Notes, January 13

 There's a tendency to engage in assertions about myself, who I am, what I am doing.

I suppose I need these in order to affirm myself, in order to inflect meaning. All the ordinary parts need meaning in exactly the way that they are ordinary — of an order of some kind. That's what the word means.

Yet there’s a part of myself that is different and doesn't need those things in order to understand what meaning is. It understands meaning and order organically, through the already existing arrangement of the molecules of my being and the energy that enters them and vibrates. 

At the root of all this order is not the certainty of order, but the probability of it: an uncertainty that leaves order flexible and able to discover itself in any way that is necessary in a given moment. It's necessary to understand a bit about quantum physics in order to understand this, but not too much. Just enough, perhaps, to understand that determination is indeterminate, that we don't know what will come next. Much of what has already taken place is a pretty good predictor — but not always. There are surprises in store.

I woke up this morning at about 5 AM and my Himalayan cat Dojo, sensing that I was awake, came over to visit with me while I lay in bed. He purrs very loudly and it was dark; all of our communication – which had a great deal of meaning in it — was conducted through vibration, through sound and through touch. There wasn't any need to define this or put an order to it. It was relationship in its purest form. There was nothing to think about; there was just understanding of togetherness. 

I wonder whether subatomic particles have snuggly moments like this together. They must, in a sense, because all relationships are built of them and it seems to me in this moment that the relationship I have with my cat has to have a bearing on, in fact be a reflection of, the entire nature of relationship and the potential around me.

Relationship is, in the end, the first and the final assertion. Relationship automatically implies responsibility, because relationship is about proximity and response. Things in the universe are built so that other things that are closer to them in space time respond in one way or another. That's a simple enough fact that doesn't have anything to do with my opinions about the world. So each little quanta (discreet unit, or package) of energy has responsibility – the ability to respond to others like it. What we call reality is built of that. 

Responsibility reaches all the way up the food chain to me. 

First, I can attempt to be responsible to myself. 

Then I can attempt to be responsible to my planetary being-duties, responsible to my place on this earth and its ecosystem. 

In doing that, of course, I become responsible to my community and others around me. 

In the end, of course, I attempt to become responsible to God, but that is a much bigger and more private question, in the sense that it is not my business to tell others to do this or, for that matter, really, quite how to do it. Only to ask the question, “how?” To describe potential approaches to it.

Ultimately, in a way that’s a bit difficult to explain in words, I’m responsible not to the certainty of what I determine or assert, but responsible to the uncertainty of everything. For me, this is a more interesting responsibility because it lies closer to the root of what takes place in the universe. It's better aligned with the way things actually are than my assumptions and assertions, many of which are based on things that are almost certainly false. 

That's the downside to having an imagination.

So I pause here for a moment at the end of these thoughts. 

The French clock is ticking. 

I breathe in. I breathe out. This takes place quite naturally because my body knows everything about this task and it doesn't need my mind or any interference in order to take care of it. There is a vibration of a higher order in every cell. That vibration carries elements of silent and receptive gratitude in it. 

Why that's the case, I can't say. I just know that it is because I can feel it. I don't need to explain why it's there.

This day is an entire new universe. Everything begins again. I will build the universe of this day from within as I speak and breathe, as I move and am still. 

There is an opportunity to go deeper today, to be a bit more present, to try to understand the fabric, the warp and weave and even the threads of this thing called love that’s so much bigger than the word itself, and leaves so much room for goodness to manifest itself within it.

These are my thoughts for this morning.

with warm regards,

Lee