Moments Organize

Soaked in caustic froth of rain
Moments organize themselves
Expanding like a silent stain
Emerging from a secret well

They slide toward what might have been
The glint of humor from an eye
Greedy, aching like a sin
A furtive glance from passerby

Fluid, with apparent skin
Moments organize themselves
Greedy, aching like a sin
Emerging from a secret well

They slide toward what might have been
Expanding like a silent stain
Fluid, with apparent skin
Stalwart, fortressed against pain

The glint of humor from an eye
Soaked in caustic froth of rain
Furtive glance from a passerby
Betrayed, yet heart aflame

E Pluribus Unum

The human mind has two primary modes of operation.  The first is to dissect and inspect.  It follows the path of fraction and fragmentation, peering downward at the infinite multiplication of oneness into many.  “The Tao created one, one gave birth to two, two to three, and three to the ten thousand things,” says Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching.

When we stop for just a moment, sit silently and watch the mind, it’s easy to detect this downward and discursive trend in action.  It grabs a thought, an idea, a story and begins to take it apart, examining the pieces individually and then breaking then down, breaking them down, breaking them down until it tires of the game and moves on to the next thought.  Like a raccoon in a fresh pile of garbage, it turns the pieces over, smells, them, washes them, tastes them, and then drops one to pick up another.  Modern scientific inquiry is often just a disciplined extension of this process, forcing the mind to stay focused on one thing and keep breaking it down in a search for the meaning that lies at its heart.

The alternative is an upward trending, unifying course that moves from the many toward the One.  We can trace the path from fragment to whole, which is a fragment of another whole, which is a fragment of another whole, and so on in an ascending dance toward the Ultimate Reality that encapsulates all.  In this process we become unified with each other, rather than separated.  We become unified with the natural world, rather than alienated.  All divisive tendencies inherent to politics, religion, morality dissolve as we climb of out the experience of the multitude, seething with competition and self-protection, toward the experience of oneness.

When our conscious attention is directed downward toward the many, we are pulled by the senses outward, away from our depth and wholeness.  The magnetic force of desire is activated and it draws us out, beckoning and cajoling.  An awful implacable yearning engulfs us and grows stronger the more we acquiesce.  Soon the only answer is to mollify the pain with substances that artificially create a sense of peace and meaning in our lives.  We are starving, aching, and numbing the pain with artifice. But when the numbing wears off the agony burns even more intensely, driving a cycle of insatiability that leads us further and further down toward separation and isolation.

But when we willfully redirect the flow of our attention inward and upward and toward the One, we open to a source of fulfillment and purpose that banishes the pain.  We initiate an ascending motion of consciousness that progressively opens the floodgates of our soul, and our basic understanding of who we are and what we are doing in this strange and complex universe transforms.  We draw strength from identification with the One, limitless and boundless and magnificent.  We are no longer seeking to squeeze water from a stone, but we have tapped the main line and nothing is unattainable or missing.  Isolation ends.  Death collapses under the weight of cosmic truth.  Existence is redefined.

“There are, says the Gita, two possibilities of the action of the intelligent will.  It may take its downward and outward orientation towards a discursive action of the perceptions and the will in the triple play of Prakriti, or it may take its upward and inward orientation towards a settled peace and equality in the calm and immutable purity of the conscious silent soul no longer subject to the distractions of Nature.” – Sri Aurobindo

Mind and Heart

 

In the “modern’ human, a gap persists between the rational mind and the intuitive and devotional heart.  On the one side, the mind seeks objectivity, seeks verifiable facts.  But it has been imprisoned by the inviolable laws of the scientific religion.  Science’s dogma hems in discerning rationality, drawing a line around what is fair game and what is off limits.

On the other side are the subjective inner experiences of the intuitive heart, the cosmic and psychic experiences that pass through all human experience, though depending on our degree of allegiance to the religion of objectivity we may consider them or discard them without a second glance.  These experiences, separated as they are from the discerning light of the mind, remain for most of us vague, abstract, and shaky.  For when we open ourselves to receive information from the vast array of cosmic forces that populate our universe, we are opening not only to beings and forces that support our growth and love us without end, but to forces and beings on the opposite side of the spectrum and everything in between.  So many, perhaps even all who have sought to explore these inner realms have at some point followed an errant spark down a dark tunnel unwittingly.

Our subjective experience is often a blind groping, hoping that the arm we grasp as guide through the fog supports our best interest.  And when it does not, when we awake as if from a dream to find ourselves lost and far from home, our natural inclination is to eschew the entire endeavor, paint the whole experience as fantasy and head for the surface world where only verifiable material truths are real.

But science, the religion of the mind, even as it pricks and probes and injects and dissects subjective experience, cannot ever really appreciate or understand it.  For when it cuts the experience into pieces, crushes it with mortar and pestle, extracts its nectar and refrigerates it for future investigation, it destroys the essence.  It kills that which it seeks to know, and so it is forever on the outside looking in, theorizing and speculating about the implications of its observations.

Science has begun to come up against its limitations, to see the walls of its self-imposed prison and understand that it is trapped.  But it has yet to find a way out, because the way out is to go within to a realm that it has forbidden and cast away.  Some scientists experiment on the cutting edge, seeking explanation for phenomena that stand in contrast to the immutable laws of science.  But even they tread a tightrope between being mocked as quacks for going to far, or missing their aim by not going far enough.  Many plumb the depths but only with a dive tank that pumps their lungs with the dogmatic vapors of ‘reason’.

It is only by eschewing all presumptions and rigid rules, only by opening fully to the realm of possibility, and diving off of the precipice carrying only the sword of discernment but no shield, no armor, nothing that would block the experience of complete immersion in the inner realm that science will finally achieve its age-old aim of uniting all theories into one cosmic and overarching Truth.

Trust

Trust the seeds of Cosmic Truth that have been sewn into your soul.
Trust the raging fire of Love that burns inside you,
the flames that rely upon Life alone from their fuel.
You have been created with a purpose.
A mission  lies buried within the chambers of your heart.
It is shrouded, hidden by the apparent complexities of material life,
ignored for fear that it is not real, a product of your imagination.
It is disguised as a hopeless emptiness.
Only you know the voice of this purpose,
only you can rediscover the long-lost reason for your existence.
And though the journey is arduous and the obstacles many,
your arrival is imminent:
It has been written in the stars.

“For it is the time for the progressive revelation of the power of Love, and all help is given to those who have cast off fear sufficiently to allow something new, even something half-understood to enter their awareness.”
-from Teaching the Heart to Sing, by Julie Redstone

Written in the Stars

Trust the seeds of cosmic truth that have been planted in your soul.  Trust the raging fire of Love that burns inside you, the flames that rely upon Life alone for their fuel.  You have been created with a purpose:  A mission that lies buried within the chambers of your heart.  It is shrouded, hidden by the apparent complexities of material life, ignored for fear that it is not real – a product of your imagination.  It is disguised as a hopeless emptiness.  Only you know the voice of this purpose, and only you can rediscover the long-lost reason for your existence.  Although the journey is arduous and the obstacles many, your arrival is imminent:  It has been written in the stars.