In the midst of grass

Detail from The Nativity, by Jacques Daret, about 1468

The Prado, Madrid

Men and women are born from a deep need of the earth to care for itself in new ways.

I can feel that care as a vibration within myself; and often I call it “sensation,” because this is the word I have been given by my language. 

The word derives from the Latin word sensus, which means the faculty of feeling, thought, or meaning. Of the three potential roots, the one indicating meaning is perhaps the most interesting, because it implies that my sensation is what gives meaning. It is a validation; it tells the truth, it roots me in my body as it is now and as I am here and now. It does not have the capacity for lying, for misrepresenting things in the same way that my thoughts and feelings can.

This leads me to wonder why my thoughts and feelings have become such liars. They are undisciplined; they wander around like lost sheep instead of dwelling in the immediate pasture. They’re impatient and inattentive; easily distracted by the imaginary thought that there is better food elsewhere.

So I hope to root myself here within sensation, as I call it, an organic sensation which plants me firmly in the relationship of life on the planet. 

It probably seems to many that I go on about this too often and that the subject has somehow become boring; after all, there are so many other ideas in spiritual work — the idea of sensation is peculiar to Gurdjieff, who was himself peculiar, wasn’t he? Perhaps this idea of sensation is an idiosyncrasy, a private brew that doesn’t belong in the greater world, say, of Christianity or Buddhism.

Yet to dwell within is essential to sensation; and sensation can be alive in ways that men and women are barely able to comprehend. When Jeanne de Salzmann said that sensation can become permanent, she meant that a living vibration that arises in the very molecules and atoms of our cells can become comprehensively and tangibly present to our awareness at every moment. 

This takes place when the two forces of gravity and magnetism join together in the singular union that is most natural to them. Gurdjieff called these things laws; that which is laid down and fixed. All of molecular Being arises on this planet because it is that which is laid down and fixed beneath the state of Being itself; and the question of molecular Being is an essential question, because the nature of the cosmos, the fabric of its existence itself, begins to ask its own questions and see its own life in the molecular structures that find relationship with one another.

We can participate in this most directly through an awakening of sensation; and then we have a legitimate and foundational premise from which to ask our questions about Being and life. It doesn’t so easily wander out of the pasture to look for grass elsewhere because it knows it is already in the midst of grass. The awakening of this faculty is essential to the first beginning of any understanding about who I am and why I’m here.

Perhaps, if I’m an intelligent and patient gardener, if I work with mindfulness and sensitivity, the grass will grow greener and richer within me and its leaves will present their greater mysteries, the ones that Walt Whitman reminded us of from the emotive presence of his own understanding… I refer to his presence as emotive, but in absolute terms it was quite definitely a feeling-presence of a higher kind, which has been recognized by all the generations that have followed him.

It’s this feeling-presence that sensation lays the foundation for; and when I truly begin to feel, then I truly begin to care. My relationship with the planet becomes a sobering function that draws me away from my own interests and my functional obsession with things human, and into the extraordinary chemistry and magnetism, the heavenly attraction of gravity, of the world around me.

Well, these are big thoughts, to be sure. But they emerge from the field of sensation effortlessly, because the field of sensation already contains them without my interference. I merely bring them to the doorstep so that those who wish to can see what dwells within this house we call a body. 

There’s an invitation here at the threshold, to enter and be well fed by the meal that is set on the table of Being. It’s a very different meal than the meals of money and power, sex and ordinary food — each one of which is a tiny and in its own right beautiful fragment of everything that there is, but just a very tiny fragment which needs to much better find its place in this confusion I have created for myself.

Sensation begins to bring all of the fragments together around a center of gravity: not the magnetism of attraction that pulls me from one thing to another, but the gentle and persistent weight of a solid Being that provides an anchor in life.

Ah, this Being is quite silent. 

It quiets the agitation and draws life together around it in the way that a mother collects her children in the evening, giving them a safe place to gather. It’s interesting that we automatically sense this action of drawing life together in the feminine, in the care of a duck for her ducklings or of a mother dog or cat who nurses her babies. Motherhood itself contains a gravity in it that draws us back to the truth. This is what the Virgin Mary represents in the Christian tradition; and she has her counterpart in others, such as Guanyin.

Notably, these female figures — which actually represent a living entity present in the body of the planet — emanate compassion, a togetherness of feeling. This is what sensation can begin to form a foundation for.

A pasture filled with grass may seem to be a strange place to try and find compassion. When we think of the parable of sheep and shepherds, it seems as though they are the main actors in the story; yet always, there is the grass. The wish of the shepherd is for the sheep to always find the good grass beneath their feet and eat there. 

This is the underlying premise of the parables, the unspoken foundation — the leaves of grass. They are the goodness given by God; they are like the lilies of the field that toil not, neither do they weep.

Yet they are clothed in glory, these simple blades of grass. 

And I think we should take care, lest we trample what was put there to eat for the good of our soul.

These are my thoughts for this morning.

May the spirit of Christ be with you today. Be well.

Warmly,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.