detail from the portrait of
Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga
I am in this body. The energy in it has come from a higher level, and the body only exists because this energy, loosely referred to as "life" on this level, is expressing it. When the energy runs its course, all of the atoms and molecules in this body will let go of one another, and go on to a new task.
There is a string that connects me to this higher level, a thread of energy that runs into the Being from a much higher place. But it's attached to some lower part of me... maybe my leg... and I don't notice it hardly at all. I'm very distracted by the things I am reading, the information that I pick up around me from the outer world, all of which seem to be important, compelling, or at any rate providing amusement that will keep me busy.
I don't sense my master; I'm not interested in him, either. But Death is always staring intently at me, because Death knows that it will have me sooner or later.
Under these conditions, I ought to be more interested in my work, but apparently even Death is not enough to motivate me. Actually, with my distractions, I don't see where I am at all.
Only the inner energy can help me to see where I am, and this is why my interest must be in this first. If I think I am going to see where I am with any of my outer parts, I'm delusional. They are capricious — they all have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, ADHD. When we see these characteristics exaggerated in children, which is becoming more and more common, we externalize them and don't see that the intellect generally operates like this in everyone. It's only when it's magnified through the erratic behavior of children that we begin to see its deleterious effects. Actually, the whole history of mankind is a history of ADHD, accompanied by weapons.
If I'm interested in waking up, meditation exercises and counting numbers while I walk around can be good disciplines, but there has to be much more. There has to be a constant interest and introspection into the inner energy, a question of what it is, where it is, and — if it does not seem to be available — where I could put my sensation in order to give it a home, should it choose to participate. It's this lack of sensation, which is a universal lack, not just the lack in one leg, or the abdomen, that lies at the root of my failure to participate with an energy that can inwardly form anything real.
There must be a relationship. This is the issue.
So I go through every day with this question, seeking this particular point of work within myself. If I'm not attending to this, in regard to inner conditions, everything else is useless.
I often need to remind myself, in situations where others are speaking and I have an impulse to do this, that, or the other thing, to just say nothing. If I just try to be there and accept the conditions I'm in, I see more. If I'm constantly throwing myself outside of myself and getting involved in a load of nonsense — which, let's face it, is my habit a great deal of the time — I can't do anything in an inner sense to help the connection form better.
I would be better off doing the smallest things — just folding the laundry correctly, and doing the dishes, and being there for that. That's quite enough, if I'm working. If I'm not, I need to climb mountains in order to scratch the inner itch, and even the mountain views are not enough.
May your soul be filled with light.