Just as things are drawn together to century in the universe, so much they eventually fall apart and dissolve over time. stars, galaxies, people, animals and everything else in the universe is destined to dissolve their component parts back into the cosmic matrix from which they are born. Just as the raw materials from which we are composed have come together to produce our unique form. So much they also disperse so these same elements can create other unique forms, through the processes of centration and dissolution, the forms of the universe increasing greater complexity and organization over time, allowing for greater creativity, depth and interrelationship, a directionality for the cosmos that seems to naturally emerge as a result of these processes at work. While it can be very disconcerting and disorienting when things in our lives fall apart, we can take heart in recognizing that it is an essential part of the cosmic process.

Looking Around the universe, we see countless examples of Cataclysm taking place, stars exploding a supernovae, galaxies colliding stars and gas dissolving into black holes. The process of the universe involves not only the creation of new forms, but the disillusion of old forms as well. From the perspective of modern physics, all matter space, time and energy have their origin in the Big Bang, which involves the creation of an enormous but possibly finite amount of matter and energy out of that singular event. In our current understanding of the physics of the universe, matter and energy can change form into one another, but the same total amount of both always remains the same. In other words, it's all the same stuff being transformed into different forms and configurations over time. Since there's only so much of this universe, stuff to go around, forms have to dissolve so that the raw materials are available to create new forms our existence in this moment It is only possible because of the dissolution of countless other forms that have led to our being here today.

The elements that make up our bodies come from stars that have formed exploded, creating clouds of gas that have arisen then collapse to form the earth. When we look at the history of the earth, we find it riddled with Cataclysm, from catastrophic asteroid impacts to mass extinctions, which devastated 90% of the life on the planet or more at times. Looking at the fossil record, life on a planet seems to be a fragile but resilient proposition. Even for those life forms that survived these cataclysmic events, future life continues only for the death of a steady stream of plants, animals and organisms, each one passing on their nutrients and genetic material to the next link in the evolutionary chain. It is from the living and dying of our evolutionary ancestors, that we're here today. And it's because of our brief but necessary existence that future generations will follow.

Every day we maintain ourselves by eating Taking in nutrients from other organisms whose forms dissolve into our own their energy blending with our own. Our bodies are literally made of the atoms of other organisms whose forms have been dissolved and redistributed to create the bodies we have today. Even on an atomic and subatomic level, the particles that make up our bodies are continuously flashing into and disappearing from existence, continually refreshing our atomic structure countless times each second. And so it seems to be a cosmic principle that everything that is born is destined to pass away. Until we can see it. This process of cannibalism expresses a very deep and profound truth about the universe.

Recognizing that this cosmic truth is at the center of our lives, leads to the following insight. Everything that is born or created, is destined to eventually dissolve and pass away. While many of us are uncomfortable with the process of loss and dissolution, we can find support and recognizing this is a cosmic process as old as the universe itself. And therefore expresses no small degree of wisdom about the nature of things. This process of loss followed by renewal is the expression of a very deep principle of life, one that is as old as the stars themselves, and one that is linked to our very existence here on Earth. In the past 60 years, scientists have come to understand an amazing story that all the complex elements in the universe have been created through exploding stars called supernovae.

Here's how it works. massive stars live their lives very quickly, fusing a handful of lighter elements over their lifetimes to create energy in their cores. Eventually, these stars run out of fuel in their cores then collapse, creating a spectacular end for themselves in the form of a supernova explosion. In these cataclysmic moments, temperatures in their cores become hot enough to create most of the elements on the periodic table heavier than iron. In fact, this is the only source in the universe for elements such as gold Silver, lead and many others. It is only through this process of cosmic Cataclysm that these elements are given birth to eventually find their way to form planets life in ourselves.

We are the living on these elements produced to the process of cosmic Cataclysm. And the landscapes of our lives are literally built on the bones of the universe that has come before us. We can therefore take some inspiration from the example of the stars when faced with loss, Cataclysm and change in our own lives. Knowing that this fact of loss and change is a universal process that affects all parts of the universe, from the stars to ourselves. In fact, when we look around at the beauty of the night sky and the earth around us, we can see that this process of Cataclysm is the source of this beauty. Without it, the universe would have remained entirely made up of simple elements such as hydrogen and helium, colorless and without former complexity is only through the transformative process of loss and dying That new life can be boring.

It can also be helpful to see that because everything arises out of the same universe of matter and energy, and eventually dissolves back into the same cosmic matrix. Nothing is ever truly lost. From the larger perspective, it is simply patterns in the seamless Fabric of the Cosmos, forming and reforming endlessly over time, leaving the essence of the universe, the fabric itself, pure and untouched. So this process called the universe has a sense of continuity that goes beyond the specific forms it takes at any one time. We can also see that this is true in our own lives, that while we have changed many times and endured many losses and cataclysms, there is still an untouched thread of continuity of strings, all these events together. This thread of continuity makes up the essence of our life.

It is an unbroken and unique process that began at our birth and extense. This very moment is the essence of a sense of you. That remains when everything else in your life changes. Bringing in the cosmic evolutionary perspective we've been exploring here, we can see that the continuity of the threat of our existence is actually the expression of an unbroken process that stretches back to the very beginning of the universe. recognizing this, we can see that the fundamental nature of the universe is not the forms that it takes, but the continuity of the process which creates, sustains and dissolves these forms over time. This basic nature of existence is sometimes referred to as true nature, or essential nature and many other world's spiritual traditions, referring to the eternal cosmic matrix or plenum, from which all phenomena take shape, but whose essential nature remains pure, pristine and unchanging.

The cosmic dynamic of loss and Cataclysm by releasing our attachments to identities which are too small for us, guides us into greater intimacy with the true nature of the cosmos, who is deeper stitch refined, as a Are