The cycles of birth and death in nature fold into the timeless present as I sit on the bank overlooking the stream. When thought completely stops in undirected attention, nature and the universe throb within one.
There is no creator separate from creation. Monotheism is as immature as polytheism. So does it make any sense to talk about God at all? Perhaps, if there is something beyond the human brain, with which only the human brain (on this planet anyway) can consciously commune.
The park is quiet. There is a distinctly different atmosphere after the long holiday weekend that marks the end of summer and the beginning of fall.
The foliage still hangs full and green over the water, heaving with an intermittent breeze under a hot sun. There’s a quality of stillness and beauty that is in the very light and breath upon the land.
In complete awareness one comes upon a silence and emptiness that contains all space and time, energy and matter. Without space there is no being. Yet there is less and less space on earth and in the world. There are too many people and too much waste, and noise and violence have become normalized.
There is no such thing as being “actors grounded in real historical time,” as an artist wrote in a recent NYT piece. Historical time is a construct, like the individual self, and attention (not concentration) ‘deconstructs’ both, allowing life to unfold as the seamless movement in the present that it actually is.
“Just slow down” is therefore a half-truth. Ending time in undivided, undirected attention to what is, without and within, permits us to see and feel the whole, ever changing truth.
To feel that which people have sought since time immemorial, there has to be space and emptiness. Space in the sense of solitude, being alone, immersed in a bit of relatively unspoiled nature whenever possible. Emptiness in the sense of not thinking or doing anything, attending to every thought and emotion as they arise until there is nothing but the strangeness of being alive.
To come upon the intelligence that imbues the universe, the petty past has to effortlessly fall away in a gathering intensity of attention to the present. One has to completely let go of the projections of the mind as beliefs and ideas about God, whether from conditioning, society, or one’s own previous experience.
Is God synonymous with awareness, and if so, do human beings matter any more than mice or mackerel? Yes, since the human brain is the only brain on this planet capable of conscious awareness of the sacred. By stepping out of the increasingly dark shadow of the past and self-centered activity, we awaken an awareness within us that merges with the awareness within and beyond the universe.
When the mind is quiet and empty, and the heart is clear and open, we participate in the continuous unfolding of creation. Does that mean there a ‘divine intent’ that manifests through some, and potentially anyone? Perhaps, but it can only operate through the individual, not as ‘divine intervention.’
As things stand, only man’s darkness is operating effectively. Immanent intelligence didn’t “allow” the present hellishness of America and the world to happen. The intelligence of the universe can only operate through us, so whether we create hell or heaven is up to us. Which doesn’t mean we each create our own reality!
Does indivisible awareness precede the universe? To those who believe the universe is entirely random and mechanistic, the question sounds absurd. They’ve put forth the intellectually dishonest idea of the ‘multiverse,’ which holds that an infinite number of cosmic permutations exist in parallel to our universe.
Is there an intrinsic intent in the universe to evolve brains capable of awareness of Mind? One feels so, but once such a brain evolves, such as it has in humans, evolution has nothing more to do with it.
Psychologically and spiritually, there is no gradual development, and the very notion of civilizational progress keeps us enslaved to ‘historical time,’ and prevents the essential negation of meditation.
Martin LeFevre
1 comment
It’s approximately time someone, who intellectuals (lol) may concentrate to, found out that technological know-how is honestly the look at of how God did it. Science is not meant to replace or (as they might say) remove religion. Neither have to we’ve got our head within the sand and say the whole lot is a miracle and there’s no manner to understand it.