The Great Story of Earth
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The Great Story is a document that discusses storytelling. It talks about how stories have been important to humanity throughout history as a way to share knowledge, traditions and beliefs. Stories bring people together and help societies progress by passing wisdom down through generations in an engaging and memorable way.
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The Great Story of Earth
Editor's Notes
- In the Great Story of HOW ALL CAME TO BE, we must remember… The birth of the universe was not an event in time. Time begins simultaneously with the birth of existence. The realm or power that brings forth the universe is not itself an event in time, nor a position in space, but is rather the very matrix out of which the conditions arise that enable temporal events to occur in space. Though the originating power gave birth to the universe 13.7 billion years ago, this realm of power is not simply located there at that point of time, but is rather a condition of every moment of the universe, past, present, and to come.
- All Nourishing Abyss In the Beginning, Before Time Began….. Was pure potential…… Singularity How can we begin to understand this All Nourishing Abyss……. This incredible birth moment? Science can take us to 10-43 seconds, but not to the moment of creation. So we look INWARD to our own experience of creation and destruction. As indiginous peoples before us to understand this realm, we turn to story THIS IS A STORY OF OUR ANCEESTORS FROM THE DAWN OF TIME I invite you to contemplate those instances of pure creation and destruction in your own life: Your own experience of the All Nourishing Abyss. Of the decision to step into mystery
- 13.7 BILLION YEARS ago, in a great flash, the universe flared forth into being. In each drop of existence a primordial energy blazed with an intensity never to be equaled again. ORIGINATING POWER BROUGHT forth a universe. All the energy that would ever exist in the entire course of time erupted as a single quantum -- a singular gift-existence. If in the future, stars would blaze and lizards would blink in their light, these actions would be powered by the same numinous energy that flared forth at the dawn of time.
- From a region perhaps smaller than a single atom, flares an explosion so colossal that it continues, even after thirteen billion years, to overpower the combined gravitational force of the entire Universe in its expansion. PARTICLES, LIGHT AND TIME emerged in the beginning. Seeds of Gaia –dancing and swirling Space and time unfurled out of potentiality and has continued to unfurl each instant of cosmic existence. Tossing, churning, foaming out of the originating reality, instant by instant. Then habits emerge, the laws of interaction: gravitational, electromagnetic, weak nuclear, strong nuclear—setting for all time the habits of interaction for physical matter. The height of mountains on earth billions of years later were determined in these early moments.
- Annhilation The Universe has expanded and cooled to the point that when particles encounter antiparticles and disappear, no new particles appear. The Universe is saved from extinction by its slight bias of 101 million particles for every 100 million antiparticles. By the end of the first second the annihilation ceases. Free-floating quarks join together to form neutrons and protons. The Universe continues to expand and cool. Three minutes pass. The surviving particles can now enter into enduring relationships: All future ground, whether stars or planets will find its strength from this, the world’s first foundation.
- Three hundred thousand years pass. Stunning Transformation: In an instant, everywhere, the Universe transforms itself into atoms of hydrogen and helium. The creation of atoms is as stunning as the creation of the Universe. Nothing had hinted at their emergence. These dynamic twists of being leap out of the originating mystery and immediately organize the Universe in a fresh way. The vast space within hydrogen and helium atoms allows photons to shoot through them without ever meeting an obstacle. Photons fly quickly and silently through these new clouds of beings. The Universe becomes utterly transparent, invisible. Quantum fluctuations are magnified into immense fluctuations in the vast, transparent cloud of hydrogen and helium, and the invisible cloud breaks up into billions of separate galactic clouds.
- Hundreds of millions of years pass. In these separate invisible clouds, ripples created by passionate gravitational attraction eventually shock the clouds into condensing rapidly into thousands of stars at a time, the first primal stars, igniting in the heat of first love.
- In the depths of its silence the universe shuddered with the immense creativity necessary to fashion the galaxies-- The Andromeda galaxy, the Virgo cluster, Pegasus, the Magellanic Clouds, as well as our own Milky Way galaxy… one hundred billion galaxies in all. These gigantic structures pin-wheeled through the emptiness of space and swept up all the hydrogen and helium into self-organizing systems, and clusters of systems, and clusters of clusters of systems. Each galaxy presented its unique form to the universe. Each contained its own internal being. Each brought forth from its own materials billions upon billions of primal stars.
- And so, whoooshh, like snowflakes falling, the galaxies flutter into existence, one hundred billion galaxies. It was an incredible moment because that was the only time in the history of the universe when galaxies could form. Before that, it was way too dense and hot. After that, it's too thin and spread out. And amazingly, the universe expanded at exactly the rate needed for this to happen…
- In this birth of galaxies, the density of the Universe erupts into galactic collisions. The Second Annihilation Some galaxies are blasted into shreds of gas; some are scattered into abandoned stars; some, in near-collision, are wrenched by gravitational tidal waves which disturb their condition for the next 12 billion years. Some of the spiral galaxies that do escape with their form intact have their interstellar gases sucked away by other worlds passing through.
- The most brilliant stars rushed through their natural sequence of transformations and exploded in colossal supernovas that matched a billion stars in luminosity and spewed stellar materials throughout the galaxy.
- Any part of the primordial fire destined to become enveloped in the unfolding of life or consciousness must first pass through a supernova explosion, its brilliance an intensity matching a billion stars. New stars formed out of these materials from the primal stars. Second-generation stars were richer in potentiality and more complex in internal structure because the primal stars had created the elemental beings of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, calcium, magnesium, and all the other elements.
- Some five billion years after the beginning of time, the star Tiamat emerged in our spiral galaxy. Tiamat knit together wonders in her fiery belly, and then sacrificed herself, carving her body up in a supernova explosion that dispersed this new elemental power in all directions, so that the adventure might deepen.
- A new star forms, new planets form, new life forms, and perhaps new consciousness forms; certainly a new era of the story of the universe begins out of the supernova explosion that destroys the old stellar world Most of the atoms of our Sun, Earth, and bodies are a gift from the supernova of our local primal star.
- Five billion years ago, after the universe had expanded and developed for eight billion years, our Milky Way galaxy shocked a peacefully drifting cloud of Tiamat's remnants into giving birth to' ten thousand new stars. Some of these turned out to be diminutive brown dwarf stars. Others became blue super-giants that quickly flashed into the incandescence of new supernovas. Others became stable long-burning yellow stars, and still others became slumbering red stars. The universe, insisting upon diversity, also brought forth from this floating cloud of elements our own star, the Sun.
- Right at the core it's transforming hydrogen into helium. And in that transformation it's converting some of itself into energy. Every second, four million tons of the sun is being transformed into this light. If it weren't for that ongoing bestowal of energy, we wouldn't have any life on earth. So one way to think about the sun, every time you see it at dawn, is to think of it as an act of cosmic generosity. It's this vast giveaway of energy that enables us to survive, enables all of life to thrive
- The disc of gases surrounding the Sun is rich with the elements from our Ancestral Star. Once granted existence, the Sun showed its own self-organizing abilities, blasting off nearly all the clouds of elements yet hovering about it, and spinning the rest into a multi-banded disc of matter out of which arose the bonded system of Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto
- THE CHARGED EARLY planets boiled as molten and gaseous materials.. On Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus chemical creativity never advanced beyond the simpler compounds, and they continued to churn primarily as gases for billions of years.
- On Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Pluto, chemical combinations slowly grew to become rocks and continents. One these planets, the planetary crust that eventually so dominated the dynamics that all significant creativity came to an end.
- One planet in this star system was bestowed with BOTH the elements necessary to create life, and the dynamic balance of chemical creativity…
- A jewel of creativity….. This blue planet EARTH Initially, creation takes place through dramatic interaction, and later through more subtle evolution New creation dances on the edge of destruction. Self-organization awaits activation, lurking at this creative edge for the whole of life on this planet.
- Gaia was hot. And violent. Slowly she cooled. Lightening struck. Waves rolled to rocky shores. Gaia was creative … moving, changing, with cycles of seasons. Her matter existed as solid, liquid, and gas, and flowed from one form into another to provide an incessantly creative chemical womb Bubbles formed a thin skin around a radical new way to organize energy….. Strands of frozen energy that communicated instructions for reproducing itself A Spiral Double helix of DNA was life’s first creative leap… the one that allowed all others to follow. Life was born.
- So let’s learn about our first ancestors. At first, simple one-celled beings filled the early seas, feeding on the exotic, energy-rich chemistry of early Earth. The filled the seas in promiscuous abundance, exchanging bits of DNA in mass experimentation Then, crisis struck two billion years ago. ….essential and scarce chemicals were being eaten up, resources dwindling– the cells began to starve and die, leaving few remaining cells. From the earliest time, life has been inventive, creative. Out of this crisis, threatening the very viability of the living planet, arose a brilliant amazing, surprising invention which sidesteps disaster and transforms the very atmosphere of the entire planet What emerges is is one of the greatest acts of creativity in life’s four billion years on our Creative Planet. LIFE INVENTED A MANDALA
- A beautiful molecule, like a patterned flower, with a magical quality. For when a photon of sunlight struck the heart of this pattern, it began to vibrate and shiver and set off a chain of reactions that harvested the suns energy to turn Carbon Dioxide into food. We call this molecule chlorophyll—a molecular net with the power to capture photons in flight : to capture the energy from the sun.
- Green things filled the seas and the crevices of the shores. Life flourished as never before, eventually covering the entire planet with a filmy smear of life over rock and sand. BUT THERE WAS ONE PROBLEM. This miraculous process gave off a waste product—a toxic gas that burned and destroyed everything it touched. And as life grew over hundreds of millions, a billion then 2 billion years….. The very air became polluted by this gas so that life could no longer avoid its touch of death. Oxygen was poison—threatening all life The first oxygen-breathing cell, was fully capable not only of enduring oxygen but of shaping its dangerous energy and thus seethed with creativity. These creatures invented sex, the habit of eating living beings, and thus deepened the community of Earth not only with the intimacy of sexual bonding but also with the intimacy associated with eco-systemic predator-prey relationships. Finally, these creatures took that daring step of submerging themselves into a larger mind as trillions of them gathered together and evoked the first multi-cellular animal. EARTH EVOLVES WITH LIFE AND LIFE EVOLVES WITH EARTH--ONE SYSTEM
- But life continued to experiment and invent. Some of those tiny creatures dug into the mud for protection. Some clumped together. AND SOME discovered another miracle… that by reversing one of the moves in the dance of photosynthesis, a new process could be born—one that could take the toxic gas that we call OXYGEN and use it to burn fuel and make energy. And so, the BREATHERS were born—tiny cells that dine on the sunlight harvesters as food for life. In burning food, the breathers give off Carbon Dioxide. Life enters the dance of a SYSTEM—where one organisms waste is anothers food GAIA began to breathe….. Passing her breath back and forth The first oxygen-breathing cell, was fully capable not only of enduring oxygen but of shaping its dangerous energy and thus seethed with creativity. These creatures invented sex, the habit of eating living beings, and thus deepened the community of Earth not only with the intimacy of sexual bonding but also with the intimacy associated with eco-systemic predator-prey relationships. Finally, these creatures took that daring step of submerging themselves into a larger mind as trillions of them gathered together and evoked the first multi-cellular animal. EARTH EVOLVES WITH LIFE AND LIFE EVOLVES WITH EARTH--ONE SYSTEM
- Six hundred million years ago, multi-cellular organisms arose with a variety of qualitatively distinct body plans; corals, worms, insects, clams, starfish, sponges, spiders, vertebrates, leeches, and other forms. Worms learned to wiggle in pursuit of soft prey, then sprouted fleshy wings to guide them through the oceans, and invented the tooth when another creature invented the shell. Ocean waves left sea plants stranded on the hot rocks; unable to crawl home they instead invented the wood cell and learned to stand up straight as early trees that lived along the shores of oceans and rivers …
- and these beings living on the edge in turn transformed themselves into trees capable of covering entire continents with life
- And they covered the continents… now living with their diversity and beauty… The animals followed the plants onto land, and soon the continents that had been floating lifelessly on Earth's mantle for two billion years heaved with amphibians and reptiles and insects…
- …and the great dinosaurs with gleaming eyes reaching up to the sunlit leaves of the forest canopy. All this creativity taking place within Earth depended upon many different stabilities, including the Sun's stable burning of hydrogen, Earth's stable revolutions about the Sun, the stability of chemical bonds throughout the Earth's system. But the disasters regularly visited Earth as well, most poignantly when an event so changed Earth's atmosphere and climates that nearly all forms of animal life had to reinvent themselves or perish. Mass extinctions meant many animals followed the dinosaurs into their graves, but such destruction also opened up new possibilities, which were seized upon by the birds and the mammals, among others, who proliferated in the wake of the disaster.
- When the mammals entered Earth's life two hundred million years ago, they developed emotional sensitivity, a new capacity within their nervous systems for feeling the universe. Throughout mammalian existence and especially during the last sixty-seven million years of the Cenozoic era, the beauty and terror of the world-the brilliance of the birds' plumage, the intoxicating display of the flowers, the lusciousness of the fruits, the frights of the forest at night, the archetypal strength of the mother-infant bond left a deep impress on the psychic nature of all the mammals, the whales, the rodents, the sea lions, the bats, the elephants, the porcupines, the horses, the shrews, the deer, the chimpanzees, …..and the humans.
- In rare instances among the most advanced mammals, this mammalian emotional sensitivity that began with the mother-child bond, was deepened with another neural capability, conscious self-awareness.
- Empowered with both, the human probed for its own distinct niche within the enveloping Earth community.
- In our lifetimes—humans have witnessed Earth from space for the first time, We have delved into the power and mystery of the subatomic world….
- The future of Earth's community rests in significant ways upon the decisions to be made by the humans who have inserted themselves so deeply into Earths systems--even into the genetic codes of Earth's process.
- This future will be worked out in the tensions between those committed a future of increased extraction and exploitation of Earth and her community of life as resource, ALL for the short-term benefit of the richest humans…
- …and those committed to Earth-renewal and sustainability, a new mode of human-Earth relations, one where the well-being of the entire Earth community over generations is the primary concern.
- From this hallowed, sacred ground
- From this hallowed, sacred ground
- Over 13.7 billion years the universe brought forth stars, galaxies, supernovas, the first cells, the proliferation of the animals and plants, and the conscious self-awareness that has come to permeate so thickly the many components of the Earth community.
- And so we stand at the threshold….. Our choices, both large and small will determine the next phase of this Great Story