May 21.
This May, I’ve taken to writing prayers first thing in the morning, because the morning seems to be the moment when everything begins again.
The moment where I know nothing, despite the fullness of this life.
The moment when I myself am resurrected into the day that is a gift from a higher place and a giving that comes from a higher intelligence than anything I can know.
The more deeply I understand the relationship that I have with the sun and what it brings to the planet, the more called I am to a relationship with my fellow human beings. The more deeply I'm called to both of those relationships — one from the level above me, one lived horizontally — the more I understand how everything in it depends on the level below me, which provides the organic and harmonic support for relationship above it.
The sun is God's representative; she brings us a good and even great food; and there is no theory in Gurdjieff’s solioonensius, which is a fact and not some set of ideas.
Yet the relationship that it cultivates, one of the beauty of the world and the necessary duty of worship, also opens the door to my inability. I begin with relationship on this level, relationship with my fellow human being, by seeing how I fail in it.
I remember that the signature feature when I woke up nearly 20 years ago changed inside was that I saw how I had never understood relationship. This may sound like a minor thing; but it’s in fact a life-changing event that shatters every assumption and forces a reassessment of Being itself. All of that centered, of course, around the event where the Virgin Mary touched me; and this great reordering that was demanded — nay, not even demanded, but commanded — was all aimed at a new education in relationship that is still taking place.
In the delusion of our ego, we so firmly believe that we understand relationship. Yet a human being on their own understands almost nothing of relationship; and it’s only through the action of God's grace and the food that it provides, combined with a firm rooting in the understory of molecular being, that anyone can begin to embark on a path that might — I stress that word, might — lead to the beginning, and only the very beginning, of an understanding of relationship.
Our understanding of relationship is forever complicated by the intense, swirling cloud of very dense impressions of personality, which are thick and difficult to cut through and have an insistence born of their opacity. This particulate maelstrom will always be with me as it is with everyone, and since we live in it, we consider it to be an ordinary condition. Even the least separation from it reveals it as anything but; and yet if I reach the edge of the storm and leave it for a moment, the world apart from it—the stillness— seems disturbing and unfamiliar; and before you know it I turn my face back towards what is, in essence, and for all intents and purposes, hell.
Yet we’re called out of that hell; the voices of angels echo in it and perhaps we can turn our heads in that direction. After all, love wants to teach us about relationship and call us out of the intensity of our self – inflection.
But can I listen?
In order to do so, a revolution must take place, and as I am, I’m part of the bureaucracy. I am the authorities; I am the police, I am even the Gestapo. I myself have established the very regime I want to topple.
The sun sends help. No enemy can thrive in the light of the good and of God; ultimately, they must all shrink back into the cracks of darkness in which they better dwell. They have a place there; they become a binder for the goodness that can become whole in Being. In order to serve in that way, however, they have to be cement, crystallized factors, and not the liquid that they prefer to be which creeps into every element of my agency.
Increasingly, I see that life becomes a choice between the active and intelligent wish for relationship with others and the force of my own desire. This can be seen not only in the broad strokes of the brush, but in the tiny details filled in with the fine tip of the crowquill pen. By this I mean the daily instants of action and interaction. My desires here are like little children; my wish for others is the place where the adolescents and the adults enter. I recognize the authority now; and yet the child does not want to grow so much.
By repeated action of prayer and submission, despite my inattention, I return to the moment of compassion, where the inflow teaches me. It is far more generous than my narrow way of seeing; far more patient with me than I am with myself, far more loving than I can be. I should listen; I should listen. It is my duty, in fact, to hear the call of this truth. This is why I was put on the planet.
Hopefully today I can attend to that responsibly.
God Bless, and be well.
Warmly,
Lee
Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.