A goodness which flows into Being

July 4

Each day, I returned again to the goodness that flows into us as Beings.

Life may not seem good. It’s filled with difficulty and suffering. For example, I learned yesterday that a childhood friend has broken their back and is paralyzed from the waist down. This is on top of a series of other very, very difficult trials they have gone through.

The odd thing is that I had not heard from this person for some time. They're reclusive, with some good reason, and I was afraid they had died. It's entirely plausible they could do so without anyone telling me. When I got the call from them, I was so glad they were alive that the fact that they had merely broken their back seemed like a good thing to me. 

The contradictions are evident.

A great deal of suffering is yet at hand for them, to be sure; yet this is surely what life has sent to them to help them learn how to Be. Being involves taking in all of the events in life, not just the ones that one prefers. The situation reminds me of my mother, also bedridden, who faces her own moment of slow descent towards death with courage and conviction. 

I know my friend will do the same; they also have great courage.

The word courage comes from the Latin -cor, meaning heart. Courage lies, like the heart, at the center of Being — it is what pumps the blood of will and determination through our manifestations. We care about life; and thus we persist in the face of adversity. 

The word care itself comes from the Old High German chara, which means grief or lamentation. Courage allows us to persist in the face of grief. Grief is something that we produce in ourselves, a feeling response to adversity; and so we go against ourselves, we go against the feeling-sensation of difficulty, and move forward into life. This engraves itself on our being — it builds character. (https://zenyogagurdjieff.blogspot.com/2017/01/on-character.html) 

In the midst of all the material difficulty we face, the individual difficulties of earning a living, tolerating the physical disabilities we encounter as we age, the struggle to understand love, and the wider social struggles for justice and the humane treatment of one another— including, last but not least, the struggle against pandemics, of course —there is still a goodness to life. This goodness is greater than the goodness we can create for ourselves: greater than a goodness that emerges simply from our material circumstances. There is a goodness that can be received in Being through a realignment from within.

Goodness is born directly in this experience from the flow of the divine presence into one’s heart. In this sense, divine presence flows into one’s courage; yet courage is not what it bestows on us, although that is a side effect. 

What it bestows first and foremost is love. This love, if it is received (and I say if, because it's not at all guaranteed we will open ourselves to it) will fill us with an understanding, an unerring understanding in every cell of our bodies, that we have been given this life filled with goodness and that it's here to support us.

In remembering the story of Exodus, which I wrote about in earlier diary entries, one recalls that one plague after another was brought down on Egypt. Yet Pharaoh hardened his heart. This is an exact story of the liberation of Being: we live in these material circumstances from which we seek to discover a spiritual freedom, and yet we harden our heart and refuse the selfsame divine goodness that freedom could bring. We're so invested in the material that no matter how bad things get, we're convinced that we should cling to it. What we don’t understand is that in the midst of adversity, if we surrender our hearts to the Lord, we'll receive everything we wish for and more.

I thought of this a great deal yesterday as the flow of grace and divine love was available. Here I was, in the midst of a pandemic, my mother suffering the difficulty of stroke and disability, my friend with a broken back. Socially isolated, uncertain of any future. 

Yet life was supporting me. 

It's supporting me now. 

The love that creates life is within me, not somewhere else in a theory or religious practice. 

God’s presence is in me right now loving and supporting. 

This is the only place it can never be found; it isn’t out there waiting to appear after I pray enough. It's here in me right now, awaiting the moment that it can bring that great love which surpasses all thought —

if I let it.

Meister Eckhart writes a great deal about this in the Book of Divine Comfort, a piece of writing I think every person participating in the process of this pandemic and its social repercussions ought to read. We're all wounded — not just by the damage that life inflicts on us, but (more than anything else) by our own overbearing egos, which seem determined to damage everything they can in pursuit of their own selfish interests. 

There is certainly a better way; there is a way of love. Yet we harden our hearts. In doing so, we become cowards, because a hardened heart has little courage. It feigns courage; it struts and poses on the stage of life, adopting outward signs of how tough it is. Perhaps it doesn’t even wear a mask to protect itself and others from disease. It wants everyone to think that it is stronger than the rest. Yet, like Pharaoh, it is blind and foolish; it may have armies, but they are powerless in the face of love.

Again, I remind myself here that I speak not of any outward love, but of the love that is formed within from the inward flow of the blessing of Grace. 

This is a fine substance that penetrates every tiny space between the molecules we are made of.

I stop for a moment and I offer my heart quietly to that potential. I feel a sorrow; because I do not deserve and I’m not worthy. 

Yet I am here; love and grace are not withheld, no matter how foolish, inconsistent, and unable I am. 

Love still flows; love still arrives. My sorrow arises from my inability to understand this. I feel that I ought to understand, that I ought to honor this great support that has been offered freely simply through the act of Being. Yet once and a thousand times, I don’t understand. I simply know that this great goodness is offered, that it flows into Being, and that even one moment of participation in it is a more precious thing that all the jewels and gold of the world.

Yesterday, this force was present in abundance. There was nothing greater than love in that day. The day was unto itself a thing filled with good; the visit of my daughter and her husband, a torrential downpour. The planting of plants, the tending of gardens, the cheerful, staccato song of goldfinches and the mellifluous call of the wood thrush. The black and white flicker of a red bellied woodpecker darting up into the woods. Bees all over the oakleaf hydrangeas. 

Each one of these things took place; and all were held in the hands of grace and filled with love from the heart of Being.

These things are true things which cannot be taken away, no matter how bad life gets. Until the day we die, we have the privilege of breathing in and out, of seeing the clouds in the sky, the stars and the moon. That very act alone is a blessing.

Will I pause for a moment today to receive that grace and to attempt once again to understand it? 

There are no certainties here. I am a weak creature, and vain; yet if I humble myself, even that will be forgiven, and love will arrive. I have been taught this many times — I need to be taught again every day, because I’m foolish and I forget. Yet if I wait, and remember, the teacher will come again. That teacher is infinitely patient with its students, and has no greater wish than the best for us.

I think I will end here for this morning.

Go deep in your heart, and be well-

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.