2021 Written after two months of reading and visiting Utube to prepare for an ANVIL session on Consciousness.

WHERE CONSCIOUSNESS LEADS

Consciousness allows me to wonder
At the awesome cosmos we inhabit.
Its size is unimaginable in its galactic vastness,
Stretching and expanding towards infinity,
Yet composed of quanta infinitesimally small,
That influence and flow through everything.
Its age is immense, yet oddly measurable.
Its incredible complexity remains consistent
And open to exploration and understanding.

Time passes and evolution operates
Over millions of years.
While other changes take place
At the speed of light.
A seamless physical flow of energy
Passes between every force and object,
And through every living being
From virus to insect to human
In a mutually supportive
Yet endlessly competitive,
Earthly biosphere.

This living sphere seems suffused
With varied levels of consciousness
While in the whole cosmos of which it is a part
There are no two objects,
However immense or microscopic,
That are ever exactly the same.
This leaves me shocked and awed at its strangeness.

I’m brought up short by the iron consistency
That mathematics demonstrates
As its workings are discovered and uncovered,
But never, it seems, invented by the human mind.

I wonder at the human brain and the multiple minds, selves and stories it creates
To operate, speak and communicate with others and itself
Across both time and space.

I wonder at how far our sciences have taken us
While uncovering how much more
We still do not know.

I wonder at the relentless nature
Of natural selection
That requires no designer
As it works within and across all species
To perfect their working until they crash
And change in an extinction,
Which results in their devastation
Or, an unimagined series of strange new births.

Will this soon be our fate too?