June 3 2021
Perhaps there’s a certain irony in “I am.”
Perhaps the whole idea of saying “I am”is a subtle part of a concealed agenda to change the narrative in ways that aren’t properly understood.
When I say, “I am,” I begin a narrative. “I am this. I am that.” I am what I think, what I feel, what I sense.
Imagine if, on the other hand, if what I said was, “this is I”?
“This is I” is the perspective of the observer rather than the narrator.
If I begin right here, right now, with nothing else added, I see myself as I am.
This formulation occurs to me because of the nature of mind and the way it perpetually creates narrative. Last night, I jotted a note to myself which said, the first step in understanding the mind is to stop thinking about the mind. Our difficulty with the intellect is that it rules everything and we apply its filter everywhere. To stop thinking about it can be quite useful.
I find myself between ideas and activity. Here I am; I have thoughts, and things are happening. Yet I’m not trying to think or to do. Instead I'm looking for the question that lies between the ideas in the activity.
Where am I?
What is happening?
There is no plan.
I do this breathlessly, as though I were waiting for an answer important enough that there’s a sense of urgency to it. Of course I’m breathing — don’t be silly, you! But there is a delicate, exquisitely poised moment of awareness within the breath that has an unscripted expectation in it: the sense that something very important will arise at any instant, and that I need to be attentive towards it.
—Perhaps it is already arising, right here and right now!
So I don’t worry about thinking; I’m just here. Thoughts are a side show I don’t need to crack the door open on; I can hear their noise, but it’s not what I came for.
Somewhere here, between ideas and activity, there’s a finer energy that I come into relationship with. I don’t know anything about this energy; I don’t make it, it doesn’t belong to me.
Yet it creates me; in its very vibration itself I know that it is life and that I receive it and that everything springs forth from it. So here I am, with this opportunity to participate very directly in life in a way that has nothing to do with my narratives and everything to do with my Being. In this enterprise, I send everything that isn’t useful to the devil.
Equally, in this enterprise, my sensation becomes a constant companion, quite naturally there — without any direction, without any forcing.
I don’t have a sensation. The sensation has me.
I don’t have feelings. The feelings have me.
In the same way that this whole mind of Being belongs to the whole mind of Being within the planet, each of my parts belongs to that same wholeness of mind. So I don’t have life; life has me. It's vibrant; it is animated. Life on this planet is a comprehensive vessel which effortlessly contains my Being along with all the other Beings in it. I’m just a participant.
The help comes from above. I’m just here. I don’t have any wrong energy in me. The energy that’s produced is generally quite right. The life of the organism knows quite well how to produce an appropriate energy. It’s my relationship to it that’s not harmonious. So I need to attend to that.
To have a quite good attention, to be poised between ideas and activity, right here, right now. To be objectively sensitive and receptive to that finer energy.
It has all kinds of potential I’m not measuring if I don’t attend.
Be well today.
Warmly,
Lee
Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.
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