This Silent Agency, Part III: To Grown Human

The Apocalypse Tapestries, Angers

Photograph by the author

 September 7, continued

The difficulty that we all have with life is that we have no inner understanding of what life is. 

We think we have an inner understanding, but what we have is a confused outer understanding that dominates what we encounter inwardly. We're inwardly enslaved by our outer manifestations. This is a true form of slavery that mimics real outward slavery in every way.

The point of inner development is to free ourselves not from the material world, or its encumbrances, but our own slavery to our outer being. When I speak about being free, it's exactly this inner slavery that I want to be free of. My inner life has the capacity for a silent agency that can sense the love and compassion at the root of all life; and yet it's enslaved and forced to serve my outward being, which is confused and has no sense at all of how real being functions.

One can't rely on the mystics alone for advice on how to acquire real being. One can see from a close reading of Hadewijch’s visions how confusing and difficult to absorb they are; one can extract specific meanings here and there, but rapture alone does not define a life or what it consists of. One needs to invest oneself not in dreams of divinity, but in the facts of one's humanity; and even Hadewijch herself, in her letters, repeatedly brings this point up.

My aim in life is to grow human; to discover what it means to be human in the deepest and most essential sense. I can't do this without being fully and wholly man, before I ever dream of being anything else. If there even is anything else, it must be rooted in this soil, for there is no other place for it to exist. My first questions, in other words, must not be where God is and what God is and so on, but where I am and what I am. 

What is this thing called a human being? Why do I call it human? And what is its Being?

 All of the inward flow of divine influence exists to support investigations into these two questions; because if one does not understand them first (know thyself) one can’t understand anything. 

 While the cosmological scale of this discussion this morning may seem overwhelmingly huge (we have, by way of Hadewijch, already dragged in black holes and the like) the questions that it's directed at are always overwhelmingly intimate. 

The questions come down to our immediate perception of the moment, our harmonic alignment with it, our sensitivity to it. 

As I've mentioned before, our molecules themselves need to have an active and sensible (consciously sensed)  harmonic alignment with the events of our lives, and the thread of higher energy that inwardly forms us, in order for us to begin to understand what this sensitivity is.  This is the whole meaning behind the name of Gurdjieff’s Institute: the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. 

Just as we can’t rely on the mystics, we can’t rely on the technical. Yes, we may need the input from mystics to develop an intuitive vision of our possibilities; yes, we may also need the technical for exercises and practical demonstrations of them. 

But we need, above all else, our instinct and the very essence of our humanity itself — an essence that defies specific description,  but reposes in eternal silence — in order to encounter harmonious being. 

I need to throw out the visions, throw out the books, and throw out the exercises. 

What I must do is live, and live with a gentle and intense focus of perception that aligns itself with the forces I encounter, both inside and outside. 

That perception must be one that does not make up its mind beforehand, but rests within as an objective instrument awaiting what arrives.

 I have to wrap this set of thoughts up this morning, because I have responsibilities to others that need to be attended to. 

May your heart be close to God, 
and God close to your heart.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.