Some notes from March 6-8

Today's solar event has been useful for inner work. 

My Whole Life

Whatever state I’m in—partial, less partial, fragmented, upset, inwardly still—I'm here right now with 100% of life. 

So as I examine this active question of my Being, I always have to begin from right here and right now.

There’s no part of my life that’s happening elsewhere under a different set of conditions. No part of life that isn’t available to me now as a part of my investigation—my effort to see who I am and where I am. 

So everything that’s necessary is here. There isn’t anything that’s missing. If I torture myself with thoughts that I’m insufficient—that the current conditions are insufficient, and so on—I miss the availability of the wholeness of my Being, which is inviting me to inhabit it.

Perhaps there are indeed qualities in me that are lacking, but the active experience of life which allows me to see them isn’t. I can’t approach my life with the idea that I’m not good enough to at least live it honorably.

Above all, within this experience of life, I need to become responsible to discover what my inner work means. To discover itself for myself, without reference to all the books and philosophies. To discover the molecular properties of my inner Being, their rate of communal vibration. This is a physical and an emotional investigation, not a mental one. I can permit myself to leave all the mental stuff behind. Really I can. It’s an impediment.

Instead I’m looking inward into a relationship that consists of a communal vibration. A vibration that arises at the ground level of my being, from which all of my presence emanates.

It’s this rate of communal vibration I’m interested in. I can invest in it anywhere, at any time, as the foundation of an investigative tool that does not rely on thoughts our theories to make its points or glean its meanings. It’s an intelligence bereft of intellectual thought; it thinks through simple, direct impressions of my life itself as it’s lived, here within the breathing and the sensation.

Payment through Relationship

Every instance of Being is paid for through relationship. 

Relationship is a currency; a means of an exchange of valuations. I need to come to and respect the wholeness of my Being as I am in order to begin this exchange. 

It demands a certain level of responsibility. It costs me something.

There isn’t any Being without relationship, so I need to learn how to pay for it. 

***

Nothingness is an emotional Grace

Humility is an essential condition given as Grace. It’s part of real feeling; higher feeling. 

I can’t come to an inner impression of humility unless it’s sent, it’s given. Most of what I think is humble consists of a theory about humility, a thought about it. An ordinary emotional sentiment that tells me I ought to feel humility because of this, that or the other thing.

Yet real humility, as I know it, only arrives from an inner seeing that arises from contact with a higher energy. When that Grace is sent, I can take in a much clearer impression of my own nothingness. A real impression—not the ersatz ones I flatter myself with when I just think about this idea. 

Nothingness is an emotional Grace.

When humility arises from this, that or the other thing, it’s artificial. Real humility has no point of origin; it's universal, a property of God’s own Being, a particle of His Endlessness. 

It's also a kind of food, which one might liken to manna: a substance found in the midst of ordinary life (the desert) which nourishes. 

***

Be yourself

In inner work, one has to become what one is, not what others think one should be. 

It reminds me of my teacher Betty Brown, who always had suspicions of organizations and their power-possessing beings. She saw them as forms—and, like all forms, something we need to go beyond.

“Don’t ask me to lead—I may not lead. Don’t ask me to follow—I may not follow,” she said. She emphatically wished for her pupils to be themselves... not what others made of them. 

Don’t be what others expect you to be. And don’t let them intimidate you. Set the highest possible standard within, and then Be yourself.

***

Inner energy

It’s helpful to understand that the energy needs to be harmonically dispersed throughout the entire body in a balanced manner. It’s okay (and quite normal) to receive energy in specific locations, such as the solar plexus, but it’s necessary to collect and evenly distribute it throughout one’s entire Being, so that all of the cells eventually acquire compatible rates of vibration.

The rate of vibration between different cells and different groups of cells needs to become harmonized. The disharmony between such rates is one source of inner tension, and when energy becomes too concentrated in one part (for example, the spine) it produces interesting effects but nonetheless disharmonizes the action of energy in the rest of Being. So concentrating too much on the action of individual chakras can actually produce the opposite of an intended aim to balance the system.

Our aim must be always and everywhere to distribute energy evenly within Being, balance the parts and the functions, and bring inner energies into a harmonic community. 

Wishing the best for you today,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.