The Quintessence of Responsive Naturing

Mantra and Explanation

The Mantra:

What is actual leads, what is possible constrains, attention weighs, intention guides, desire motivates, still what becomes is a creative response to these concerns.

Since the actual leads, possibilities congregate.

Since what is possible constrains, what becomes is coherent.

Since attention weighs, what is just is advanced.

Since intention guides, events tend towards a path.

Since desire motivates, something is accomplished.

Since what becomes is creatively responsive to these concerns, continuity is nurtured.

Nothing is caused; everything has a reason.

The Explanation:

Every being is a formal sæculum, which is its potential ontogenetic life. The essential characteristic of a sæculum is that it is intelligible. A sæculum is a form of duration — duration that is cognitively active — which is actualized via the cognitive informing of the ontogenetic potential of the formal life of the being and all of its autogenous activity. This cognitive informing is responsive naturing. The intelligibility of that which unfolds is intuitively recognized as it arises, which is then apperceived through, and into, the extant paradigmatic body of understanding.

Responsive Naturing is not random since what is actual leads what will happen next, so that possibilities congregate around the actual and give more weight to particular possibilities. Attention gives added weight by advancing one or more possibilities so that the response may be constrained more to what is deserved or appropriate in the circumstances. Our heartfelt intention to do something, or accomplish something, leads our attention, and guides us along a possible path to our intended goal. And, of course, without desire to reach that goal, effort will be absent, unsustainable, or ineffectual. Our intention will, as the French say, be a velléité — just a passing whim.

These concerns are shared by all living beings, although to different degrees, depending upon their ontogenetic potential. While a sæculum is of an evolving potential — with each new possibility taken, opening, and closing, other potential paths, it is the coherent continuity recognized Now that is the inviolable constraint.

Thus, one can say, the ‘fate’ of all beings is their ontogenetic potential, as constrained by the possibilities allowed by the recognized coherent continuity in each moment of the being’s life, and not some predetermined future.

More importantly, it is in the evident fact that responses are creative, even while being led by what is actual now, and drawn to what is attended to among the most likely possible choices — that mass around the actual — for what can happen next along a being’s intended path, that is the evidence that this naturing has the unwavering character of concern for all beings.

So, rather than chaotic activity or predetermined causation, we find in the ontogenetic informing of every living being, a coherent continuity that is creative within the ontogenetic bounds of formal possibilities. Thus, the creativity that can be found in the responsive naturing of that informing — the evident scientific fact that responses are not predetermined, nor random, which all scientific practice must eschew — is evidence of concern in the naturing of what comes to be. This concern nurtures the being, as the naturing unfolds.

And nurturing concern is love.

Thus, Responsive Naturing exhibits an ever-present concern to nurture Life in all its forms. It is, in other words, Love that is empty of selfish concerns; empty even of an entity that is concerned and that loves.

Is this not God?

God is not a being, God is the concerned nurturing activity that becomes all beings. God is otherwise than Being and beyond the intelligibility of beings. God is Real. Beings exist. Those being two aspects of understanding it all.