dancing with planets

The moment you are absolutely clear that you know nothing, you have begun.

-        Zen priest angel Kyodo williams

Dancing with the stars? How about dancing with the planets! Early in the mornings, outside, I usually put 1-2 songs on and let the music take me over. And these last few months, I’ve been tuning in not just to the music but – more and more - to our Solar System. It all started with Venus and now it’s the whole planetary shebang: Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are all well visible in the wee hours. I look at them and try to picture that they are all cruising through space at unimaginable speeds (a couple dozen km/s). It feels almost unreal to see them all lined up together and to feel like I’m connecting with them through my dance. It feels mystical.  

I call it mystical because mysticism involves experiencing intimately something that is ultimately unknowable to us. After all, “mysticism” shares its root with the word “mysterious” - something not revealed and unknown.

And honestly, how one can even begin to grasp what a planet is!? I can hardly have any understanding of anything around me. What is water, what is a tree, stone? What are time and space? Some physicists now speculate that time and space are far from being a fundamental reality. They might be just some kind of data structure, one of the countless interfaces. What if there are deeper structures that are beyond space and time, giving rise to them?

Evolution gave us a dumb-down user interface to interact with reality, just enough for us to stay alive and reproduce. All that guides us - including how our sensory system has been shaped - are adaptive behaviours. Evolution has had little interest in equipping us with any notion of what reality is. Perhaps we have an internal antenna that can only tune in to one – time and space station. What if there are more stations in the radio of physics, different types of transmitters altogether or whatever.

It is fascinating to read and learn what the science currently tells us about our Solar System. But, in the end, I connect with the Universe much deeper when I have a dance with those shiny, unknowable celestial beings.

This post flows with: Oxia - Domino (Phaxe & Morten Granau Rmx)