Good Nothings and Bad Nothings

 

April 16.

There are mornings when there's very little on my mind and I begin in silence and emptiness; and then there are the mornings where the sun gives light from within and something real is heard, a vibration which creates worlds that I did not know of and cannot conceive of having in me.

My aspiration is always to acquit myself honorably of my duties in this life; but if I’m honest with myself, which ought to be a duty in and of itself at this age of 65 years old, I'll admit that I have already failed. 

This is the consequence of reaching a moment when remorse of conscience is active.

When one is younger, one thinks of much; one thinks of this and that. One thinks, among other things, that one has “understood” remorse, that one knows what the word means and that one has had this or that magical experience of it. But this is impossible. Remorse is a substance that builds slowly in the marrow of the bones and it’s functionally impossible, under any ordinary set of circumstances — and we are none of us extraordinary, not one single one of us — for enough material to deposit itself in the molecules of Being for real remorse to begin to arise until one is in one’s 60s — perhaps even older. I can’t say. But what I can say is that despite a lifetime of work and experience, it is only after very much effort and the perspective of many decades that a harmonic consonance deep enough to produce real remorse arises.

Remorse is what is felt in the bones of one’s life, a fine substance that re-creates the very structure itself.

In this way it is quite close to the soul. The soul needs to feel its pain and suffering in order to grow; it’s the fertilizer from which leaves that can breathe the carbon dioxide of our daily life may grow. The soul is separated from that world; it lives on the oxygen that is produced, that is what it breathes; and its roots grow throughout a person to the extent both that the sun shines and the darkness lives within.

There was some speaking the other day about the unity of Being. 

This question isn’t well understood,especially when one is young. But eventually one perhaps begins to see how we are divided; and how convenient this is. Divided, we always have someone else to blame for how we are and the way we behave. If we acquire unity, there is only one being to assume responsibility; and we would prefer to avoid debt, because we don’t want to be responsible. In division, there is always somewhere to run and hide from what we are and the way we do things. In unity, there is no place to rest our head. If there is one of me, I can’t run away from him into someone else.

Then there are the arguments about unity and what produces it. As though there could be subjective interpretations of this, a question. Yet there is only one true answer, and that is the action of sensation. Not the crude and ordinary action of sensation, but the sensation of the organic, the molecular, sense of being. This is what produces our individuality; and one either understands this or one doesn’t. There is no middle ground here. To understand this is to begin to understand many things; and to not understand it is to begin to understand nothing.

There are good nothings and bad nothings. The moment that one understands one understands nothing one is in a good nothing. Before that moment, before that real moment of understanding which inserts itself into the space between one atom and the next one and creates a spark that lives, one lives in a bad nothing, that is, a nothing without value. 

One should be quite clear that there are nothings with value and nothings without any value. If one looks closely in life, one can see that both of these manifestations exist one next to another. 

Nothings without value are the norm. It takes an attention to see the nothing with value in it.

One would be best off with simple thoughts. Thoughts want to be complicated and add over and over again to everything. They’re idiots this way. The whole world works on this; let’s put some more stuff here and there, let’s add to this and that, let’s think more, let’s do more, let’s act more and argue more. 

This is not a good nothing. In a good nothing, the action is subtractive; we prune the bush, we rake away debris, things become emptier and more focused. I don’t need this thought. I don’t need that one. I need to sense, to breathe.

Please, dear thoughts, quiet down and go sit in the corner over there for a moment. We love you, but you aren’t helping here. There are too many of you and while you are allowed to make noise and play, good behavior is also required in this classroom.

When this class is over, we will all die, so it is important to pay attention now. Even you, as unruly as you are, but to begin to sense this and be a bit quieter.

Hurrah for using all three parts today. Be well.

warmly, 

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.