The confluence of time and attitude

July 11

Some further thoughts about the confluence of time and how the arising of my awareness is related to it.

Awareness is an eternal rebirth into the present moment. 

I use the word eternal to refer to an event which lies outside time; because time does not exist in the present moment. 

Each present moment is an instant that exists unto itself independent of reference to the moment before it in the sense of its existence; and independent of the next moment. 

The only reference to the moment before this instant of time can occur in the sense of a consciousness or awareness; that is, the reference requires an agent of perception.

Yet by being conscious or aware of the previous moments, that agent consciousness already establishes its independence. It can see previous moments within its memory; but it is unto itself of this moment, not those moments. 

It has a perspective from eternity, from NOW, on all that went before, as well as an ability to anticipate the movements that will come afterwards.

Awareness is born now. When Meister Eckhart speaks of eternal rebirth and eternity itself, he speaks of these matters. Yet it almost isn’t of consequence; the philosophy and metaphysics of it are compelling but unnecessary. What is it necessary is to live it as fully and organically as possible, with a concentrated and focused but very gentle intensity that encounters this present moment as a truth, and inhabits it. 

This takes place on a scale, by degrees; awareness can approach the present moment on a sliding scale, but to inhabit it fully belongs to God alone. Because of our fractional nature, the fact that we are iotas separated from God, we can never fully inhabit the moment, because the moment includes all of creation, and it is (to those of us with sufficient humility) self-evident that we're functionally unable to encompass all of creation in our comprehension.

"Okay," you're saying to yourself, "van Laer is off in his abstract thought territory again. Where’s the stuff about normal life?"

The point is that this IS normal life. Awareness exists independent of time; but it is concentrated in this "substance" of time. My attitude emerges from it; that is, the way I am, the attitude I have towards my life and other people, emerges as an independent entity within each moment due to the confluence of all the forces that bring me to it.

There are both inner and outer forces that bring me to this moment in my life. The outer ones are material and subject to arbitrary action, what Gurdjieff called the Law of Accident. Some people are rich; others poor. This woman has enough food to eat, that one doesn’t. He is sick, she is not. These events spring from material forces that give birth to, crush, and extract materials from one another in what could be assumed to be almost random patterns, but for the fact that we assign them significance and meaning by using agency to discover an order in them.

The inner forces that bring my awareness to this moment are quite different. If there's no supervision, they can indeed be as random as the outer forces; I can run around like a ninny, behave like a child, sit around making horrible remarks about other people who are not like me on the Internet–or, if I’m a media figure, on television, where everyone in the world, so to speak, can hear me. 

But I don’t want to behave without inner supervision. I have a wish — perhaps old-fashioned and outdated, but for me very real, nonetheless — to behave like an adult, to show respect for others and to not irresponsibly spread negativity around as a source of amusement and ego-gratification. 

That is to say, I'd like "someone" to be in charge of the inner condition. I would like to understand it in terms of a responsible order. To be a responsible person. Not an arrogant fool.

If I see my intelligence properly, understanding the function of memory and the way that it knits elements from the confluence of time-events together, I understand that already my consciousness has a function designed to create an order, to supervise (to "see from above") the events that bring my being to this moment. When I spoke about memory the other day this element was a part of the question. The point is that this moment in time, from the perspective of consciousness, comes from somewhere. When we say that eternity is born in the present moment, the independence of this present moment in time from others still has a conception, a gestation period, before its birth. My own perception of time is the intelligent comprehension of that parentage.

In allegorical terms, we might say that God the Father, from the personal point of view, inhabits all of that space before this instant. God the Son is this eternal moment within me, born of consciousness. And God the Holy Ghost represents the force that knits these two independent yet co-joined forces of Being-creation together.

This, of course, is a bit too much of a naturalistic description of what is actually a spiritual event, but perhaps you catch my drift. We embody the intention of the universe and of God when we become aware. To the extent that we become more mindful, more aware, and more responsible of our supervisory responsibility for our being, to that extent do we reflect the Will of God. The less we do so, the more we reflect nothing more than our own will, which is driven by a confluence of reflexive reactions to outer forces: in a word, stupid, in the sense that it is in a stupor, dazed, hypnotized by the outer world, its temptations, its pleasures.

Its hatreds.

My attitude towards my life is formed from everything that went before, but the attitude exists eternally. It’s always in me right now. 

I need to see my attitude right now, within this eternity (separate from time.) It is a product of time, because it contains time within it, but it also has the ability, the capacity, to be entirely independent of time. The influence of everything that came before me does not necessarily have to dictate my attitude. This gives us a hint in the direction of what all the spiritual teachings are trying to indicate when they speak to us about “freedom.”. Freedom is not freedom to do whatever I want. We can’t define it in material terms; as many famous political prisoners have pointed out, you can put a man’s body in jail, but it is impossible to imprison his love, his thought, his attitude. 

What we have within us is a potential for freedom from the burdens of the past and the inflections of attitude; we have the potential to inhabit the moment freely, that is, open to the present possibility, and be filled with a gentle and intelligent love that is prepared to receive it.

Everything in us that comes from the past and imparts an inflection to prevent that is a clear and present danger. 

The issue is that the confluence of time and events within memory puts an enormous amount of pressure on us to live externally, to act externally, to determine who we are based on the action of these external forms, forces, and circumstances. The external world is forever trying to impose its own mindless and partial order on us. Only by becoming responsible inside can we change that.

We have many organic tools within being that can help bring the force against this insistence of outwardness and the destructive capacity of time, in its influential nature as an arguer for the material. 

These organic tools are of a spiritual nature, because they are constructed by ancient forces with capacities and abilities whose roots lie beyond the molecular manifestation of creation. The molecular manifestation of creation, however, is so close to these roots that it drinks directly from them in every moment; and if we come into relationship with that very fine creative force that is present in us — even now, as you read this — it can act as a support. 

But it only does that if I am mindful enough to bring love and care to this moment of being, to pay attention to the relationship between my mind and my body.

Today's photo is a tulip tree silk moth, which Neal found dead next to a neighbor's house yesterday. Tallman State park hosts a substantial stand of tulip trees, so the moths are probably far more common in the area that our sightings of them might otherwise indicate. At one time it was thought their cocoons might serve as the basis for a native American silk industry, but that never came to pass, because the work of unwinding the silk was too labor-intensive and expensive to render it practical.

Go deep in your heart, and be well-

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.