Higher Still

It did not come through the eyes, since it has no color; nor by the ears since it makes no noise; nor through the nostrils, since it doesn’t mingle with the air; nor by the throat, neither, for it cannot be eaten or drunk. Nor did I discover it by touch, since it is impalpable.

I rose above myself and found the Word was higher still. Curious to explore, I went down into my depths, and found in the same way that it was deeper still. I looked outside myself and saw that it was outside all that was outside of me. I looked within and saw it was more inward than I.

I then recognized as truth what I had read; that in it we have Life, Motion and Being.

~ St. Bernard of Clairvaux

 My favorite texts seem to grab me by the throat to remind me of everything that I can never know. I don’t know why this relieves me, but it does.

All that I do not know. All that I will never know.  Everything that is higher, deeper, wider, bigger, smaller, hidden beyond the ego’s reach.

Mystics, depth psychologists and those who seek out psychedelic journeys often speak of “ego-death” – but for most it seems the ego is just temporarily dethroned from its autocratic rule over the psyche. And it spends the rest of its existence trying to figure out how to assume the throne once again. If we are fortunate, the ego will experience some healthy humiliation and perhaps come to accept its proper place and role: One important and precious set of capacities among many powerful forces in the world.

Many people believe that their ego, their personality is their entire self, believe that they know themselves surely and completely. We imagine we know for sure and certain who we are and why we do what we do. We think we are doing exactly what we intend. We believe we control ourselves and our fates, and too often we even imagine that we are the source, the generator of whatever powers we may temporarily have use of.

Last night, as often happens when a piece of text has begun moving through me, it summons a dream:

I dream somehow, that human beings, animals, and plants are just like batteries, that store and transport energy for time. Life is simultaneously the container, and then energy within. We can be discharged, drained, restored, and recharged up to a point, but eventually we will have carried and released all the energy out into the world that we can – and the container will be finished with its task.

But the energy that passed through remains, moving out through the world – heat, light, particles in motion, without beginning, without end.

The battery did not generate the energy it contains and distributes for a time. It all just moves through.

We spend so much time identifying with the container we forget that all that comes into us, all that moves through us, all that we send out into the world is who we are too. That this is our most essential function.

We are less than we imagine. We are more than we know.

I woke with a start - as if I had overslept and was late for work.

How would we live if we could remain cognizant that there are aspects of our being that precede and surpass us, that life moves through us and transcends us farther than we might reach in any direction, that we can never apprehend?

What if this didn’t need to be merely terrifying (it should probably always be a wee bit terrifying) but offered all the relief of knowing our proper place in the world? What if humility is simply accepting all we can never know about the world, about ourselves, our motivations, and the consequences of our actions? Respecting all the forces that pass through and around us, that are more than we can ever be or know?

What would it mean to withstand the notion that life is simultaneously temporary and eternal all at once? To harness all the love within our own mortal hearts, and then to leave even our own hearts behind, feeding into Big Heart, as a raindrop dissolves into the river.

In theistic language:

We must die to our dualistic notions that we are anything other than God.

We must also die to our grandiose delusions that we are God.  ~ James Finely

Maybe we are both more insignificant and more indelible than we can ever comprehend. Less than we imagine. More than we know.

Life, Motion, and Being.