Instruction

The flowing-in-of-life is the point at which perception encounters the external.

It is a point of construction that leads to instruction. Construction is, roughly speaking the action of putting things together externally; and instruction is the action of putting experiences together internally. Both are necessary. 

Things meet together in time at every single instant, both inwardly and outwardly. They are perceived; that is to say, they are seized together as a whole thing. Under the best of circumstances, they’re “understood;” that is to say, we’re aware of the fact that our ego and our consciousness are, relative to all that is, subordinate entities — part of a much greater whole. Yet that understanding is fugitive in us most of the time. In the end, we’re not really aware of the situation.

The difficulty continues to arise from our intuition that perception is separate from the external, that it is not part of a single whole thing. There’s no unity in the experience of Being. I don’t see my dependency on the All-Arising, chemical and molecular nature that surrounds me, and the way in which I am in fact, in absolute totality, an inseparable part of that All-Arising. My mind keeps insisting that “it” is “out there” and that I’m different from “it.” 

The idea that we’re the same thing never occurs to me. The very existence of such an idea is a threat to “my” autonomy, my mastery of the universe as it stands. In this sense, we are all infected from the beginning of perception with a certain pathological megalomania. 

It takes a lot of work to put this particular individual in the back seat of the car.

Perhaps, for a moment this morning, I can come into somewhat closer touch with a breathing perception of the molecular state of vibration which creates my being. This quality is here now; and it fills the entire body with an intelligence of the molecular level, which is — paradoxically, counterintuitively — a higher intelligence than the one that my mind produces. 

If I do encounter it — and this is, for most people, admittedly rare — I immediately know and immediately understand that it’s superior to my own intelligence. This point is the point at which the flowing-in-of-life begins; it’s a consonance of molecular vibrations that align themselves with one another in order to exchange information. I am, in other words, a point of exchange with higher influences which are always speaking to me from the foundation of my essential being, these selfsame atomic and molecular vibrations. Each time I stop for a moment and attend to the breath and its presence as it spreads its influence throughout the body into every molecule, I’m reminded of this absolute fact.

This fact is much bigger than I am and much bigger than all the facts I have been stuffed full of as though I were some kind of enchilada. The enchilada is bulging; but it isn’t really filled with any sense of a finer quality of vibration, and in the action of attending to the flowing-in-of-life I can immediately see that. It’s possible, for a moment, to understand that the enchilada and the plate it is on don’t have a lot to do with the actual action of life. Almost everything that humanity has constructed to distract itself and serve its desire stands apart from what might instruct, what might teach inwardly; and instruction begins with my molecules, not books or forms. Not the “teachings” which have been stuffed into me and which I consume as eagerly as the ice cream I like to have in the evening while watching television. Ooh la la!

In point of fact, I have a greed even for “teaching,” the wish to better myself through some “discipline” that provides an “improved” lens through which I can view life and — most importantly — myself. I need an improved lens to look at myself, because whenever I look at myself for even one tiny second objectively through the lenses I already have, their distortions and insufficiencies become apparent. I think that the tools I’m using to look at myself aren’t good enough; so I try to improve the tools. 

But maybe it’s not the lenses that are distorted.

I don’t see that the discipline I need lies in a relationship to the molecules I am made of; and I don’t see that “improvement” lies in this same intimate relationship to the chemical and physical entity which gives birth to my essential being. If I begin there and discard the enchilada for a moment, I discover that although I obsessively order up one enchilada topping after another, there’s better food on the menu.

I don’t see how absolutely repetitive I have become. How I use the same language over and over — words that aren’t even my words, but which I have adopted and adapted to because they mirror others around me and help to preserve the illusion of meaning. 

How interesting it would be, if it were to happen, that something original might happen in me, something that’s born of my molecular vibration itself and not all of the consequences that have arranged themselves around it like parasitic entities. My thoughts and my constructions are constantly stealing energy from the original state of molecular vibration, which has a state of purity, of being untouched. It is, in a word, virginal; and it remains that way forever, because it begins in a place that has not had intercourse with life. Perhaps you see where I’m going here; the Virgin Mary has something to do with this, but not in the sense we think we know of Her as, although Her ordinary form is quite useful from a feeling point of view. I think that the reader who understands what I’m getting at will understand that there are important and delicate nuances here, the beginning of an allegory that opens a mystery which has not at all been explored enough.

As usual, I began this essay this morning from nowhere, having no idea of what I’d say or how I’d say it. Yet these are my thoughts for this morning; and perhaps I will just leave it at that for today.

Do something real today. Be well.

Warmly,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.