What mountains have you climbed lately?

 

Notes from early January

There comes a moment when one realizes that there’s no real escape from one's limitations, and this can become quite interesting. I spend much of life dreaming about my limitations. How I’ll overcome them, how I actually have power and can control things. It's not just in me that this takes place; the whole society I live in is childishly obsessed with the idea of superheroes, human beings who have magical powers, persons who overcome impossible odds and exhibit immortality of one kind or another. Our movies are full of it. These people with these great superpowers are at the same time selfish, weak, and silly most of the time. 

The contradictions are never examined.

All of this creates an influence in which I begin to dream that I have no limitations. This inner condition, which humanity shares, leaks out into society and creates all kinds of horrifying results.

But in fact what I'm interested in now is my own limitations, and the facts. The fact is that I'm a tiny creature living a brief, tiny life, which is even smaller than usual due to isolation. It reminds me of the way my teacher Betty said, “life is so daily." That is to say, it’s a small, routine, and mostly predictable thing, for the most part, that repeats itself over and over. I'm occasionally amused by the idea of helpless hamsters, trapped in cages, running on a wheel in place, but my life is very much like this as well. No matter what we do we can't escape the limitation of our own lives. The limitations of this body, of this moment. These are the facts.

If I accept the limitations of where I am and what is true, however, and I spend a bit less time dreaming, I begin to see that every single thing in me could be of interest if I had a good attention to it. The action, this inner action, which is a gentle gesture of attention, calls me to a kind of humility as I accept my circumstances. In the midst of my nothingness, I finally have the opportunity to be something – to have being. The gift of limitation is the ability to encounter being.

 And that can strangely overcome limitation in a certain way.

***

The substance of ourselves, the fact of what we actually are — as opposed to our dreams — needs to become more concentrated. This only happens through attention and sensation. It's a form of alchemy. Furthermore, being a human being is a fluid condition. If I freeze it, it ceases to be; so I have to discover a way to inhabit the fluidity. The fluidity of this present moment. The moment I begin to define it and criticize it, I’ve already forgotten to inhabit it.

Can I accept my limitations with grace?

***

The question is a nearly constant one: why don't I stay here? Why do my thoughts occupy me so much and take me away from “work”—whatever I think that means?

If you have this question, I will speak to it for you, rather than speaking of myself, although I’m no different.

You don't have a good attention in the body, without tension. You don't have something active, some thing alive in the body and in sensation which you are in a relationship with. You’re wrapped up in your psychology, in your mind. You can’t do much inner work there.

The energy needed for this attention isn't psychological. That's a different kind of energy. It's not that psychology isn't important in the work, but the point is that this kind of energy is useless in terms of coming into a relationship with the body, with sensation, with the foundation of being. There is a higher energy available. You need to learn about it, to come into a better relationship with it, to let it inwardly form what is needed. 

Dismiss each word, and sense instead.

So why are we so attracted to your life and all the things that happen in it? Why does it have such a grip on the imagination and constantly drag us back into it instead of staying present and closer to the inner work which are supposed to be a constant companion in daily life?

Only being can be real. Everything else has to become an activity in relationship to it — an accessory. 

We cannot make being an accessory.

with warm regards,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola magazine.