Representatives within Being, part II

 I’d like to say a bit more about this idea of being representatives within Being.

We’re caught in a world of confusing influences. Outward circumstances pull us every which way. It’s difficult to keep focused on honoring existence, on what ought to be done. I need the gravitational force of Grace within me to help keep me centered and focused on my responsibilities, which always ought to be to God and thoughts of God first. If everything in me has a center of gravity that begins with a relationship with God — an inner relationship with the Grace that arrives that starts every moment, right now— then I remember my responsibility.

 When we speak about “self remembering” and ”self-knowledge,” we often think that this is remembering myself and knowing who I am, knowing myself. Yet it would be more helpful if we understood these terms from the perspective that the "self" in question is God. 

It isn’t my self I'm remembering; if I remember rightly, what I remember is that Being which creates me, not myself. 

That Being is a powerful creative force that gathers my existence together at the point of my intelligence and consciousness. “I” oversee that moment of the creation of Being and inhabit it, but it's not my own property. If I understand my role correctly, I'm like a supervisor hired to oversee a vast factory which manufactures all kinds of miraculous things, who never owns it and has to treat every employee and product that is manufactured as precious. Some of the parables about vineyards and servants are about this question, phrased in terms appropriate to the times in which they were told.

Anyway, this vast factory is what I call my life. When I remember myself, if that ever happens, what I remember first isn’t that what Lee does, or how important and wonderful he is (I'm not in the least important and I’m certainly not wonderful) but the extraordinary, inherent, living, and active value of this quality called Being within me, which through its own eternal Grace (Grace outside of time) already causes me to Be. 

I inhabit a demand and a responsibility from that instant forward (that is, within all instants.) That responsibility is forever present; it’s my duty to bring myself into alignment with it, to sense it.

When I speak of extraordinary, inherent, living, and active value, I think these are the four qualities vital to an understanding of life. Being is extraordinary: it inhabits the order (the order) of this level, but it comes from a level much higher than this. It is inherent because the quality of Being penetrates all the other levels of the universe along with this one, in quality and intensity according to its concentration. There is nothing without Being.  It is living because it is constantly growing and changing and learning about itself.  It is active because it is imbued with that quality called agency, which cannot be separated the conferring of responsibility. It is this last quality of being active that endows Being with intelligence, purpose, and direction.

 I find it helpful, while inhabiting the inward flow of Being, to remind myself as often as I can of these principles, not by using the words for them, but through the active sensation of Grace which automatically aligns Being in such a way that the qualities are remembered — wordlessly. They have to be embodied without the words, inhabited as a garment. This helps to protect me from the elements, keep me warm, and instill a sense of gratitude for the fact that I am given gifts of life and Being, clothed in the garment of God’s love, and can make an effort to give thanks for it.

May your heart be close to God, 

and God close to your heart.
Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.