“Humility consists in knowing that in what we call ‘I’ there is no source of energy by which we can rise. Everything without exception which is of value in me comes from somewhere other than myself, not as a gift but as a loan which must be ceaselessly renewed. Everything without exception which is in me is absolutely valueless; and among the gifts which have come to me from elsewhere, everything which I appropriate becomes valueless immediately as I do so.”
I’m not so interested in my sensation, really, because I don’t truly understand its potential.
Everything that I think I know about it is already false from the beginning; for example, I think I am in charge of something here, rather than just Being which comes into relationship with it.
I can’t be too precious about it either. I can’t walk around all day long thinking I’m going to somehow break my work. I drop it all day long anyway.
I need to simply ask, what is my relationship with myself right now?
Not overthink it, but just experience where I am. Sensation can help me understand that life is a whole thing.
Why am I trying this? Why do I do this? I need to see how theoretical I am. Where is the force that grounds thinking and challenges it to acquire a different quality? The effort has to begin with something real. I can’t start from imagination and expect the real to just wander in somewhere.
If I think I know what the result is or should be, already, I limit myself.
I can’t work forwards or backwards from where I am. I need to just work from where I am.
How is my work when it becomes my own and isn’t so much under external influences?
These are various notes I wrote to myself over the last few days. As always, the question of why people don’t understand sensation and mistake the quite ordinary sense of the body, however enhanced, as organic sensation is in front of me.
The difficulty is with the inflow. If the higher energy is not always flowing in, and I am not always in relationship with it, I lose my Being immediately and with it my organic sensation ceases to exist.
For most, this is normal, and they want to understand why. Or at least, those who understand what organic sensation of Being is want to understand it. Yet there's no true understanding of organic sensation unless it's permanent. This changes the nature of individuality. So the wish to understand remains separated from understanding itself, because the sensation isn’t permanent.
Why?
I'm dependent upon the inflow of a higher energy if I wish to work. I must submit to this force. The mistake that I constantly make is that I think the force is mine and that I can do this and that. I don’t see that all of the force and strength I draw from for my work comes from the relationship with this higher force.
Once I see this, perhaps something can change. Perhaps I will begin to act serious about my work and a little less seriously about the external circumstances of life. Until then, I will have it the other way around; I think that by acting seriously in an external way, I'll be serious. This is sheer foolishness. I can only be serious inside, where it matters. Outside, not so much. It’s important to be alive, to laugh and have a good time. This is not contradictory to work.
Seeing my dependency changes the ego as well. It is a different creature when it sees that what it needs does not belong to it and can’t be taken. It begins to learn respect.
I remember, many years ago my teacher Betty Brown said to me, “enjoy your life.” This was said in the midst of instructions, very specific ones, to work. Both things go together. They aren't contradictory. Nothing in life I do has to be changed. My work has to be added to it. Everything I subtract from life in the hope of working will ultimately end up being a loss.
This is a lesson hard won.
Flagellation will not drive the soul into heaven.
May you be well within today.
Lee
Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.
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