CHAPTER THREE

August 1st, 2024.                     Life is the one place where you should be. So far, you are aways somewhere else.

 

Life

During our existence, sense desires arise, brought on by aromas, sights, sounds and touch. They signal Life pulsing through the body / mind of our existence. The register of these signals takes place with consciousness, conscious awareness.

Conscious awareness drives curiosity to seek satisfaction of the sense desires. This is the pulse-beat of Life seeking to affirm Life.

                                           The single most important action throughout existence                                             is our response to that pulse.

BUT

If the field of that curious seeking remains solely within Existence, we cover the Life pulse with a deadening growth of Developmentalization through Existence-Arrogance (f). This is what humanity has primarily pursued. It is the direct result of defining existence as life and thereby confining all our efforts to satisfy the sense desires within existence in ignorance of

                              the dynamic relationship we could have with Life.

 

The tragedy of our actions lay in the impossibility of satisfying desires with any permanence in the temporary state that is existence.

 

 

 

This is what the Buddha determined as the root cause of our dissatisfaction or suffering. It also leaves us in ignorance (and consequent anxiety / fear) of what lay beyond existence, so we negatively define it as death. 

If we relax our Existence and gradually allow an increase of Life pulse to enter, there comes a point of discovery.

Love shows up.

Not romantic emotional attraction (love), although it to may be present, but a knowing Love that surpasses all hesitations and fears. We begin to move through our time confident of a sense of what is True. Romantic love when experienced, is of the ego-self

Love is beyond self.

You may imagine that such Love would be eagerly accepted and welcomed, but the force of it, like the force of Life, is alien to our senses, overwhelming. Consequently, we have a fear of it.

The degree of fear or hesitation to letting go into Life is a measure of how compacted our Existence has become.

When total compaction is reached, fear becomes hatred. People who hate are driven by fear, the opposite of Love. Thus, it is fear that Life challenges, not hate.

Hate is a condition entirely within Existence, that is why it is pointless to hate the hater, that would simply bury oneself in Existence along with the hater.

Life-Love resolves hatred by bringing to the surface the fear in the hater and introducing that fear to Life.

I will talk more about ‘Existence-Compaction’ in the next Chapter.

For now, I’ll just point out the importance of our being connected throughout existence.

What we do in existence affects every other part of it. Most often that effect will go unnoticed, unaware as we are of it. But the effect of the more compacted acts of Existence are often obvious, the making of a millionaire causes a recognizable shift at the other end of the economic continuum. A declaration of war at one end of the power continuum causes a reaction at the other end. In such cases, as in all actions perceived or unperceived, the effect of one’s single or collective actions cannot be avoided, due to the intrinsic connection that exists.

Because Life-pulse is the thread upon which every element of existence hangs, like it or not we are all responsible for each other and the ecology that sustains us.

Gratitude

A reminder pinned up by my desk says                                                                      Don’t complain, don’t criticize, don’t gossip. Just say thank you.

If one’s situation is free enough that one could do any of these things, be thankful for that freedom.

 

Thankfulness is the genesis of gratitude, and sincere gratitude offered absolutely is the path of devotion.

The fact of our being here, arisen out of Life’s potentiality, is an opportunity to participate in Life’s evolution.   We are the reciprocators of the greatest gift possible, a being of the pulsating transcendence of the absolute. (f)

We are given to know this by conscience-ness, a word that’s another inadequate shorthand for                 the deep complexity we experience of which we are an integral part.

You may protest ‘No, I’m just the offspring of my parents, an animal like any other, only with a conscious mind’. And you are.

The difference between you and the rest of the sentient world is (as far as we yet know)...                                                                    You know you know.

                     We can self-reflect.

 

A consequence of which is we can know of the symbiosis between existence and Life. Thus far, that understanding has been imprisoned in the negative relationship between life and death. In such a position, whilst one may have gratitude for existence, it seems absurd to be thankful for death.

But when we change our conscious perception from the negative construct life ends in death, to affirming that existence reveals Life. The actions of one’s existence then, infused with a newfound awareness, reflect gratitude expressed in devotion – to the way of harmony with Life.                                                             

 What was perceived as an ending is now fully embraced as endless Life.   

We don’t have to wait upon our desire to bring forth change. Returning to my pinned-up note to myself, we can practice gratitude for Life right now as the Truth that brought us into being.

Creativity

      The most central, and natural way to offer                  gratitude to Life for one’s existence,             is through creative acts.

 

The inherent potential for creativity within us reflects the potential within the quantum field that gives rise to our being here.

The strongest expression of the symbiotic relationship between existence and Life is devotion-creativity. A reciprocation that moves existence in concert with Life-evolution. It is our part in the relationship between the seen and unseen, what is temporary and what is permanent, the known and the sought, existence and Life.

The practice of art, music, singing dancing etc. as a function of our being makes a Life opening in our existence.

What we do creatively through the cultivation of our self is done not for the ego but for the bringing of Life to others.

This takes place through the realization that what we create is not ours, we are simply the means by which it's created.

 

             We all have creativity inside of us,                          because Life is woven within our being – our body and mind. We are a culmination of Life-consciousness                                   which is of itself                                                          a completely creative principle.                                     

We cannot not be of it if we’re conscious.

The problem we face is the confinement of the creative principle behind the compacted walls of Existence. Notwithstanding differences in character, small children free of oppression, if asked to draw, sing, dance etc. do so without the thought ‘I can’t’. Being at a stage where Life is still large within them and existence yet small, they will often do such creative acts without any asking or prompting.

     We can observe how the gradual imposition of Existence over existence                                           inhibits this creative Life expression.

If we grow up grasping ambitiously to the stuff of Existence, the resultant Extinction-compaction can completely extinguish the creative principle. It is an Existence exactly opposite to an existence carrying the ‘strongest expression of the symbiotic relationship’.

Character

What you can notice about babies is they have a range of behaviors. It’s clear we are not new-born with a blank Life function, we are from the start differentiated in our response to being here. Some babies are quiet, some noisy; some withdrawn, some outgoing; some peaceable, some angry – and so on. Our character begins with a particular baseline arising from Life. That expression, what we observe in a very new-born, is Capture.

Capture is picked up by the pulsation arising from the Life-field-potential (f) as it becomes actualized.

It is only in the very first moment of inception that capture arrives, beyond that beginning, genetics grows the fetus to term, with capture attached via the Life pulse. Why does any of this matter?

 

Because becoming aware of the internal make-up of who we are helps us understand our originating being, that is, who we are before we are overlaid as we grow up, by enculturation into Existence.

We are formed of many layers during our early years, that cause the ego response to fluctuate as it carries out its primary task of taking care of us. As it does so, what we experience is mood changes, giving rise to thoughts and actions. Because it is primarily the impress of enculturation that forms the layers of our character such that we fit-in with society, the ego overreaches its natural securing of need, and becomes the driver of greed.

Capture

But we can’t simply walk away from or drop enculturation. One discovers, even in a monastic environment or long meditation retreats, that we are tied by a deeper, stronger force. What makes our subsequent condition (character) challenging to change is an intrinsic connection between the ego and capture.

We need to get to know what capture has returned (with) us to existence.

This is an important central element I will return to many times.                                                                             For now, I’ll indicate its placement and influence in the development of character.

The effect of capture on the emerging ego formation resides in the primary element, known as Id. Id is the repository of the vital mental/emotional drive that seeks continuation of the body/mind’s survival.

It is capture that determines the character of the Id, thus from day one we see a range of differences in new-born babies.

As a child grows, the Id is challenged by the influences upon her/him: Parents, relations, carers etc. These influences form in the young child’s mind in opposition to the drive of the Id. In a healthy upbringing, these two forces coalesce to form the ego. All three internal conditions, Id, ego, and the influencers - known as super ego, continue, forming the character of the grown person.  

The makeup of capture arriving with each birth varies in density, that is, the level of permeability allowing or inhibiting Life.

If it is light, the baby is calm – sometimes called an old soul. If it's heavily compacted, we see (and hear!) what seems to us an angry baby. (of course, the baby cannot be angry, as it as yet has no character that holds views). Most of us fall somewhere in the middle.

We can see from this understanding how getting to know one’s capture helps us unthread our enculturation and the influence of capture on our character. However, to do so requires patient attention, the foundation of which is  

a strong intention to Life

                       I shall continue with capture in future chapters meanwhile, you may want to read                                section 7 Capture, in The Green Jade Book.

 

May you be well, may your days and nights be filled with Life.

 

Comments and questions - sucinno@hotmail.com   Subject: Nearlife.

(f) FOOTNOTES

Developmentalization through Existence Arrogance.

This describes the excessive growth humanity has pursued to assuage itself of the fearful consequence of being temporary. Turning our back on this simple reality, we have tried to dislocate ourselves from the fundamental truth of the relationship between existence and Life. Our arrogance has buried us in ourselves made concrete by accumulation. 

 

a being of the pulsating transcendence of the absolute.

This statement points up the intrinsic relationship we (existence) have with Life. Life’s (absolute) pulse operating beyond and within our being, calls upon us to acknowledge its transcendence, that is, its constant potential out of which we arise moment by moment to live commensurate with its evolving process.  

Note: Life evades concrete description precisely because it cannot be defined with language. I shall return to ‘Life’ many times, attempting linguistically to circle ever closer with the pointed finger. But given that Life is ultimately an experience, it is Intentional attention that finds its reality, not any description. 

 

Life-field-potential

Life is an energy field. The word ‘field’ is another inadequate sign – it is not flat or two dimensional, it has no edges. It’s just the nearest common usage language offers. But it IS and the central dynamic it holds is total potentiality, that is, anything could manifestly arise out of it.

A Life-field pulsation wave as it becomes actualized passes through Capture, [another inadequate ‘field’].

Note: Such fields, generating outside of existence, do not have spatial / time constraint, therefore they are distinct but not separated.

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