While the universe is energy, it is organized energy, and it is this capacity to organize

that we call intelligence.

This intelligence extends from the orbit around a nucleus to the orbit around a planet.

It whispers into birth the growth of a blade of grass with as much ease as it fashions the borders of the Milky Way. Nothing is beyond its ken. Without it, nothing can be. With it, everything is.

The universe is a grand design. The designing force that shapes it, the abstract intelligence that fashions its infinite structures, the animation that makes life possible

is what human beings call divinity.

The nature of this divinity is not known, despite the eons of literature about it. Most literature has defined it as an anthropomorphic principle and some have defined it as

an incomprehensible abstraction. Ultimately, the only thing these ideas define is their authors. The Tao that can be spoken of is not the Tao that is.

Nevertheless, however, we conceive of divinity, it would not be unreasonable to assert that as human beings we appear to be both shareholders of the design and the designer. We are shareholders in the design because we are as embodied as any other creature on this planet and our elements are the same elements as the earth. We are shareholders in the designer because like it, we are intelligent, capable of organizing nature into new forms, transforming sand into a glass or a microchip, or a roving band of Neanderthals into a civilization-creating species of homo sapiens.

Despite the intelligence that organizes energy, an interesting illusion exists: that the subset intelligence is independent of the universal intelligence. This is an illusion because without the universal, the subset has no ground of being. It is a pervasive illusion, and may be better called a hallucination.

This hallucination exists despite the obvious symbiotic network of relationships identified by biologists, despite the probing of physicists that show that all particles are in instantaneous communication, and despite the experience that survival is not possible without cooperation. Yes, despite nothing but evidence of the unified nature of all things, animate and inanimate, microcosmic and macrocosmic, human beings persist in the notion of separation.

This idea is the source of all grief. Yet, like a hallucination, no argument can dispense with it. We believe in what we see even when it is not there. Ultimately, it may even be considered a form of insanity, an insistence in mistaking the imaginary for the real.

However, the universe is a self-regulating organism.

The instrument of this regulation is so disarmingly simple that it is often overlooked.

It is simply this:

What you do unto others is what you do unto yourself.

Here is what it means:

A malicious thought, one designed to hurt another creature, is your own nemesis. Similarly, a benevolent thought, is your own blessing.

In the moral universe, it is as irrefutable as the law in the physical universe that states that light is the absolute speed limit.

In this sense, it is a constant. It keeps the balance of all things and to deny it is to suffer the consequences of that ignorance.

This simple formula regulates all things. It is an absolute law. And it is an obvious one.

A single moment of reflection about your own or cultural history will reveal evidence for it.

Yet despite this self-regulating constant, only the wise notice it and align with it. Since these are few in numbers, an insane world of human affairs exists, where those who lust for power and control over others do not see that as they smite their enemies, as they abuse their victims, and as they violate the dignity of those who are perceived to be somehow different and inferior, they place a curse on their own heads.

It is the denial of this self-regulating constant that allows infamy and injustice to perpetuate itself eon after eon.

The only way the ills of this world will reverse themselves is to use the constant in a way to perpetuate the greatest good for the greatest number. Individually, this is experienced as an abundant life, where all the riches of experience appear to miraculously shower themselves upon you. Culturally, this is experienced as a renaissance, a golden age, a time when happiness is not an idea but an experience.

Why does this constant appear invisible when its dynamics are everywhere?

Perhaps it's simplicity makes it complex. Those who inflict their own pain upon others are diligent in the pursuit of their own destruction. Pushed to an extreme rebellion against it, the race of humankind will destroy itself. Yet the opposite is equally possible. Intelligence might prevail, the constant will be noticed, and like a flower blossoming, the self-corrective measure will be embraced, adopted, and make manifest a pleasant world to live in.