(You can listen to me reading this piece that I wrote in the video above, or find the written piece below.)
Everything that has ever been created first existed in potentiality. This includes each of us, swimming and merging together as One in the reality of our connectedness. We can perceive this as a half recalled dream, an imagining, but it’s a truth, The Truth, even. It’s the wakefulness that we aspire to return to now, but that which we are and from which we are born into this physical slumber to dream a beautiful dream. A dream which has it’s own rules and instructions.
The place where we always exist as One, because we are It, we are All, is infinite. There is nothing but It. So yes, it is everything, but this also means it is nothing; without shape, without form. To be, which effectively means to be something, the Oneness separates; seeds scattered across time and space and animating matter, to experience the infinite by fulfilling the potentiality of the whole.
Thus separated, we become aware of this separation, although we do not realise that we are separated, just that we are, this is the Self. This awakened awareness of separation is further realised by polarity. Masculine/feminine, yin/yang, light/dark etc, because for ‘this’ to exist individually, it must be different from ‘that’.
However, with this duality is also born relationship as ‘this’ can only be ‘this’ by being considered in relation to ‘that’. Therefore, the very thing that highlights our separateness and individuality is relationship, connectedness and seeing all the separate parts in relation to one another, connected by their very existence.
The spark, the spirit, our infinite nature, or rather, The Infinite nature is being expressed separately and in relationship to one another. The nature of one half of this duality is rational and forceful, the nature of the other is emotional and receptive. The merging of the two is the balance of the alchemical marriage.
What then are the rules and instructions? These are known and experienced through our instinct. Instinct is at the core of us, deep-rooted from birth. It is that which causes a baby to cry when experiencing discomfort and also that which spurs a mother to attend to the needs of her child on hearing those cries. The instinctual mind is a primal part of us; immediate, automatic, reactionary and focused on survival. The exact nature of what we perceive we are surviving changes as we move through the various expressions of consciousness. Self-awareness is founded on an understanding of our base instincts and our relationship to them as they form the instructions and rules each of us live from and this may be where that story begins, but as humans, it by no means ends here.
The expressions of our duality, of the rational and emotional sides, is what it means to be human. Our rational, active side is what has allowed us as a species to plan, to build, to organise ourselves into groups, societies, developing languages and cultures. The emotional, receptive side giving us feelings and moods.
We may intentionally learn and work with the rational and the emotional, the head and the heart, but the instinctual mind is the one always working in the background, directing how we relate to our dual natures and this is not always and nor is it supposed to be, a balanced expression. Rather it is a constant dance, motion, a vibration. But too much of one or the other and there is stagnation. Prolonged expression of just the rational mind can lead to empty, intellectual concepts that have no real meaning or purposeful impact on our experience leading instead to nihilism. We become emotionless beings concerned solely with self-benefit. The absence of the emotional means relating and relationships become near impossible as we isolate and retreat into the rational mind. A healthy balance is crucial as the emotional without the rational would mean very little actual getting done and our ability to create and work effectively is greatly hampered. The inability to integrate emotional and rational lead to greater suffering and the instinctual urge to survive becomes the over-riding drive, but without any idea or hope on how to do so.
When we are able to express both the rational and emotional instinctually, this is when magic occurs in every moment. We become able to assert ourselves courageously and purposefully, experiencing harmony. This is what it means to live from the heart, to realise that which has until now existed solely in potentiality. Empty intellectual notions are suddenly infused with life. We realise that the separation from the infinite whole is something that occurs in every moment and every place; on every time scale and in every space. All things, all the time come together and break apart, only to come together and separate again and again. This is the very vibration and humming of life. This constant vibration of merging and separating is the breath of life. What is there to hold on to? What is there to fear losing? What is there to fear becoming? Fear itself becomes a part of that great reverberation of life.
It is also fair to ask, within this constant motion, what is it that would prevent us from just becoming lost in this vibration, meaninglessly jostled this way and then that? Our individual will, when expressed instinctually through a mind and heart connected to and through a clear vision, is able to focus that which exists only in potentiality, and give it shape and form, by taking that which is passive and uncommitted energy and making it active.
The will may sometimes lose focus, the vision can become less clear. This is a sign that we’ve drifted from a healthy integration and balance of our head and heart. This too serves and is a necessary part of the expression of the will, for it allows room for adjustment, prevents self-obsession, nurtures humility and allows us to see more.
“Seeing is believing”, “what you see is what you get”, are often seen as phrases of those that lack faith and demand certainty. But what if the ‘seeing’ refers to the clear vision and the focus of the pure will? In this sense, then, seeing stops being passive and becomes active.
Joy and pain, loss and gain, breaking apart and coming together, all wrapped up in fear, rage, desire, love, these are the very twists, turns and pirouettes of the dance of life. Through this constant vibration, this constant motion, we recognise more of the infinite potential within every moment, every situation, when we are able to reconcile our internal, personal experience in relation to the external, always separate, always together, always passive, always active.
The vibration of life, be it at the scale of a heartbeat or an atom, a human life or the life of the universe, assures us that beginnings and endings are guaranteed and the very movement of life. It’s always time to stop and start again.