I was learning to live in Nature, shaping my life, my everyday activities in a direct way according to the weather, the seasons, the rising and setting of the sun and moon. I was once again becoming aware of Nature's all-powerful presence. If anyone had asked me, I would still have been unable to say what might be learned from Peter asleep among his animals on the prairie as I had seen him that first summer, but I was learning it. I was learning it slowly, painfully, in solitude and silence and out of my own experience.
Breakthroughs to a new state of being are often preceded by a state of turbulence in which there seems to be a lack of order, as in water that boils before it reaches another state of being as steam. The world is now going through great changes. It is possible that life has no meaning or purpose. Yet there is also another viewpoint: that through our increased awareness and closeness we are coming into another state of being. Such awareness can move us to be more fully human than ever before in history, because it is ultimately awareness, not denial, that creates greater humanness. Teilhard sees the purpose of God as moving us toward the next stage of evolution, moving us toward a new, deeper worldwide interconnection of human beings.