An Inverted State of Being

June 8

It's 6:00 am; the old French clock in my office has just marked the moment with its chime. 

I’m here in front of my computer again, beginning what will be the last week before I return to work. Our office will be on a staggered schedule so I’m only going back for two days a week, but it marks the symbolic end of this stay-at-home orders and the first wave of the pandemic disruption. I say first wave because the aftereffects of this experience will echo through the nation and the economy, and the world at large, for many years to come. It has ended many lives; it has permanently changed the rest of them. We will have to confront the challenges of this new outer condition in ways we don’t yet imagine.

As always, I begin the day examining the nature of my inner condition. I want to remain precisely aware of that throughout the day, never forgetting that the inner exists as an active force of its own, and that the relationship between the inner and the outer parts of my Being needs to be nourished.

We live in a life where the outer part of our being is usually quite active, and the inward part is passive. This isn’t just a question of activity; it’s a question of awareness. You could call it the conscious and subconscious, if you wish; yet the psychological terms don’t sufficiently describe the condition, because they label the two entities as things and confer a false impression that we already know enough about them, that we understand them.

There's an inverted state of Being available to us where the inner part becomes active and the outward part is passive. This is actually a huge change in terms of the way we experience life, because the inner part then begins to receive life in a different way than we otherwise knew was possible. Instead of Being flowing outward into life, which drains us of spiritual substance, life flows inward into Being, which feeds it. 

Now, unfortunately, there is no on/off switch to invert the polarity of Being; and  for most of us, the active part is decisively located in our outward nature. It becomes helpful, however, to confront my life — to be in it as much as possible — asking myself, how am I receiving this? 

The whole act of assumption which we engage in perpetually, without thinking for even an instant about it, relies on remaining hidden in order to function. Asking the question of how I receive life may help a little bit in terms of trying to see this action more clearly.

When life flows inward into Being, a living thread of awareness is created. A different kind of vibration arises from within, because now a center of gravity is forming. This has a taste, a flavor, that can’t be mistaken for anything else. It's the taste of the spirit and the taste of life. Within it, the finer substances of the Holy Spirit, of Grace, concentrate themselves. The secret meaning in the Gospels of water being changed into wine is when life (water) flows in and changes in to this higher substance through transubstantiation. 

The effect of this on us is like drinking wine; a fine, warm vibration that animates being in a new and different way. It opens our soul, our spirit, to a new experience of life. Only the inward part of ourselves can actively sense the sacred; and when it's active, receiving life, we suddenly discover that the simplest things are actually sacred. People who take psychedelics often find this from the very first time they take them; and they are astonished. Yet the effect, of course, wears off; and it wasn’t produced by a natural rearrangement of our organic machinery, so it costs much more than it should.

When I receive my life and this thread that feeds Being becomes alive and active, 

I am. 

There is nothing missing, nothing to be added. 

It isn’t complicated; it isn’t filled with my thoughts. They become a minor event that takes place in the background, not the motive force for my existence. They aren’t a part of my inward nature and my soul; they're a satellite entity. I can forget about them and just be. 

It produces an organic satisfaction unavailable to the thinking mind alone.

From within this place, which produces its own silence, I can give thanks for Being. That thanks is not directed by form or philosophy, not dictated by religion, morality, or presumption. It emanates from the heart of Being without provocation or impediment. It is a natural state. Some call it a natural state of prayer; it is said — and there is truth in this — that the whole universe is perpetually engaged in an active state of prayer that we don’t sense most of the time. Prayer, to us, always takes on a form and has proclamations, supplications, observations and statements in it: it is a thing of the mind. 

Yet there is a form of prayer that exists naturally as a sensation and a feeling; here the mind participates as an observer, not the director of operations.

Amen.

Go. and sense, and be well.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.