Recently I was in Maine. I stood in the woods and really appreciated the weight of my own philosophy, my recovery from mental illness, and all that I have come to learn and unlearn. I used an app to check whether the trees I was looking at were yews or firs (they were balsam firs). And then I stood watching them as I tried to realize that the firs are not, in fact, firs at all—or are not merely firs. In the knowledge that “firs” is only an abstraction to which these irreducibly individual instances are mapped, I tried to take each one in as an individual emanation of the same divine Ground from which I arise. I noticed that while I tried to take them in as such, I was unable to see past my own nose. Then I closed my eyes and scrunched my face up real tight, and when I opened my eyes, for a moment I did take them in as such, without mentally saying anything about it. 

Standing in the woods, I saw at once how I benefit from the control that conceptual systems have given us over nature and the way that they can blind me to beauty. I was forced to acknowledge the privilege of standing in the woods without fear, knowing with fairly high confidence that nothing dangerous will attack me. Why? Well, we have for the most part eliminated large predators. Moreover, I have the capability to know that information because we have classified them, tracked their ranges, and invented means of disseminating such information. Clearly, the list of advantages goes on and on. I cannot by any means advocate for abandoning conceptual systems. But the great irony is that in order to enjoy the advantages of conceptual systems to the fullest, it seems that one must forget that they exist.

I think at our greatest moments, we do forget that conceptual systems exist. We engage directly in the moment, without trying to fit either the moment or our engagement with it into a category or schema. I think that my trans-schematizing schema of recognizing haecceity in all things can help me to seek beauty where I might otherwise have implicitly given labels and moved on, as evidenced by the way I stood in the cold for so long to pay attention to the beauty of forms and sounds around me; but this schema can also stand in its own way, as when I tried to look at the trees as unique individuals for such and such a reason and found that I was only thinking about how I ought to think.

Ultimately, I did not go outside and have a romantic experience of forgetting all labels and observing the world “as it is.” On the contrary, I was battling the whole time to focus on sights and sounds rather than on how or why I ought to focus on sights and sounds. But in a weird way, I think that whole battle revealed to me something about my own nature—something that I have realized before, but which I can always recognize anew, as if for the first time: to observe this battle of trying to control my attention based on my schemas is to see nature itself without filter. Everything is wrapped up in it.

After standing out in the woods for so long and reflecting on all these things, the following poem crystallized:

The End of Humanity

The end of humanity (and its source) is to know

that there is not “humanity” to inhabit as such.

There is only the ongoing “I”—and what

I take it and make it to be.

When I observed myself battling to control my attention and see things without conceptual filters, I realized that battle itself was seeing nature without filters.

There is no special state where my schemas and preconceptions disappear to reveal “pure nature.”

Instead, I realized that the very awareness of my perspectives coloring perception was already pure experiencing of the natural world—including my thinking self as part of the world.

All my ideals about seeing nature perfectly without mental filters just cut me off from simply engaging the nature already before me—including my judging and categorizing mind as natural too.

Noticing this fight with my own attention didn’t reveal some pristine nature “behind” my distortion. It showed nature as totally inclusive of messy conscious perspective.