Laws of Being

Oct. 22, Hangzhou

I believe I’m immortal. 

Only by organic sensation of myself can I remember my mortality in any meaningful way. Yet that organic sensation is dependent on a certain kind of attention.

Without the attention, I forget that I am, and I forget that Being is my true center of gravity.

This morning (3:30 am) I'm in my hotel room in Hangzhou, wide awake in bed, studying the nature of the organic intelligence, which has been quite alive the last few mornings. 

This organic intelligence is truly the first important part of Being, since everything begins there; and the presence of God is always within it. When I am within the intelligence of my Being, God is never very far away. 

The inherent nature of this intelligence is that it receives; and what it receives before it receives any impressions of the outside world is the receiving of life itself. Life flows into us as a sacred energy; it has a quality that transcends the nature of ordinary existence, even though my ordinary existence is founded on it. To touch it from within, to breathe it in and out, to feel it coursing through one’s veins and enlivening the molecules of the body, is to know God not as some external force, not some abstract cosmic entity, but as who we are and what we are. The psychological, theological, and philosophical separation between God, Being, and this universe we live in dissolve in the midst of the actual manifestation of God’s presence within Being. 

Already this begins to sound psychological, theological, and philosophical; and I feel quite sure you may be taking it in that way. Yet rest assured that the presence of God is no such thing. It begins and ends with presence, not with theory; and as long as we are willing to begin and end with that same presence, we form a relationship with God that cannot be so easily disrupted.

There's a quietness within this receiving of life. It's utterly still, even though no other part of me is; and it has a depth of sensory capacity that exceeds my understanding. It has an understanding, in other words, of its own. Applying my own standards to it degrades its nature. It has an integrity that I lack.

This intelligence of presence that’s born within Being has ideas about the nature of life that I also don’t understand. I see that. 

I can see as I participate that it has a subtle capacity I’m unable to measure; it has wishes for my life that exceed my own ability to form a wish. I’m thereby required to trust it; and it engenders trust. At the same time, I begin to see how little of my ordinary self, with all its egoistic desires, can be trusted. 

Being has a law onto itself. All of the animal kingdom obeys that law, because it isn’t contaminated by the subjective opinions we humans occupy our experience of life with. We have, in most ways, removed ourselves from the rule of law and become lawless planetary beings, criminals. 

The nature of our criminality isn’t a human criminality, but a cosmological one. We have few understandings of laws of the cosmos or of nature except the mechanical ones, which we foolishly believe drive everything, as though cause and effect existed independent of intelligence and will. If we understood the law of Being correctly, we wouldn’t destroy everything around us in the way that mankind currently does. 

The difficulty is that no amount of philosophy or intellectualizing will bring me to a true inner understanding of that law. The only thing that can lead me to understand the law of Being — actually, the laws, because there are multiple laws, not just one — is a change in my actual inner state. Everything in my psychology has militated in such a way as to prevent this by all means possible. So although I dwell directly in the presence of the Lord, and have him as a direct neighbor in my Being, I often remain pathologically unable to sense His presence.

Organic intelligence, which can sense that presence, follows its own law. It doesn’t operate according to my whim, so — once again – I need to learn how to trust it. To allow it to exercise its intelligence according to its own understanding, which is superior to mine. If I trust, then it trusts me reciprocally, and I discover it has a greater power to inwardly form a connection to my ordinary being. 

A greater power than I thought; and I realize that I need to invest in this trust, because it’s the only thing that will bring me closer to this intimate inward relationship I wish to know so much more about.

As always, deepening this intimate relationship draws me deeper into the mystery of life and Being, and its fundamentally sacred nature.

A new series in the continuing essays on Metaphysical Humanism and the Laws of Being will start publishing in this space on January 11, 2020.

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

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.