The Field Has Notes

Annie Robertson

Feb 15

5 min read

Updated: Mar 5

Song Pairing:

“It is no more surprising to be born twice than it is to be born once”

- Voltaire

4:06

After becoming too familiar with swiping through profiles, juggling the multitudes of makeshift houses that scatter the planet, watching cars aggressively dodge sloths, going volcano boarding in the yellowest yellow outfit possible, and checking in with bioluminescence, I’d had enough of radically trusting the uncertain path.

Time for some answers.

I invited the universe for smoothies and a chat in Nicaragua, to address some overdue dynamics between us..

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/08d3b2_f6266020d45042f0b4c8a3b3296900e1/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

The universe is a bit stingy. Field noted.

Spirituality is one of those words that is so important that it shouldn’t be a word. Quite the sentence, really… that shouldn’t be a sentence, but I am glad it is nevertheless. Side-stepping poetic empty frames for a moment, what I am attempting to put pressure on here is that in my own experience of being a human, I have found that there are many ways to understand (stand under) things. Gears can turn emotionally, socially, verbally, hypothetically, musically, numerically, and physically. Something that I feel deeply may not be researchable via the internet.

There are things I know, but don’t know why just as there are things I know why, but don’t know. For instance, we know logically that the Earth is a sphere spinning at 1,000 mph, orbiting a sun that is 93 million miles away. But to my mundane situation, the Earth feels relatively flat. I don’t want to identify as a flat Earther, but can you see why all kids and probably elephants are flat Earthers until you tell them otherwise? In truth you could also see the Earth as a malleable set of ripples according to quantum field theory. Maybe I am a flat and circular and rectangular and puddle Earther all at once.

Being a walking mystery works in loops that way, the cycle of receiving and giving information, of being engraved by the external world while simultaneously engraving it. Maybe the practice of spirituality is learning to feel abstractly logical things. Learning to feel geologic time and embracing what then unfolds to shape compassion in your character. My professor of geology told me once that tectonic plates move at about the same speed as fingernails growing. As a result, I think of tectonic plates every time I cut my

nails. I think of planetary forces in relation to my own body. Yes, I admit I have made Earth’s mechanics personal.

This is the dictionary definition of spirituality:

“the quality of being concerned with the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.”

Now let me ask you: do you feel satisfied?

I don’t…

I am concerned with physical things and I think physical things are concerned with me. I have a physical body that touches physical surfaces and those interactions are put through my brain as feelings which then allows me to ask my soul questions. The fact that I can say that physical and material things exist in my own phenomena has me asking spiritual questions. Spirituality is a category-less, all inclusive non-idea.

Spirituality is a relationship to mystery.

Oh no: here’s another speed bump: when I have felt the most spiritual, it has been in moments when I am not the inventor, but rather the participant. Maybe another aspect of spirituality is that the world doesn’t revolve around me and my concerns, but threads and entangles all concerns. In fact I’ve noticed a certain peace that arises when I consider a world of my absence. Maybe my spiritual journey isn’t even mine.. maybe I am a bird listening to older thermals so I can better glide? A branch evolving to be more flexible so I don’t snap so easily. If I am the exploration in collaboration with the wind, then I am both insignificant and massive. Just as I am traversing the world, the world traverses me.

I think of spirituality like an umbrella covering all things that can’t keep out the rain, like old bubble gum being reused, like oceans that have come and gone under our obligated feet. Now, obviously I have an imperfect overly-dressed definition of spirituality… it seems to come with the choice to write about it. I can’t really imagine a definition other than silence that works properly. Wow, this is frustrating. I keep trying to simplify, but I think it is impossible. This very essay is an active experiment.

I watched a documentary last night on the largest machine ever built: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This is the machine that proved the existence of the Higgs boson particle. Now what’s interesting about the Higgs field is that it completes the Standard model of physics because it explains how it’s possible that particles have mass… how anything has mass.

That’s the science part. The spirituality part is picturing wading through this abstract pond of linking and separation, letting sticky ripples drag your particles into form. How do you feel: magnetized and repelled by energies transforming your weight as if the universe is pine sap and you are its favorite sweater?

Fun fact: the Higgs field is in the shape of a “Mexican hat”. It is easy to say that if this was a different shape at all, we would not exist. The “perfect Goldilocks” universe sentiment. Certain chemical reactions would be impossible to form “life” as we know it. But how I would prefer to frame it is that I ate my pasta this morning because I was hungry and had leftovers which allowed me to notice a spider at the window. While observing the web, I remembered a project for class I had forgotten about that I needed to work on. If it wasn’t for the pasta I would not have noticed the spider. But really it’s that if I had to make my own breakfast, maybe I would have remembered a different important thing.

Maybe such a differently-shaped universe would be a Goldilocks situation for some other inconceivable overthinkers.

I will not prance around too much in the science/spirituality battlefield. Mostly because I believe they are allies that heard unfair gossip about each other early on. Both kinds of knowledge can make us kinder people. I think that defining the entirety of existence is impossible, but what we do discover is valuable in perspective. The most honestly progressive moments in human history come when ego is challenged. After all, technology and tools are not the indicators of advancement, but rather how us sentient beings use them.

Groundbreaking discoveries are neutral in and of themselves. How we as a species create from that defines meaning and abundance for ourselves and other life on this planet.

Looking at vastness, at passing, at the uncontrollable, at the miracle of a Mexican-hatted universal field, inspires us to be less selfish. But in order for the knowledge of science to make for a kinder humanity, one needs to feel it. Not think of it separately, in “practical or economic” terms, and to bolster personal intellectual status. But to really feel what such grand calculations say about you. Although it will preface by saying you are impermanent and insignificant, the rest of the chapters will forever mention that you are magnificent.

Spirituality is learning to feel what is real beyond your scale (which science helps define), and letting that reshape your character.

So I understand if you look at my poetic “blah blah” of imagining oneself dressed in layers of ripples and colors I can’t see and say - how useless. But it makes me feel absolutely beautiful. And if I and you feel that, it changes everything. Our graciousness during our limited time here: that is at the heart of the matter.