I have grown up with movies where tea pots had eyes, brooms freely moved about on their own and animals spoke to one another. The whole world seemed animated in the imagination of the movie story-tellers, and so it has become for me. There is animation in all things, whether they be trees, people, rocks, stars or spoons.
The threshold of being alive sometimes has seemed to be related with movement. But I know now that movement only tells the easily visible part of reality. Not only do I now see that plants move, something I once saw as a distinction I once reserved for animals. Now I know there is movement in rocks and water and stars. I see animation in all things in my material world and I realize that I have simply been limited in my ability to perceive it.
It is perhaps a broad notion of animation to attribute aliveness to all things. But it is how I see my world. There is movement within all things, even if my senses are unable to grasp it easily.
Perhaps it is enough to see the movement simply as energy, although I also see animation as having many other characteristics as well. I recognize it as having many faces. It is the deep power that surges in all material reality, contained and constrained by structures I scarcely understand. It appears as love which courses through all things and unites us all. It gives us unity and oneness with all that exists. It pours out as expressions of compassion, wisdom and loving kindness.
It is life that oozes through all the crevices of everything I see and touch. For some, it is the face of a deity that is alive and so animates all things.
I prefer to focus on the nature of this animation as a manifestation of love. I like this way of absorbing and embracing the nature of aliveness in all things. This notion allows me to feel the force of compassion that compels me into a loving unity with everyone and everything I experience.
I like a world that is naturally animated by a principle of love, uniting us all. It is the alive source of fountains of loving kindness. All I have to do is jump in.