The Unknown in Being

Hudson River, late December 2019

Jan 5, 2020.

There's an energy that flows into the soul from a higher level. 

This energy penetrates the deepest parts of a human being, and is collected in the spiritual center of Being. The presence of God is directly sensed through this energy, creating a wish to be in relationship with creation itself.

This question of being in relationship with creation itself is of course no different than being in relationship with God, because all we can know of God lies within creation. We're unable to think our way past creation, and are hence limited. This means we know, indeed, very little if anything of God; yet even that very little can become everything, if it's experienced.

This knowing I speak of is the knowing of my own nothingness and nothingness in general. That's to say, it consists of my unknowing and ignorance. It isn't, however, a theoretical or philosophical unknowing and ignorance; and the unknowing and ignorance isn't an unknowing and ignorance of words and ideas. It's an unknowing of Being, which is an organic phenomenon that affects the feeling and the body as much as the mind. 

Being becomes known in the unknown. It’s the mystery of Being itself that penetrates all of the parts in a living relationship. This is the substantial and physical action of Grace and Mercy within Being. These are mysteries that simply must be experienced in order to appreciate them.

I was explaining to my wife earlier today that the experience of this Being, this unknown territory which exists within as I live—even in the most ordinary actions of driving to the grocery store and getting gas—produces a deep feeling of sorrow that resides in the cells. We clever modern humans think that our intelligence is somehow in our brain or our mind, but this isn’t true. Our intelligence — which is actually the intelligence of God, not our own intelligence – is in all of us as a whole thing, not some localized product of a bunch of neural networks in the form of meat. The original manifestation of presence and Being, the experience of the spiritual within life, takes place in the cells. It takes place in the molecules. The intelligence arises there and builds itself into a whole creature. It begins undivided but differentiated; it re-creates itself in the wholeness of my Being.

This re-creation of wholeness, this experience of being, brings a sorrow which lives in the molecules of Being. It's an ineffable nostalgia, a mysterious sorrow which cannot be explained. It settles itself in a fine layer over the landscape of life, gently covering creation as it is perceived. My molecules aren't tiny creatures with no awareness. They have feelings. They equally have thoughts, which I might even catch an echo of if I pay close attention to them.

My own feeling is just a summary of the way my molecules feel. I know this is true through sickness and disease, but it is equally true in an emotional and intellectual sense, in every moment. 

To encounter it directly is to realize how finally textured Being is—

how granular its nature—

how delicately incremental the accretion of the fineness of Being actually is.

Today, may your heart be very close to God, 

and God very close to your heart.

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.