So you look straight out into that winking sunset or up at that star-gashed sky or over at that frolicking goofy mutt in the park or at that funky yellow Mini Cooper or deep into the rich burgundy flesh of that goblet of wine or over at the soft gorgeous rhythmic rise and fall of your lover's chest as s/he sleeps and you think, this is proof, isn't it?

This is proof that there's something more, something richer and more divine and far, far more profound and enthralling and cosmic and worthy and wet and delicious about this damnable existence, right? You can just feel it, that divine kick, that lick, that juice? Of course you can.

You just know, in other words, that this can't be all there is.

Surely, you think, it's not all smirking inarticulate presidents and gutted economies and bogus wars and international resentment, factories belching venom into the sky and the oceans with decreasing federal restriction and increasing corporate glee.

Surely it's not all rabid psychopatriots and fear-happy Bible huggers and homophobic Republican senators promoting their tyranny of sexless ignorance, garbage-food conglomerates consciously poisoning the population with toxic foodstuffs far more full of synthetic goo and Agent Orange by-products and bioengineered rat dung than actual food from which the body can draw life and energy and funk and satisfied karmic burps.

You think: No way can it be all about thuggish 8 MPG SUVs and inexplicably dying sea otters and 45 percent of the country actually believing Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for 9/11. Can it?

Millions of people invoking the name of God as justification for war and hate and death, more homeless, more poverty, more rampant population growth, more bitch-slapped civil rights, political corruption and bizarre viral disease and Dick Cheney making you question the very definition of sympathetic animate biped?

Because it's just so easy to forget. It's so easy to let the crush and rush and chain-saw babble of the world, of the major media's prepackaged hysteria, overwhelm your senses and numb your id and pile-drive your innate ability to look, really look at the world around you, and ultimately let them effectively asphyxiate what you deeply sense to be true.

Not simply that everything is connected. Not simple that there is a throbbing pulsing extant ever-present scientifically proven energetic vibration to every damn thing on the planet, animate and inanimate, breathing or not, each and every organism radiating forth its sacredness and its profanity and just waiting for you to raise your consciousness just a little so you can receive your divine epiphanic ass-slap.

It's not just that. It's that you, right now, at this moment, are much less removed from those pulsing vibrational things than They want you to believe. You are closer than you think.

Here is the basic formula: The more They get you to ignore and detach from and hurl sticks of dismissive ignorance at that divine interconnectedness, the more you feed the common tyranny of fear, the collective cultural moan, and the easier it is for corporations and the government and the masters of televised dread to convince you to buy into, say, a noxious war. Or toxic fast food. Or ultraviolent entertainment. Or Celine Dion.

Conversely, the more you work to feel nature, imbibe it, soak up that juicy interconnectedness like wine into a mattress, suck up that vibrational hum and awe and kiss, the more you realize the value of protecting and preserving and treading lightly, actually taking the time to taste your food, integrate with those objects, feel that breath of your lover. Simple, really.

And, hence, the less you require of the material world. This is what scares them the most. This is why They don't want you to notice, to feel, to remember, or to question their motives.

Because the less you believe that everything around you is just a tedious lifeless resource to be consumed and shrugged off, the less you feel the need to share in the massive force-fed belief that we are here to devour as much as possible, as quickly as possible, and blow the living crap out of everything that gets in our way.

And then you take the idea one step further. You realize that by soaking up that interconnected juice and raising that vibrational consciousness just that little bit, on a day-to-day basis, you are directly and immediately affecting everything around you, inspiring it, them, us to do exactly the same.

The final kicker: It's all accessible right now. All you gotta do is ask. Invite it in. Literally. Just ask.

Want to be healthy? Strong? More open and lickable and less bitter and baffled and cynical? Ask for it, place some divine intent behind it and breath it in and imagine what it would feel like to radiate health and sexual vibrancy and self-defined joy and really cool taste in shoes. That's how you start.

Because this is the biggest collective delusion of all, that you can't get at it, that it's so much wimpy tofu-hugging BS, so much fluffy New Age psychobabble. What a convenient excuse that is to remain wallowing and acidic and humming at a simplistically low, want-based pitch, happily drunk on the disinfo They want to sell you. It's just too easy. And lazy.

And it does require work. It takes some concentrated and open-hearted effort to raise that awareness, to tune in on that level, sift through the bogus media and healers and teachers and pretentious yoga classes, gurus, smarmy inane Chicken Soupy books to find the authentically divine heat and rush and thrust.

You gotta get off your ass. You gotta question everything. You gotta see the world anew, always, every moment, to progress and evolve and vibrate higher. And, to be sure, it can be a total divinely annoying pain in the ass.

But, really, when you get right down to it, what else is there?