March 3
To become responsible means, within the context of its linguistic roots, to pledge myself once again to support the other.
Respond (late Middle English (as a noun): from Old French, from respondre ‘to answer’, from Latin respondere, from re- ‘again’ + spondere ‘to pledge’. The verb dates from the mid 16th century.)
Every morning when I get up I pledge myself again to the process of this day of life.
So the first thing that I do in the morning is become responsible.
I pledge to bring what I can in myself to support this life and the requirements it has. We’re in a reciprocal relationship, this life and I; the substances of its nature flow into me, both through the food, the air, and the impressions; and equally my intention and manifestation flow back outward into it.
If I’m in a good state — it happens a little bit, every day — I receive a precious sense of how extraordinarily valuable the simplest things are, such as a fig, or a piece of bread.
If my sensory apparatus is in a good relationship I know this in an organic way that has nothing to do with the theory of such things. The complexities that put these matters in front of us are impossible to sort out, understand, or ever fully appreciate; yet they’re here for our benefit and the benefit of the whole world. Everything on the planet has evolved that way and is in its place according to that great goodness that emerges from the love at the heart of creation.
One of the thoughts I had yesterday is that it’s strange the way human beings think they'll understand how things work. In any instant, trillions of microorganisms, living creatures in the form of viruses and bacteria, are interacting inside us in their individual natures and molecular understandings; and together they are producing “me.” The microbiome, scientists are discovering, is actually the chief and absolute source of the balances between mind and body, illness and health.
That realm is so complex and dynamic that our interferences with and adjustments to it can never be more than the grossest of phenomenon. In each moment, trillions of relationships are engaged with; trillions of compromises and balances are struck. My consciousness exists on a level far above that and can’t really interfere in any truly effective way. Most of what it does in regard to these infinitesimal phenomena are guesswork. It’s true that I may be able to take some direct actions of very specific kinds, such as a vaccination for a disease; yet when I try to understand how it affects my psyche, that is a very different matter.
There is no vaccination for anger or confusion.
There is no vaccination for bad influences that lead me astray.
This brings me to the thought I had yesterday about the phrase from the Lord’s prayer, “deliver us from evil.”
The word deliver comes from Latin roots meaning to “get away from” and “set free.” (Middle English: from Old French delivrer, based on Latin de- ‘away’ + liberare ‘set free’.)
Yet the evil that I need to be set free from isn’t (as we so stubbornly presume) an external evil.
It is my own inner evils that I need to be delivered from.
Being responsible means to pledge myself again to a life that moves in a direction away from evil and towards a loving understanding from within.
I recently spent several weeks contemplating the question of good and evil from the point of view of Meister Eckhart and Gurdjieff; and while the matter is complicated, we can’t hope to understand any of it without long and careful contemplation. Knee-jerk reactions to the ideas of good and evil are almost always formed around things we learn from outside ourselves; and the only way to begin to understand them is to study how we are inside, the way our inner relationships function.
Within our psyche, the functions are (metaphorically speaking) just as complex as the function of our biome: myriad interactions of thought, emotion, and physical sensation take place in the course of the day. This day, for example, will be exactly like that. Every day is. And so I need to be prepared to receive the day and see with some greater care how my thoughts, my emotions, and my sensation interact.
If I pledge myself to that attentive scrutiny, a gentle presence that accompanies my action, and I'm sensitive and delicate about its application, I see a little more clearly what’s going on.
Perhaps I even begin to understand that I need to receive my life gracefully as it is, not with the evil I have in myself which wants to manipulate it, command it, control it, wield it as a weapon.
If I'm attentive and I look carefully, I see that this weaponization of my psyche and my life is all too common in me.
What of it, then? This inner dictatorship, this embattlement?
I live this life as though I were immortal and could control things; and most especially, I live this life with the subtle, relentless, and unexamined conviction that I'm better than others. The first thing that needs to go is this belief that I’m somehow above the rest. We are all in this mess together; and if that doesn’t produce a little compassion for others, nothing will.
I have a very close friend who is dying of a degenerative disease. Much preparation is taking place in their life and the lives of those around them who love them.
The sense has now developed that the end will be relatively soon, not measured in years.
There’s been much thought about death and its nature as a result of this. We live with this fact on our doorstep at every moment and yet we pretend that it doesn’t affect us. Even covid has failed to impress upon our nation in general and the world at large that there are much more serious things to do than fight amongst one another for selfish purposes.
Who listens when this is sent? Almost no one. Everyone thinks that what they do is good and what others do is not.
This observation drew me, last week, to write that any selfish impulse to return to a selfish good is in itself evil. We must discover an objective good; and that can't come from us as we are, because all of us are subjective.
For some weeks I’ve kept a picture taken of my sister and myself in Scheveningen (Den Haag, in the Netherlands) on my desk. The photograph dates from May 1963. It’s a symbol of an entire world; and it is a reminder for me of what is truly precious, which is so often see only in hindsight.
It reminds me of death and how it separates us from everything in this world, no matter how firmly we wish to cling to it.
We so firmly believe that death is “bad.”
Yet it is not evil.
I was reminded of this last night in a dream. I have, you see, actually died once before in my life, but I won’t explain how. The point is that it wasn’t a bad thing. It was actually an enormous good; not the good I want, but true good in its own essence.
So I know precisely what death is and how it functions; and last night I was reminded of that in the dream, a teaching dream to point out to me once again that I don’t understand anything, I don’t understand what a great benefit this life is — and I don’t understand that death is also a great benefit.
This humbles me beyond measure. I will probably still retain some fear of death, because the organism doesn’t know any better; yet the spirit, the soul, the psyche can know something more of it, and in that there is nothing to be feared. It’s a movement towards a much greater love than we can have of ourselves; and in that alone it is a deliverance from the very evil that we inhabit within the selfish realm of our own desires…
which do not respect where we are and what we are doing.
So I hope to become responsible — to pledge myself again to these questions and this life this morning.
May you be well within today.
Lee
Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.