CHAPTER FOUR

August 15th, 2024       You have the greatest freedom. The freedom to choose Existence or Life.

 

EXISTENCE

 

We can choose where we place our interest and awareness between existence and Life.

Compaction is the measure of energy a person, family, group, society etc. gives solely to existing, over what we give to Life.

The measurement of such compaction is an equation of time to timeless.

Developmentalization   COMPACTION

We enter the timeless when we are in one of four conditions:                                                    

Totally still and silent with deliberate intent upon Life; lost in an act of ‘pure’ creativity, that is creativity solely for the creative sake; devoting one’s being to the Life of another – that other may be a person or any form of sentients. All three occur within the symbiotic cycling of Life-existence arising and return. (f)     

The fourth condition occurs when Life completely ‘takes over’ existence.

They are all potentially outside of the imposed boundaries of existence.

With a strong intention constantly held these actions take the participant out-of-time as you will know if you have ever been totally absorbed in a creative act.

A healthy existence is one in which the (single or collective) ego does not exceed its primary role as the guardian of well-being.

 

COMPACTION

As we move through time, what we individually and collectively give attention to - determines existence.   That determination manipulates the elements, ecology, rocks, minerals etc., in the construction of total Existence. And the existence of ourselves in the character of individuals, families, societies, countries and the world. Each form of us from individual to total humanity is subject to compaction that can range between no compaction to ninety-nine percent compaction. [When total compaction occurs, the element disintegrates]. (f)

Compaction is absent when there is a healthy existence as defined above.

 

The action of compaction

When the activity of the ego goes beyond its primary role, existence begins to compact. It closes to the Life-pulse.

This very simplified illustration shows the degree of attention given to Existence causes its compaction thus closing off the Life pulsations within which, and from which existence survives.  

LIFE

If I were to duplicate the above diagram here of the timeless forth condition, outlined in the existence section, there would be a blank space. It would not be because an element of existence disappeared, but it would indicate how illusory existence is.

Illusion refers to the tenuous billionth of a micro-second arising and returning of existence-matter out of Life.

Occurring continuously in space-time, it appears to our senses to be solid.   

That appearance seems to separate us from Life, which we now know is an impossibility.

 

 

 

Now we can appreciate the absolute nature of the symbiotic relationship between Life and existence. We are Life-given-form.

The implication of this understanding is that if we truly want to live throughout our existence our attention will remain on Life.

In doing so we will be drawn by Life to act in harmony with the process of Life’s evolving.

Thus, through this symbiotic connection we can see existence is given purpose (beyond self). That purpose is Life.

 

         IMPOSITION

We have for thousands of years imposed upon Life’s neutrality. We have projected onto that unknown, death, with imaginings of what lay beyond our existence.

All such projections are of ourselves, anthropomorphic entities embodying our best hopes and worst fears, drawn out of our behavior toward each other. We can be kind and cruel, caring and caustic. Attentive and absent, protecting and rejecting. We can hurt or heal. Thus it is, we make for ourselves a God or gods whose behavior is ours. In so doing we at best confuse Life, and lay Existence upon it, rendering ourselves ignorant of its essentialness to our being.

The complex traditions of competing religious impositions are a form of compacted Existence: Invented by egoism fearful of its self-ending. The compaction of some religious practices is permeable others are very dense and inhibiting of Life. All carry the irony of our knowing we made them up, and thereby cannot solve the life-death dilemma.

To believe there is someone or think there is nothing outside of existence, denies our intelligence and observations. That denial is causing confusion, suffering, and a laying a path to extinction.

 

FEAR

In section five of The Green Jade Book, it says...

‘…You are afraid to Love. In consequence of which, you are afraid of Life.                                                        Your conflicting truths arise from fear, not Life.

The surprise for most of us is the first assertion, that we are afraid to Love. What the book is saying is, that it is Love we fear, not love, the difference (note the upper and lower case ‘L’) is profoundly important.

The Love cited is the core energy of Life, that which drives its pulsations. In referring to our fear it is saying we are inhibited [by Existence] to a point that we cannot deal with the total vulnerability Love-Life requires of us.

This has come about as a consequence of Existence-compaction. Being closed off from the full Life pulsation, it becomes a mystery with the power to give or take away life, it has become death. The fear thus created by our ignorance binds us to Existence, holding us back from Life.

Most of us don’t consciously think of it as fear, but as the title of Ernest Becker’s Book ‘The Denial of Death’ makes clear, it is fear that we suppress. Consequently, our ego is constantly dealing with a heightened sense of protection which is the source of our over grasping to Existence.    

TURNING TOWARDS LIFE

SIMPLIFICATION

If we do nothing else, adopting a new linguistic awareness of Life and existence, and simplifying our surroundings, will loosen the prison bars of Existence.

It is not easy; the ego puts up resistance defending our mind from the fear it holds at bay.

What we find happens as we move in the direction of Life are moments of Light [i.e. the breathing space after clearing clutter] followed by anxiety [of taking one’s Existence toward less - destitution]. This occurs because our actions form a message that we are making our way out of Existence and into Life.

The ego reads that message as a kind of self-suicide and does its job of trying to ‘save’ us.

STILLNESS

The second ‘practice’ we can usefully adopt in laying a way open to Life is stillness. Compacted Existence is formed of constant mind and body movement.

Stilling body movement is challenging, particularly when we are deep in compacted Existence.

We mistake sitting watching television or movies as being still, but the emotional content of what we view activates the internal systems in our bodies, controls and agitates. Our mind is in constant shift with each scene change, dialogue, and mood music.

You might think sitting quietly reading a book, let’s say studying an interesting subject, is stillness, but it is simply a slowing down.

slowing down is not stilling.

If we take a close look at such times, we can see the mind is nowhere near still, which means the body at its deepest level continues to react to thoughts and agitations.

 

Stillness first and foremost is an intention, free of any other purpose. It is sought for its own sake.

SILENCE

                                                       Here are some words from ‘Consolations’ by David Whyte.

Silence is… an intimation of the end, the graveyard of fixed identities. Real silence puts any present understanding to shame, orphans us from certainty, leads us beyond the well-known and accepted existence.

Silence is the third practice we can bring to our lives, but like the first two it is not easy, it may be the hardest to carry through. It is an intimation of the end, a move to lay down our self-identity in which we have a kind of uncertain certainty; an Existence clung to, yet never satisfiable.

Silence is the master passkey to all the prison gates.

Each of our clinging’s drop like diseased fruit seen as unfit for Life.

If we can reach for silence in the stillness of a simplified existence, Life floods our being.

Whyte again: We are confronted with the unknown and previously unacceptable conversation about to break in upon our existence.

LIFE

A line from The Green Jade book reminds us that. ‘Those who search with strong Intention for Life, Life will find.

 

The finding is the occurrence of being ‘taken over’ by Life. It is the forth condition mentioned at the beginning of this chapter.

Life’s takeover occurs in two ways.

The first are sudden Life take-overs.

They occur when a person is experiencing such a compacted Existence that there is a danger of Life being completely closed off. E.g. deep depression causing suicidal impulses; a person who has accumulated great wealth and has a crushing realization that their Existence is pointless.

Life floods one’s being pushing the troubled ego aside. Such experiences being overwhelming can be perplexing and require processing.

 

Another takeover though sudden, is not overwhelming, because the ‘processing’ precedes it, so to speak. It is the result of strong intention and practice.

One may be sitting observing stillness, silence, beyond the pull of the five senses, and a point comes when Life’s presence is all there is.

The second way, Life bypasses the ego and takes control of our actions.

This is the strange experience of finding one has done something without thought or intention. Such action is like moving the rudder of a big liner to change direction. It will alter one’s life away from Existence. 

In both cases, Life’s pulsations have become greater in their affect upon the actions of our existence than our own (ego) determinations.

You may want to take note of these lines from part nine of The Green Jade book.

             Life arises timelessly, instance upon instance.                                                            Never seek the end in your Intention simply pay attention to the moment.                The only right desire is a want for Life over Existence.

 

LIGHT

You may have gathered by now that I use the terms Life and Love synonymously.

That is because the creative pulse embedded in life is a constant potential that is quickened, causing the arising of existence, by Life’s impulse toward completion (f). That quickening is experienced as Love.

Life contains a third facet, Light.

It is a condition that can be seen and not seen, thereby being in wave and form simultaneously.

 

This explains why folks who have a near life experience when their form is apparently dead or on an operating table, experience Light as they move into Life, and feel Love within that Light.

Within existence it is light that often draws us beyond the concerns of ego-self bringing upon us a momentary Life envelopment.

The experiencing of light for its own sake, that is it being the core of whatever is taking place e.g. sunrise, sunset, moonlight etc., is Life penetrating existence.      

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

 

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

(f) Footnotes

...‘the symbiotic cycling of Life-existence arising and return’. (f)

These are times when, by intention we turn existence toward Life and the moment by moment arising of life within existence is made manifest and fed back to Life through differing forms of devotion.

‘[When total compaction occurs, the element disintegrates]’. (f)

Prime examples of this event are the collapse of empires, when Existence-arrogance reaches a point of completely closing to the natural Life pulse. In an individual it presages suicide, (an increase of which occurs in a collapsing society).

‘That is because the creative pulse embedded in life is a constant potential that is quickened, causing the arising of existence, by Life’s impulse toward completion’. (f)

At the level of quanta materiality, by which everything is manifested, it is the potential within the wave pulse that is transformed into matter. That Life potential seems to be pulsing towards an end, a completion. [To what end we don’t as yet know, though it has been speculated upon].