Three Foods

 

Can I appreciate the sacred foods that are given to me? 

Sometimes it helps me to do this more intentionally first thing in the morning.

Very much of my relationship to food is related quite strongly to the animal in me, and I need to submit to that honorably and with some honesty. The animal is strong and I can’t fight it so easily; we cooperate better when we are friends, but then it influences me more than I want to. So I have to strike a balance and pick my opportunities.

The cup of chai that I drink combines within me according to the lawful parts of the animal. Yet it also produces a sacred harmonic that brings other parts of the body together; and the breathing deepens, bringing the food of sensation closer to the heart of my soul. A certain form of more concentrated relaxation arrives; the cells gather their magnetism together in a consonance of effort. Already now things are more together; and that strange and inexplicable vibration which is the vibration of stillness arrives. 

It draws my agitation out of me and I become more passive.

So I’m here now with the three foods combining quite fluidly within me. In my stomach is the milk, the cream, the chocolate and the herbs and spices from the chai; it reminds me of its blessing. 

The air comes in and out of my lungs without interference, and reminds me of its blessing. 

The impression of the sacred harmonic within Being reminds me of its blessing.

I’m a very tiny creature. I’m just here; I’m here to honor the moment without knowing what it is or where it came from. I’m not just trying to gain a sense of my own nothingness; I’m within my nothingness, manifesting it. By manifesting my nothingness I’m doing everything I can to honor the gift have been given and the life I am required by duty to lead.

It may seem strange to say that the experience of my nothingness is the way in which I fulfill my duty and honor my life; but this is in fact the only way to do that, because it is only through this experience of my own nothingness that I can make room for something real to enter me. This is, indeed, the point both of Gurdjieff’s practice and Meister Eckhart’s sermons. And yet I keep acting as though those were outside things, hypotheses that I can hold at arm’s length and examine in some clinical matter. 

These need to become my inside things, these things which are not things but an attitude, a letting go, an investment in what I am not.

The great question is before me now as it has been for some weeks. It’s the question of feeling. 

In the midst of the nothingness, a sacred feeling arises. That feeling is so sublime and intangible — yet at the same time it is so dominant and absolute. It manages to remain hidden and reveal itself at the same time; it is a bridge between the great sorrow of everything that must pass and the great joy of everything that comes to be. My awareness is a current that flows between these two poles and makes them available to one another in the experience of truth.

The three sacred foods are help in this matter, because I see in my experience of them that they provide the energy for this matter. This is worth everything; and yet I need to explore exactly what that means. 

If I'm given a little; I owe everything. If I'm given everything, I still owe everything. It helps to see this; and in the daily bread of the three foods, I’m given the help to see in this way. 

Then perhaps I can begin to pay, as one must, even unto the last farthing.

May you be well within today.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.