At the time of writing—February 25—I'm in the business class lounge at the airport in Seoul, on my way back from China. This is the first time in some years I've had a layover of any length of time here, allowing me to write a post—something I used to do frequently years ago, when my layovers here were more routine.
There are many daily things in life, yet under the average set of circumstances, a relationship to a finer energy is not one of them. Yet an intelligent and conscious study of exactly this energy (not some coarser substitute) in action in the body is essential; and without a relationship to a finer energy, in many senses, there can be no study of energy. Studying ordinary tension and studying ordinary sensation, sensation as we invoke it and as it exists on average in us, we don't study much of anything. We find that we are tense; that's hardly news. We find out we don't have much sensation. But what do we actually know? Do we know that we are breathing, thinking, feeling beings, creatures in a relationship with this life and with the planet? Probably not. Without a relationship to some finer substance, these ideas, although entirely real, are at best one-centered. The intellect is capable of killing higher ideas and curating them in a vacuum where they stumble around, zombielike, looking for more brains to eat.
Only with a relationship to a finer quality, a more essential quality that rests in a kernel within the breast—in the heart—can anything real be sensed.
We are definitely meant to be much more open to the higher, yet we can't do it. Nonetheless, the force of Mercy is enormous, and it constantly seeks us. It can be a daily thing. It can be an hourly thing, a thing of every minute.
Why isn't it? Why do we spend years going to groups, sitting in meditation, doing retreats, weekends and even weeks spent in intensive work to try and become more open, without much than a glimmer appearing in us, except under what we call “special circumstances?"
Well, it's a good question. The idea of a higher, or finer, energy may remain for the most part mythological in the average course of a lifetime. It is an aspiration—a
wish to breathe—not an inspiration, that which has been breathed and incorporated. Yet it is possible to breathe; it is even necessary to breathe. And it is even necessary to breathe in order to breathe—to do so consciously, that is.
My own hubris stands in my way, first of all and most of all, yet I can't get rid of that either. I recall distinctly the many times that Betty Brown remarked to us on how arrogant it seemed to her that we all thought we could work, that we could participate in something higher. She was getting at just this point; and yet, she knew precisely what work was, and what was possible. The idea of a finer energy was not a theoretical one for her. She, like me, ultimately came to the conclusion that it is our arrogance that prevents us from receiving what we need for our work.
We wish to make the effort of opening central to our work; we wish to receive an energy of a certain finer nature. It isn't just one energy; it doesn't enter us in just one way. We stand at an intersection in a play of forces, and we have the capacity to both receive and transmit a range of influences and actions. These influences and actions have both horizontal and vertical characteristics. The work of distinguishing between what is of Essence and what is of Personality is a work of understanding and discriminating in these matters. There is not one single thing; there is no single work, no single state, no single energy. Not except at the level of the absolute, a level we're at a very great distance from.
What is important is to carefully and intimately come into an inner relationship that cultivates. Finer energy seeks its own kind; like attracts like. If you have gold, you can get gold. The difficulty is that men love having gold, but for the most part only in order to squander it.
This idea of a precise inner version, an intentional relationship, an intimacy, is part of what is needed in order to recognize gold and help it be laid up in those most secret places of the heart, where it can help us.
I respectfully hope you will take good care.