Being with Love in the Present, Part I

Detail of capital from Eglise St. Pierre, Chauvigny

March 1, 2020, Sparkill

Be heedful at all times, for if the whole is aware, its parts are aware. Control your anger, do not seek revenge.

Ibn Arabi, Divine Governance of the Human Kingdom, P. 63. Translated by Shaykh Tosun Bayrak al-Jerrahi al-Halveti. Fons Vitae, 1997.

Last night, a discussion with Neal and Sylvia about how our past affects us.

We were talking about our experiences—all different, but they share a common thread —of personal betrayal by loved ones affects our attitudes towards them. One sees that even after many years, there may be a residue of anger and attitude towards another person. This can lend a dangerous color to the way I perceive myself even now.

A bad attitude toward someone from my past can serve as a form of inner vengeance. This needs to be looked at quite carefully. Everything in me that points my emotions or my feelings (the lower or higher parts of my emotional being) towards the past prevents them from being focused properly in the present. Don't make the mistake of believing that your feelings can be misled; higher centers can make mistakes in the same way that lower centers can. Spiritual orientation is no guarantee of infallibility.

This action of allowing my feelings to be pointed towards events that took place at another time under different circumstances is always destructive. My feelings are needed in order to perceive what is taking place around me now, what is taking place in me now. Anything that points them in another direction causes them to fail in their immediate task. 

There is, of course, a contemplative responsibility for feeling which takes place in the now, but that contemplation is not pointed backwards. It does not look in that direction. It includes that direction, but that direction is behind it. In this particular instance, it's helpful to be reminded of Christ, who was offered the whole world in the course of his temptations and said, "get thee behind me, Satan.”

It's possible, with right inner attitude and sufficient contemplation of feeling in the present moment, to completely transform the way one's emotional and feeling attitude functioned in the past situation where wrong was done to one in such a way that one now understands the goodness and value of that moment, instead of dwelling on the hatred and anguish that arose at the time. 

This can't be a forced exercise where one tries to convince onesself using thought and psychology in order to attain forgiveness. Forgiveness has to come from the feeling part—that is, the heart—and it needs to emerge as a consequence of work that the heart has done, not work that the mind has done. The difficulty with psychology is that it works with the mind; and the mind can't do this kind of work.

So I need to see where I am using my sensation and feeling – where I am right now. Not where I was, and the bad things that happened to me. They are over. If I wish to understand the concept of attachment, the first thing I need to understand is that attachment does not mean a wish for the things one is attached to. The outward attachments are always nothing more than an expression of the inward ones. My attachments begin within me, in my feelings, and in the moments when they are directed towards things other than the goodness of the soul. We all live in a constant state of temptation in regard to this question.

Someone recently questioned the idea that sensation is where inner work begins. 

I would speak to it thus: the sensation is the anchor which can keep me here where I am. In this way, feelings rest on a firm foundation. 

He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? 

And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. 

And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 

And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 

In this passage from Matthew 16, Christ distinguishes between that which we perceive with the outer or natural parts of ourselves – flesh and blood – as opposed to what we perceive with our spiritual parts, that is, our father: that from which we are born. Our Father is the inward flow of the divine into our being, from which we are born in every moment through our spiritual sensation. Our being begins here, and this is why Christ said upon this rock I will build my church. The church in this case represents feeling, which is love. Of course to use this term opens the door to a much wider explanation of the nature of love and its relationship to feeling, but we can’t deal with that in this particular essay. The point is that if I don't have a firm foundation for my love, it has the wrong attitude and looks in the wrong direction. More frequently than ever —and this is where we begin the discussion —it looks towards the past, and in doing so forgets the present. It needs to help with sensation to prevent this from taking place.

My attachments to life usually begin with this looking backwards, in the wrong direction, with my feeling. I don't need to revisit the ills of the past. I need to digest them. This involves a comprehensive form of contemplation and forgiveness. If I do this work in a right way—if I allow the sensation to ground the feeling so that it can do its work—then my emotional attitude stays in the present and supports me, instead of continually revisiting the pain and anguish that others caused me in earlier parts of my life. Remember, that kind of information is only useful to the extent that it helps me be with Love in the present – whenever it pulls me in the direction of being with anger or hatred in the present, I betray myself.

May your heart be close to God, 

and God close to your heart.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.