Raccoons

April 29

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This morning one of the first things I did after I had my coffee was to refill the bird feeder. 

I use discarded parts from an old elevator in Manhattan – a set of iron gears –to keep raccoons, who are devilishly clever little creatures, from getting into the bird food. Every morning I have to lift this cold iron. 

Iron is an element formed in the hearts of stars; it arrives in the universe dispersed as atoms in clouds of dust; is concentrated, turned into ore on planets, and – in the case of earth – extracted and formed by men to serve their purposes. 

This mundane object, made from the heart of stars, has been used both to lift things and weigh them down. 

In lifting things up, it needed to be intricately crafted according to understanding and future purpose. 

All it needs to do to weigh things down is just have its own gravity. In that role, it serves powerfully to deter thieves. 

Yet that gravity needs to be placed with a clear intention as to where it can do some good.

There isn't any doubt of it. There's a part of me that wants to cling to my ideas about things, which are elaborate, and my emotions, which consist of reactions to that.

It's possible, however, for the mind and feeling to develop kind of freedom. An independence from the world of things.

Although it may be difficult to understand the perhaps foreign idea of having an organic sensation of Being, it's very important to sit quietly for a few moments every morning in the stillness, very early, before anyone else awakens. 

It becomes possible, in these early moments, to participate quite simply – without any expectation or plan – in a gathering of inner gravity. One can just sit here, sense the vibration of one's molecules, sense the tone of one’s Being. All the forces that make our body and our intellect and our feelings are gathered together here. They have an attraction to one another. A gravity of Being draws them together.

This gravity of Being is a subtle spiritual force that binds what we are together in communion. To the extent that I honor that force and sense its presence in me, I hope to concentrate it. It becomes slowly more focused.

To the extent that I form an intelligent center of spiritual gravity in me, so do I gain independence from the world of things (and raccoons.)

To be independent means to not "hang down" from the world of things. When my being hangs down from the world of things, the world of things is what's lifting it up. 

Yet if I think about it for even a moment, I begin to see that what lifts me up is not the physical, but the metaphysical world: the world of love and goodness. 

If I can see that I depend on those forces for Being, rather than the forces of things, life is quite different. I might even go through my day asking myself where I stand between this obsessive-compulsive world of things, and the world of love and goodness. This needs to begin by sensing myself, by sensing the gravity— in the end sensing and understanding that my being arises from that inner gravity, not from the outer world. 

This gravity from within is the most useful force I can deploy. It keeps those thieving raccoons of the mind at bay.

From within this sensation, the mind is free. It isn't reacting; it isn't engaged in the usual manufacture of nonsense. It is just quiet and sits here with me awaiting what arrives.

This may seem like a kind of passivity and even stupidness; yet it is in fact very active and sensitive to all that takes place. The parts of me that receive impressions of the world become softer and are able to render them in finer detail. Aspects of very small events that I usually ignore become much more interesting. I begin to see that life is here, around me now. 

Beauty is around me here, now. 

Goodness is also here, now.

Nothing is out there somewhere else as a set of events taking place in other people’s lives. Those things are real, yes; but rendering them in my imagination and giving them power over what is here and now distracts me from life as it is now. 

And I want to know what life is now. 

When the mind becomes still, the tension of my being relaxes and the constricted, contracted parts of myself gradually dilate. Although these tensions are related to the physical tension of the body, they are actually metaphysical tensions — conditions of Being that have tightened up in such away that the spiritual forces which might otherwise feed me don't reach me. 

As they relax, a new and quieter place opens which may allow the arrival of a real feeling. 

Not a reaction: as in all real feeling, an initiation.

This gives birth to a sacred gratitude. If I taste even the smallest part of this feeling, it forms a force of Being from within that can be carried through the day.

My gratitude can serve as a reminder for the good fortune I have to be alive at all. 

If the thought is free, and in a right relationship with feeling, it will be naturally inclined to remember this at all times. 

This is a bit of what freedom means when we understand the world from the spiritual.


Go. and sense, and be well.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.