Zen, Yoga, Gurdjieff- perspectives on inner work: The Feeling-Basis of Existence

Wednesday, June 26, 2019

The Feeling-Basis of Existence— Notes on The Kingdom of Heaven, Part I

May 4, 2019

I’m back from China as of last night, and contemplating the Kingdom of Heaven within us.

One of the things that occurred to me last night on the plane was that everything Christ told us is true.

Of course, some of it has to be understood allegorically — literal interpretations of his words that connect them directly to material things too often turn them into crude statements that attempt to put the treasures in them up on earth where they are corrupted.

We can understand “earth” in this sense to be the external, the outer world. Christ speaks to us of our inner world and the way it is arranged; and the Kingdom of Heaven is the inner place of conscious awareness within which our life is received: a spiritual lens with the ability to see into not only our own hearts, but God’s.

God wants to be with us in every moment of our life and in every breath. It’s His most earnest wish.

This is a living force that flows into us, not one of the innumerable intellectual constructions we erect around our presumptuous meanings. It is the actual meaning of life, not the theoretical one. And our life does have an active meaning with a deeply emotional base, which forms everything in the end.

I know that there’s a great risk here of getting lost in analysis and, once again, theory, but it must be said that love is the basis of all being and all existence and that there is no other force of creation or of existence.

Materialistic rationalists don’t understand this; they would have love born of matter, whereas the absolute truth of the universe is that it is love before matter and all else.

Love is what begins and ends everything; it is the Alpha and Omega. And it is this feeling-basis of existence that human beings were designed to come into contact with.

Another thing that occurred to me last night on the plane was Christ’s great commandment (Matthew 22:35 – 40):

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.

There is no greater truth than this truth.

Wishing the best for you on this day,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.

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Recommendations and current reading list

Lee's current reading list (all recommended)

The Iceberg- Marion Coutts. This extraordinary book deserves to be read by every individual engaged in an inner search. The questions it raises about life, death, and relationship are framed by the authors responsibilities to her very young child and her dying husband. This is a book about real work in life, not esoteric theory.

Far From The Tree: Andrew Solomon. Parents, Children and the Search for Identity. Highly recommended.

Inner Yoga, Sri Anirvan—This extraordinary book is essential reading for any serious student of Gurdjieff or Yoga practice. Written at a level of both practical and philosophical discourse well above other contemporary work, Anirvan investigates the deep roots of Yoga practice, theory, and philosophy in a deeply sensitive series of insights. Of particular interest is the extraordinary and challenging piece on Buddhi and Buddhiyoga, which examines the questions of practice, life, and death with an acuity rarely encountered in other work of this nature.

Divine Love and Wisdom, Emmanuel Swedenborg. Swedenborg gives us a detailed report on Reality as received from higher sources, reflecting many Truths one would be wise to study carefully. Readers will be astounded by the extraordinary degree of correlation between Swedenborg and Ibn 'Arabi. Many fundamental principles introduced by Gurdjieff are also expounded on in fascinating detail by Swedenborg. All of Swedenborg's works are well worth reading.

The Divine Governance of the Human Kingdom, Ibn 'Arabi. Another real gem, this book ought to be read by every seeker on the spiritual path. If you can only find the time to read one book by Ibn 'Arabi, this ought to be the one. By turns lighthearted, serious, insightful, and ingenius, al 'Arabi introduces us to our inner government character by character, explains their relationships, and indicates how to bring them into a state of harmonious cooperation. Written with love, the book deftly manages to avoid being didactic, delivering instead a sensitive, poetic, and even romantic look at how to organize our inner Being.

The Bezels of Wisdom—Ibn al 'Arabi. A compendium of observations about the nature of "The Reality"—what al 'Arabi calls God— from a 13th century Sufi master. This towering work easily holds its own against—and is worthy of comparison to—13th century masterpieces from other major religious traditions such as Dogen's Shobogenzo and Meister Eckhart's sermons.

Also worthy: William C. Chittick's The Sufi Path of Knowledge, an extensive review of al Arabi's works.