of a human being as if the invisible is irrelevant, unimportant, or in any way of lesser significance to visible, “objective” reality.