Love in the age of Covid19, part IV: Being is the meaning

Statue of Ur-Ningirsu, detail

Circa 3110 BC

Photograph from the Louvre

Over the last week or so, I’ve received a number of pieces from various friends that were written by people who claim to "speak for" the virus, so to speak. 

In these pieces, the virus (who speaks surprisingly good English, considering it’s a nucleic acid) explains how it has actually arrived on the planet to help us, by calling attention to how we are trashing our environment, how poorly we are treating each other, and so on. In some of the other pieces, it's an author saying more or less the same thing — channeling the virus so that we can understand it.

I have nothing personal against these pieces, and I'm not trying to make fun of them. They’re touching, but a bit too romantic for me. They project a sense of cosmic adventure that correctly identifies many of our human deficiencies, and convey an overall sense that we ought to do better. Nothing essentially wrong with that, I’d say; although telling all the folks whose relatives die and whose livelihoods are destroyed by the virus that it’s ”for their own good” and a loving action does run the significant risk of sounding snotty, and is unintentionally but grossly disrespectful of human suffering. 

Suffering may be good for us and build character, even spiritual growth, true; but I’ve never seen anyone set out to intentionally seek it because of its inherent goodness. That’s rare. Besides, as Christ says, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. (Matthew 6:34.) Enough suffering comes to us naturally without the need to invent more of it on our own. When it does, respect it. Don’t reformulate its nature by invoking metaphysics; accept.

I was awake last night in the middle of the night for about an hour, sensing this inexplicable, yet insistent, Being in the dark and pondering such things. 

What I want to speak about this morning as a consequence of my pondering is the question of meaning and how we deal with it. I recently completed a book called Metaphysical Humanism, which is an exploration of why things mean anything at all in the first place; so I've been doing a lot of thinking about the subject. What the essays by the virus or about the meaning of the virus evoke for me is our urge to read meaning into everything we can; and, of course, our equal habit of writing meaning into the things around us. (I myself, of course, am guilty as charged. Mea culpa.) The essays by and about the virus’ metaphysically positive nature raise questions for me once again about meaning.

One of the points that Metaphysical Humanism makes, although perhaps it doesn't state it outright, is that meaning is invested in and begins in Being, rather than the other way around. That is to say, put in the simplest of terms, Being doesn’t mean. Meaning is. Or, to turn it into an imperative, Be, don’t mean. (And, by the way, its corollary imperative: don't be mean.)

Being is the meaning. Everything begins by Being; and there’s an intellectual, and emotional, and a material component within our Being, gifted through these three intelligences—intellect, feeling, sensation—directly capable of perceiving Being first, before our intellectual parts begin to interfere with Being and interpret it. If these organs within us are properly developed, Being is our primary mode, experience, and understanding of existence; and we begin to discover that the meaning we read out of and write into our lives is a secondary arising. It's a subset of Being, not the primary component.

Being, as I have said for almost two decades now, rests within a fundament of Love, out of which it is created. Our attempts to understand this will always fall woefully short, because that Love is infinite in its being and infinite in its capacity. We are extremely tiny organisms, who have by design and effort managed to concentrate a tiny bit of that Love around a gravitational focus of consciousness. We call these reassembled fragments of love our lives; and we live our lives forward into mystery. (Credits to Stewart Kauffman’s fine book Reinventing the Sacred for that phrase. Another reference worth considering is Jeanne de Salzmann’s The Reality of Being, which recapitulates her struggle with the exquisite accuracy of this deeply inward vision of life.)

Yet in the end we cannot read our way into understanding. Our understanding of Being isn't going to come out of books – or this essay. 

It comes out of our engagement with and relationship to life as it takes place. This is a highly unpredictable and messy place, this life experience, and it stubbornly refuses to conform to our interpretations or our expectations. Even the virus knows that.

I'm not arguing that we shouldn't impart meaning to life; nor am I saying that we shouldn't write heartfelt essays in an attempt to interpret it. Not at all. 

What I’m saying is that we begin in Love and Being, not in explanations and meaning. 

If we work inwardly to inhabit Love and Being first, explanations and meaning arise naturally, not through the artifices of our intelligence and craft. The first time one encounters this truth inwardly as truth—not as a construction of truths, which is a different animal entirely— it’s surprising and dramatic.

Who knew?

Eventually we learn that this experience, so mysterious and inexplicable, is what has always been referred to by humanity as the sacred.

Embedded in that mystery of Being is what Love is.

May your heart be close to God, 

and God close to your heart.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.