from 'A Circle of Swift Songs:'
A Circlet of Inner-Life Stories...
These stories are from my new book manuscript... of life in the spirit.
EVER OPEN TO THE CALL OF THE SEA, ever attentive to the depths in my
heart, I could feel the pull of my inner ocean drawing me onward; and I had a yearning to go
to the coast. With the wind in the east, it would be wild and rough there;
but the day was bright; only thin-torn cloud being swept across the sky in high
vapour streams. I was certain we must go and no thought of work laid out for me
at home could hold me back; homeschooling set us free to explore and to be as
spontaneous as the birds in the learning activities we chose.
An hour or so later we were ambling along the shore; sometimes stooping
to pick up shells, sometimes running and twirling and trailing driftwood
sticks. Or just standing still, staring out to sea, as when we spied a pod of
dolphins, and marvelled. Time became our loving teacher instead of us its
slave.
Assured the children were happy and content for awhile with their own
form of learning I wandered alone to find what I would meet. I ran south along
the sea-edge until I reached the mouth of the stream that was itself content
with its own business of running to meet the Sea. Something made me pause here
before wading across and I pulled out one of the shells from my pocket. It was
a cockle shell. But it was not empty. The living thing was still inside. Shut
in. I turned it over in my hands, looking at it and listening. I knew it could
speak to the present condition of my inner world and in a language that had no
words. I listened intently to hear, because I wanted to understand everything I
came across to see what it was that I could learn from it.
I had an insatiable desire to understand the way of things. But though I
had an enquiring heart and absorbed much there, I remained always a pupil in it
all, and never presumed I was a teacher of anything. I had in me by now a
horror of ‘teaching’ anyone but myself. I learned from my children.
I learned that life was caught, not taught; and that you cannot teach
anybody anything a fraction so well as they can teach themselves by their own
seeing. As for catching life, nothing is so contagious as example; which is all
you can be, and the only way you do teach, as they see - you - what you are
like and what you actually do, rather than what you say you do! This is what is
infectious!
I knew, and only too well, that if you want to teach your children to
walk in the light, you had better, you, truly, truly, do so! The answer is not
anywhere in the ink of the pages of a book, so you can’t shove that in their
face and expect them to see it, but in the living ink of the life of a person,
you, truth writing in you as you live truly and become yourself a book, a
living book known and read of all men.
I looked up and out and all around about me. Breathing in the bright sea
air; glorying in the freedom that comes of being deeply connected. The sound of
the sea whipped up by the wind and the movement of the soaring gulls above as
they were given their flight by it filled me with joy. The sound was as life in me lifting me up. The movement
as wisdom teaching me of flight and another way of being. The sea was my audio
book its pages the waves; the wind its intrinsic teacher giving it its speech.
I exulted in its roaring summons as I waded through one lacy page after
another. Feeling their sharp cold as I went suddenly deeper I caught my breath.
I turned back then and smiling pushed my way through them to the shallows,
where I gazed down again at the live, closed cockle shell lying in my open
palm, before I bent down to gave it back to the scalloped-edged sea. I didn’t
know that I had not heard.
I returned to the shallowest place at the mouth of the stream and
carefully waded across it eating the shelled macadamias that I carried in my
other pocket.
The children had by now caught up with me; they’d ‘smelled’ them, no
doubt! After each had been handed their ration of nuts they ran off across the
stream ahead of me to play; instructed to think and observe and to ask
questions of whatever they might find. Although this was hardly necessary, they
did it automatically; they were children after all and were experts at it!
As I reached the other side of the stream and walked slowly along the
beach at the edge of the sea watching my bare feet leave footprints in the sand
I returned to my thoughts on indelible truthfulness: It was the reality of what
was written inside you that was your actual inner condition unbeknownst to you;
it was true that you are what you think, not what you think you are! The
under-hidden things were what were real and really directing your life; the
upper-visible things hid that from you: we didn’t exactly know what was going
on within us most of the time; things were whirling away there we had no idea
of.
I walked on. My eyes fell on the tiny holes in the wet sand; the only
sign that here the busy life of little sea creatures was going on, down beneath
the surface; life I had no knowledge of; hidden in the dark.
The sun was warm. The sea sparkled. I enjoyed the feel of the sand
between my toes. I stood on solid ground, and yet it was impressionable. I
stopped walking. I made pictures with my feet in the sand. I thought: My mind
had pictures made in it, where my thoughts walked. I wished only that my
footprints there would be as beautiful: I had pressed a pattern into the sand
that I felt was beautiful. But was it? I thought: The imprints of truthfulness
in you that was the way of all beauty and the best ground: because it was
light, not darkness: so there the
place upon which you could build living things that would stand up, because
they had a foundation clear as crystal.
I knew there was more that the sea, and the wind, and the seashore would
together teach me this day; this was only the beginning, I felt.
Time went by. We all were delighting in the sea’s enchanting borders;
the children were digging in it making interconnecting holes in the sand;
channels where they hoped the water would run; unaware, of course, that this
activity paralleled their inner endeavours. As I watched them living water went
running through the channels of my own mind: for curiously the words ‘have
faith’ and ‘only believe’ made their way to the surface with simultaneously a
conviction that here was the way of life and I would come to understand it.
It was then I realized that thoughts on this whole essence of
‘believing’ were what I had been mulling over earlier as I had walked and
stooped, picking up the sea’s treasures granted me from its generous pages. I
recalled now that I had been wondering what it really was, beyond what I had
already experienced and this in order to rattle my own traditions, because I
knew I was being taught my greater need of this inside wondrous ability that
was my birthright to more closely connect; and that being, life, well, it was therefore, the most
precious thing that could ever be sought for.
Everyone has and yet needs to a greater extent the capacities for
reliance and trust, that when an outer form of something was taken away, we
were able to have its inner part, its invisible or spiritual part, which only
by the exercise of our ‘muscle’ of faith, were we able to see and know, that
this was indeed, there, for us to enjoy!
Asking that it might be better explained to me, so that I could more
easily understand and more freely live, I inquired within: What is
the nature of ‘faith?’ What does it look like? What did it feel like? What was
the sound of it? Did it even have a taste, or a fragrance? And what was that
like? Was there any picture of it? And where does it live?
When something was in picture form I could grasp it and understand it;
and all in the instant that I saw it. But how could you comprehend the very
nature of faith? Was it like the light? I asked. I had already been shown
pictures of the light. Could you now show me by a picture the difference
between faith and ‘un-faith,’ so as to make it obvious? That in seeing in a
twinkling the difference between the two there might be a demonstration of the
truth?
Carrying on walking along the beach beyond the stream I soon came to the
rocky promontory at the southern end of the bay. There I sat down on a flat
ledge of basalt rock, some way back from the crashing waves, dipping my feet in
the surging swell as it ran in and out of a narrow channel between the rocks.
Swishing my feet idly in the icy clear water I was at peace pondering the
questions of my heart.
I sat quietly and oblivious now to the outside noise of wind and waves,
aware only of the distant happy sounds of the children playing, and the sun
warm on my back, I was free to sink inside and listen. I basked in the heavenly
warmth, feeling it seeping all through me. I looked down. I took more notice of
the going out and the coming in of the swell in the channel: the taking and
giving of the sea…which was its way of maintaining its unending life. It was
speaking. It was opening up its swelling pages for me to read. Something made
me look up. I noticed the dip and lift of the gulls and terns, their sudden
dive and plunge, their capturing and rising again as they went about
maintaining their own life…it was the only way. ‘Terns.’ Everything was
turning. Turning, for life to exist, even! Yes. The terns were. The sea was; in
its tides. The land was; in its being ploughed. The sun was; in day and night.
The trees; and the seasons, too. Everything! And people? Of course! It was no
different! And their traditions? Yes. Wouldn’t there be less empty forms of
things, if they would only turn the same as everything else?
I blinked and looked. All that turned was renewed. I looked and saw. And
I saw, too, the answers I was given when I asked the questions I was given were
as light as a feather! For everything was already there right before your eyes
to tell you all you needed to know. But it was sight that couldn’t wait for
you. It was gone the next moment for the next telling-thing. It seemed that there
was always more life where you least expected to find it. Truly, the choicest
parts of anything are hidden.
I got up, and stood listening for the children. Saw them safe and happy,
not too far away; and then like them revelling in the tang of the salt air and
its energizing ions I stretched out my arms lifting them up and around about
like a dancer. Happiness filled me. I went and sat on another higher ledge of
rock on the other side of the narrow channel, and faced the sun.
As I dangled my bare feet above the cold crystal sea, opposite where I
had been sitting, loose tresses of my long brown hair went flying in the wind.
And perhaps, my thoughts did, too; for it seemed they dipped and plunged into
the clearest depths, flew along a line, and exposed to the penetrating sun
sending its life-giving rays to illumine them there… another realm opened up.
If the sea was my book of the sound of life, then the sun’s book was the
one that gave the all of life: infusing life and light into everything in the World!
Oh, if only people would read it! For being a book that had no words, it was
one which could do no harm. Because what you could read there was unique to
each person. Unique to its interpretation and joy inside you alone, and not in
another: that you might be whole. Complete in not trying to find it in another
person; for what could be had of it was in each one different; being as it was
according to the amount of exposing light that each one could bear.
I ran my hand over the rock ledge at my side. Felt its texture. Felt its
pattern. I could know by feel! I shut my outer eyes tight; lifted my face to
the sun. I could learn all I needed…direct… being opened to the book that had
no words. All at once, I saw via the twinklelight that my questions concerning
believing were heard: I was being answered and by all around me.
In the lines of the rock, in the stability within it, I was beginning to
see a pattern to how people tend to understand inner life, i.e. spiritual life,
(it’s the same thing they are inseparable) they did it by earthly printed,
book-learning, rather than by feel-learning, by their inner being (their spirit
;) which was strange I now realized. How could you learn that which was
‘inner,’ or ‘inside,’ or ‘spiritual,’ by that which wasn’t?
Like how could you understand ‘water,’ if you didn’t touch it, or feel
it? How could you know what it really was to swim around in it, if you had
never swum in it? Your understanding would be guess-work only: theoretical:
lifeless!
Like if you were faced with another language, how were you going to
understand it, if you didn’t know it? To understand Chinese I had to know
Chinese. Else, I would find myself knowing all about it, but not it, itself.
And of what use was that? I wouldn’t actually be able to communicate with the
Chinese person! I could wave at him, and smile, but we wouldn’t actually get
anywhere, like that!
Without a compatible affinity it was all just something in the distance,
you were in another place.
Inner or inside things could only be learned truly and effectively, by
the inside of you. . .
Suddenly I saw: They want to know it; they want to know inner
(spiritual) life and what ‘faith’ is, that is its ‘muscle’ which facilitates
it. But they think that the way to do this is to learn about it. This is
people’s way. I had not questioned it until now, but it is the way we do
everything! It is the way we go about getting to know, anything. The only way we know how to know something is to
learn about it. Well, this is how we
learn; isn’t it?
I ran through it a moment, and saw: But our way of knowing about
something and someone is not, faith! It is just knowledge gathering! And in
gathering knowledge, I have more knowledge, not more faith! And the more I keep
gathering and gaining it, the less I have of the substance of it: the less I
have of faith! But it is faith that is
the substance of things hoped for, not the knowledge about it! The knowledge of
faith is not faith, but knowledge!
I noticed a lovely dark patterned limpet shell lying not far from me in
a little dip in the surface of the rock. I leaned over to my right and reached
out my arm to it. I could just about reach it with my fingertips. I stretched a
little more and grasped it. Sitting up again I held it in my palm and looked at
it; thinking to add it to the others I had. After a moment I put it down and
felt in my left hand jacket pocket for the seashells I had already gathered and
stuffed there. I fingered the shells. Felt their
smoothness. Felt their interesting shapes. It then occurred to me that the
amount I had had been growing as I had walked the beach: I had picked up more
and more before crossing the stream and then stopping here at the southern
promontory to sit and think.
Suddenly into my mind’s eye came a picture of the mouth of the stream
and my standing there. In a flash I saw what I had missed earlier. How clearly
the living thing had spoken in my open palm. But I had not heard it all. I had
thought only on where it rightly belonged, because it was alive; and on where I
belonged, which was like it. But now I saw there was more. It would tell the
story of my other shells, which were not alive.
I took out a small trumpet shell and a few others from my pocket and
held them alongside my limpet shell. I shook them in my hands. I delighted in
the hollow chinkling sound of them as they jostled together. Even the smell of
them was lovely when they were in their own environment. I had such a lovely
collection. And then all at once I realized with
a jolt that this is just what I am
like. Along the shores of my life, I carelessly walk collecting all the lovely
‘shells’ of the truth, enjoying their ‘sound,’ they seem so nice when they
click together, and I think I have life: But
having not what’s in them, I don’t! The little trumpet and all the other
shells in my hand were empty. Their living insides were not there!
I lifted my eyes. I stared at the horizon… at the shining in the far
edge of the World… I heard a song singing in me. I had almost always songs
playing by themselves inside me. And they were every time applicable to my
inside life and living. I caught a phrase of it ‘singing, cockles and mussels, alive, alive, O.’ Oh! My knowledge
gathering it was like gathering cockles and mussels! They might once have been ‘alive, alive, O!’ as in the song, but
if they were not still snug in their shells, what have I got? I’ve just got
more cockles and mussels. Shells of them. Outsides, not insides. Knowledge
forms, not the substance.
The sun pierced through a thin veiling of cloud. Too bright now, even
with my eyes shut. So I looked down into the clear swaying water in the channel
below my feet. I heard the sea’s roar. It was edging closer. Mm, I thought,
shells; they are nice to have, and to hold; but I can’t eat them . . . unless I
lose something.
Oh! The same as with bodies of knowledge: only in losing their shells
could I have the substance of them and eat them. But then, oh, I have
seemingly, nothing: I have no shells of them. No pretty seashells. Nothing that
can be seen. I have nothing I can carry, or show off. Nothing outside. Nothing,
additional; and that didn’t feel too good, because I want nice looking, things.
Things I can hold. Opinions. Things which I can feel are mine, but which are separate from who I am:
the things that will not challenge and change me: safe things. I want knowledge
I can own, knowledge I can bandy about, knowledge I can get by myself, and not
by faith; because that feels like nothing. But only in losing the form of the knowledge of the truth can I have its insides! It is there I am
pressed to faith; because it takes faith to lose some lovely thing, for
something I don’t yet know, that’s even lovelier. That’s hard. But it is only by faith, that I know any life, at all . . .
I turned my head to the right and looked towards the entrance of the
narrow channel where I sat. The wind in the sea surge had brought in a feather.
A black feather. A gull’s probably. I watched it absently, still thinking along
my own line of thought; but I followed its curious mesmerizing course till it
was at the head of the channel where there was a tiny beach. Backwards and
forwards it was being carried by the little pages of the sea. Like me, I
thought idly, being caught and carried upon the sea of life; where I’m given
more, for my having less; then more again needing even less. The pullback was
sometimes greater than the push forwards, even though the tide was coming in.
Who would ever think life was all by having less? But it was wonderful. I
marvelled at the wisdom within this unending wordless book in front of me,
turning its pages over and over yearning that it should be heard and
understood: seen and read.
Black. Feather. I stared at the thing approaching the wet yellow sand.
It was a remex: a long, prime wing feather; stiff, glistening. I knew it would
speak; but I returned to my thoughts that life, it was all and only by faith .
. .
I continued to listen. And I thought. The less I depend upon gaining
head knowledge, the greater need I have of faith. Oh. So faith would grow if
and when I had need of it. I realized that by depending upon what I could
gather by myself, I was stopping myself from depending upon what I could not
gather by myself, that I might have it by faith from life, itself; and the more
I did that, the less need I had of faith, and so the less faith I had. Oh! So
depending upon what I had, had stopped me from depending upon what I didn’t
have, that I might have it by faith, to most truly have it. Have that which was
most truly there.
Again; because it was always backwards: and forwards; the black
feather... on the surging swell. What was it I had been given? A black one; or,
a white one? Mine was black: Knowledge collecting had overtaken living by faith
in my life, even as I had collected and still had a pocketful of pretty
seashells! I had my answer! Now I knew ‘where I was at,’ and what to do. I
rejoiced! How truly I delighted in being found out. It was like my food. It was
joy all unspeakable full of life’s glory, because this was the food that
brought life.
Tasting this thought I ate it all with glee: The light showed me
up...and what it showed…was light…not darkness; for it was no longer in the
dark. And the light was my life. It was my food and I ate it. It was wonderful.
Eating life I had the substance of life.
I jumped down onto the channel’s smooth little beach and picked up the
feather now given up by the sea’s pages and deposited there. I held it in my
hand. I studied it. It was from a gull’s right wing. A pinion feather. A flight
feather. Suddenly I realized inside, and clear beyond the dry and dusty
knowledge that I had been taught in school that though a pinion feather… an
opinion ‘feather’…was asymmetrically shaped it would have been symmetrically
paired on the black-backed gull’s wings, which would have given it its flight,
its thrust and lift, and . . . an even flight . . . balanced flight!
Oh, I was being shown how to ‘fly’ inside: how to soar through this life! By balancing life! By balancing a
pair of, oh, so similar opposites: right and left flight-wing-understandings; and surely, to do that, you had to be
able to tell them apart. . .
But first, what were they? What were these two things? This pair of
similar opposites? I was still staring
at the large strong feather; and tilting it so that it now shone in the
sunlight. I had had to think carefully a moment before I had seen which side of
the bird it had come from. …My brain was slow. I had once been dyslexic. As a
teenager I had hardly been able to spell a single word the right way around. My
school essays had been sheets of red ink, until they gave up and no longer
marked them.
I ran my fingers along the smooth silky grain of my feather’s barbs, and
then holding it between my thumb and forefinger, feeling along its two edges, I
squeezed gently, and felt the compression… and listening, intently, heard from
its discarded life that it had been released for a new one to grow, to continue
to be able to fly. I smelled the odour its pungent saltiness. Tasted its
meaning. We were ourselves to be as ‘salt’ in this World: the influence of our
lives to function as salt does, without which we were good for nothing, but to
be cast out and to be trodden underfoot of men; and we didn’t understand that;
nor what made us ‘salty,’ but it was ‘life!’ …it was life that did it! …drawing as a magnet all that was open to it.
I held out the feather before me feeling the pull of it in my hand in
its twisting and turning in the brisk wind. Fascinated I looked up to watch the
effortless gliding of the big black-backed gulls as they went skimming out over
the sparkling sea and into the distance toward the island. In a flash, in a
twinkling, I saw and heard in my spirit: ‘Balancing flight:’ It was in knowing
enough, to know how not to know, that you might know without any effort at all,
and so ‘fly!’ In other words: Having sufficient knowledge to be able to know
when to let go of it in order to free-flow and ‘fly,’ which was without it! For
life was in: Leaning not so much upon
what I could understand, as upon what I couldn’t, which was there and waiting
to give me lift; because it was so much higher than I, and would take me up! I could not see what was there, but it
was there; and I would perceive it, and ‘fly’ by it, by believing, which was,
faith!
I laughed exulting in the continuous answering light as the feather
balancing in my outstretched hand. I splashed my feet where I stood in the
little pages of the sea. It was still coming and going…still ‘to-ing’ and ‘fro-ing.’
The wind took up my feather and then spiraled it down; both wind and sea
claiming its own. I danced and kicked up a spray of water in an outbursting
bubble of joy. Sunlight in the droplets turned them into diamonds and they fell
all around me. I felt the force of the sea surge against my legs as it fell and
rose…and fell and rose…‘the fall and
rise’ within me in my spirit. It was the fall that gave the rise! Dying:
and living! Dying, in order to live, to be filled to the brim with the All of
life, and the rest of it, the rest which works life! It was in the letting go
and losing that you rose and your wings were steadied. This was treasure;
because it made you rich in life… the life and light that gave you ‘flight!’ I
kicked up the water some more and sent another spray of diamonds high into the
air. For a split second I saw them as prisms, splitting light into all its
perfect parts, into all its seven colours… the full spectrum of colour… it was
in everything and everywhere; for everything was made of it!
A
yacht was on the horizon. It was sailing past the bay with its multicoloured
spinnaker flying. Idly, I watched its progress. Time slipped by. Time stopped.
Light slipped in. Oh. ‘Sailing!’ Of
course! I could ever be sailing, onward; free in the light. But then it
occurred to me: People, they are not at all used to sailing free… and having
just by believing with nothing else added. Didn’t we always like to add
something to believing: it felt better? But add-ons were false riches, and
deceptive sails, for they were not life. They only weighed us down upon one
wing, so as we couldn’t fly or sail straight! But on and on and into all the
perfect parts of the uncharted waters of life I could sail: if, that is, the
truth was seen against the un-truth in me, which made light perfect, because it
wasn’t in the dark!
Looking up suddenly, something made me turn around to see what was
behind me; after a moment I saw what it was I was seeing. Staring across the
basalt ledges to another miniature beach nestled between the rocks I noticed
the shadow upon the unmarked sand. Shadows had taught me a lot recently. They
were still intriguing me. They spoke more eloquently of the presence and
absence of light and life, by their existence, than ever I could, by my words.
They always taught me some new or expanded inner thing: my understanding being
built consecutively, and all by itself… little by little… diamond by
diamond.,.. particle of light, by particle of light.
The shadow I was looking at was a picture of the rock above it, which
was in the path of the sun. The shadow said it was there; it was the evidence
that it was there; but it wasn’t actually, it. It wasn’t actually the rock.
Of course, it wasn’t. And this was valuable. I saw what it was saying: Losing
more of my shadow-knowledge I have less about something, and more of what it
truly is. And having more of that, I have less of what it isn’t, and the light
increases in me! The less I have of the shadows of life, the more I have of the
substance of life. Oh! So it was easy to get more shadows, but it takes faith
to have less of them!
Deep in thought I looked down again to where I still stood my feet in
the sparkling water and in the incessant surge. A green mangrove seed went
floating by. I picked it up. It was like some tiny heart almost split in half.
A gull swooped by. I turned to follow its path. For an instant I saw it
pictured upon the sand. The shape imprinted in my mind, as fast and sure as the
sudden thump and press of an engraved, signet ring seal upon a piece of
parchment. Yes, of course, I thought. My knowledge makes only a pathway of
shadows before me, not light; when
I’m faced the wrong way, my back towards the source of the light. Just like a
sundial creates a shadow path of the sun; because where its gnomon is - the
upright part which casts the shadow - it gets in the way of the substance of
the stream of the light, and prevents it there; so all I have is only a shadow
of the light, not the light, itself.
‘Gnomon.’ Funny that I should know what it was called. As I said it now,
it sounded like: ‘No man.’ Why, if I wasn’t there, I suddenly realized, there
would be no shadows of the truth, only truth itself! And I saw: Wherever ‘I’ am, and my stubborn owned knowledge
is, the light isn’t, and all I have are its lifeless shadows.
It was a repetition of what I had learned inside sometime ago, when I
had asked within, how I could picture the light. But this was a new slant to that; because this time I had asked to
understand what believing was? What was the nature of faith? And this was all
part and parcel of the answer I was being given. . .
Where my mind was full of knowledge, that place in me becomes solid,
just like the upright gnomon in the sundial, and what is solid gets in the way
of the light, and blocks it. …Oh; so it was true: Less really was more! For
having less of my solid knowledge
would create fewer shadows for me, because less of me gets in the way to make
them! But, it takes faith to have less head knowledge. So faith was made to be
the way that I might have the substance of the light; (…which was, in fact, the
only way to have it!)
That I know ‘about’ something doesn’t mean that I ‘have’ it. Though I
might have some intelligence of it, I don’t have it, itself. So my own path of
learning, ‘about’ was not the path of faith; it was just ‘about:’ not the real
thing.
‘The real thing . . .’ I heard the roaring of the sea. Small, wisp-torn
cloudlings passed over the sun - nearly three hours past its zenith. A raucous
flight of black-back gulls went by. All at once a gust of wind whipped up my
hair again, sending it tossing around and into my eyes. I couldn’t see. Lifting
my hand to move it away, I sensed the living wind of the natural World
synchronizing with that of the spiritual World and of their speaking together,
for they were one, and my hair, along with some other kind of blindness fell
from my eyes. Oh, it was all that was needed this meshing together of the two
Worlds; the two, which were one, when they were divided; divided unto that
mysterious distinction between two similar things which were opposite; a
glorious distinction which brought life and light wherever they were found out,
inside me.
I knew and by long and agonizing personal experience that this wonderful
joining was all because there had been first, a division. I still held the
little green mangrove seed. I imagined it floating again in the clear crystal
sea - the sea of light - the two shiny halves of its heart split asunder, and
yet joined in its middle; even as I had been, also; and yet was now mercifully
joined in my middle. This was the place of the
substance of life: the see-through-knowing of real life, which didn’t get in the way, because it was all
invisible and instant and fleeting, giving only what was needed in and for the
present moment. And all moment by moment, so as you couldn’t make a thing of it
and turn it into a form; a form of ‘solid-knowledge,’ which only blocked out
the light. You had life the moment you were living in it; even as in real life.
It was so simple. It was even, utterly simple. But we didn’t click we
didn’t get it, it was too simple.
But the life of the seed was in its heart, and by its heart working;
even as my life was in my heart, and by its going. Real life. Why, the real
thing . . . was real life! Even as I don’t live by my mind’s stored knowledge,
but by my heart’s spontaneous beating.
I saw: The living breathing World around me did ‘this and that.’ I did
‘this and that,’ in it. Where we met, we meshed. And there we were one. But I
couldn’t see it with my outside eyes. So I must ever have . . . everything . .
. by faith. I was blind to life where I had no living eyes to see it.
I lifted my arm and threw my waxy green seed, which was about the same
size as a walnut back into the water. But having thrown it against the wind, it
didn’t go very far and it was soon back, at my feet. Walnuts, I mused, and I
saw a picture of a shelled one, in my mind. I saw they looked like a split
brain, inside; and they, too, were joined in the middle. I rejoiced that I was
well and whole now with no longer any fear, and that I had the hid wealth and
treasure of that long time of darkness.
I bent down and picked up the seed and had another go at throwing it
back where it had come from. But I turned away before I saw the trail of light
coming back to me from it. Even so, filled with its luminescence I walked on
and away from the sea following the children, deep in thought. Funny, but now
that I was not clutching the mangrove seed to me anymore, I had more of what it
was saying, and by its freedom. I had more of what I was being taught, by
letting it, go. I had the bear light of it, alone; ‘HAVING:’
by my having the wherewithal to have it with; else I couldn’t have it! And I’d
‘have not,’ even all the while, I thought, I had it!
The sea dashed a bigger wave-page at me and suddenly I was soaked to my
thighs. I ran higher up the beach and to the safety of the rocks where the
children were now ‘studying’ - and with varying levels of innocuous shrieks -
the tiny crabs in the warm pools there. I climbed on up to a higher boulder which
had a reasonably flat part in it where I could sit and watch the children, and
think. . .
‘The wherewithal?’ It was in ‘having’ life in you, to begin with; and
then the letting go of it, to truly ‘have’ it!
I saw I had not understood: ‘Having.’ Our way of knowing is all from out of ‘something’ having something,
not from out of ‘nothing’ having
something, which is . . . faith . . . which brought the substance of it!
The way of ex nihilo or, OUT
OF NOTHING having something - and something, which was more real than shadows,
which really are nothing - is either as nonsense to me, or too hard. But real
life and real light is in the heartbeat of our spirit, alone; and functions in
spirit, in spiritual ways. When I function in my ways, ‘me and life' don’t
meet! Light and I don’t meet. We don’t meet each other functioning in opposite
ways. We don’t even come near! I only get further away thinking light and I can
draw near, by our shadows; our shadows of
the truth. That’s just plain crazy. Of course it is. Shadows are places of no light. So light and
I cannot meet in a shadow, because it isn’t there! Light and I cannot meet
where it isn’t! Likewise: Can I hand the light my shadow and then expect it to
meet me in it? It can’t. It’s not possible! Because I’m not really there. Only my shadow is there; not the real me;
only the ‘shadow-me,’ where I pretend.
Reality must meet reality to be real. Where I am not being real with
myself: i.e. where I am not wanting to be seen of me inside myself, I cannot
meet the light and have life: the
light cannot enter the shadow and there still be a shadow there. There I would
be seen. There in that place in me I would have to be real. I would be real.
Where the light is I am made real.
Shadow and light cannot mix. My pretend life and reality cannot meet, so
I have only pretence there. Light and dark cannot co-exist. They cannot live
together in the same place. For where one is, the other isn’t! They are not
compatible. They are actually completely opposite! The light is absolutely light! Real life is absolutely real life; or it
isn’t real life! I laughed
for joy. I jumped up in delight. I stood on the rock of life: this was it!
I was standing upon THE ROCK OF REALITY where there were . . . real answers
. . . to real things.
I went climbing down the boulders again to the rock ledges near the sea;
I had to get down to the little beach once more and write it in the sand. Of
course, it made no sense to do that. The tide was coming in and would soon wipe
it away. But my sense was in what I couldn’t see that I could see was there.
And, anyway, I wrote it just for me, and for the little pages of the endless
See to see. I wrote and with a light grey driftwood stick I’d picked up:
‘Q.E.D.’ in big capital letters. ‘Quod Erat Demonstrandum:’ that which was to
be proved, was proved! I stood back full of joy and looked at what I had
written.
Perhaps, angels watched. And maybe the gulls laughed with me, as they
came flying towards me high overhead; and then went wheeling and dipping out to
sea again the sun on their wings, all calling and keening to one another,
rejoicing in their ineffable airborne life. But anyway, after this brief
exercise in a similitude of insanity I went simply on again across the lower
slippery ledges of rock, encrusted with the sea’s other living things, and on
as far as the next rock enclosed little beach, where I stopped. I was on the
edge and about to jump down when I noticed the shadow in front of me on the
sand . . . my own . . . the place where I had prevented the light. There
immediately came into my mind, an image of a child’s doll.
A doll…? I was confused a moment. A fog inside. The fog cleared. My own doll? And I was answered. Oh! My ‘I’-doll. An Idol! I was astonished. I had made an idol
of myself. I gasped. I couldn’t breathe. I was broken some more. I could almost
hear the pieces of me breaking. I got slowly down onto the fresh new sand, and
signed, on this new bit of beach, what I had written on the last, drawing with
my finger my arrow pierced heart.
I saw my shadow life was like a paper cut-out. A paper doll. Like my
little girls’ dress-up, paper dolls they loved to play with. There before me
was the question: Which will I have? A paper cut-out, or the real thing? An
image of how life can be lived, or the reality of it? What do I really want? A
pathway of shadows forever in front of me? Or a stream of light flowing right
through me going out before me constantly illumining my path?
Oh. If I could just SEE living-life! If I could just SEE the nature of faith, then I would see
and understand the nature of ‘un-faith.’ …and,
if I could see what that was I wouldn’t want it! …and I would run from such a
lifeless thing!
I had reached the end of my small me-shadowed beach and was climbing up
the huge rocky boulders of the promontory that divided this part of the bay
from the next one beyond it. It was tricky climbing. I thought if I didn’t look
where I was going . . . Suddenly I
stepped on a slimy surface, lost my footing, and fell. But I was up quickly,
rubbing it and carrying on. This time looking more carefully to see and discern
the clear bits from the slippery bits; I had to see the difference. Oh. The
difference. Of course! There came that inaudible click again, the sound of the
meshing, and I sat down where I was on the rocks, so as I wouldn’t fall again
and from not looking where I was going. . .
It was all in seeing distance and difference.
Seeing the difference between what it was and what is wasn’t; there,
there was light. If you could not see THE DIFFERENCE then you couldn’t see
anything worth seeing! You had to be able to have the distance to tell apart
the actions of ‘life’ from the actions of ‘un-life’ in you: the difference
between ‘the holy’ and ‘the profane,’ inside you: which was in happily and
joyfully seeing the truth of your own, inner condition: your ‘shadow’ or
‘light;’ else, you walked in darkness! You had to be able, to tell apart, these
three sets of the self same thing, at the same time; because where, you did,
there was light!
And I saw: There was more joy in seeing your darkness than there was in
seeing what you thought was your light. Because in the instant you saw your
dark, it was light, because you could see it; and it wasn’t dark anymore. No
longer in the dark, it couldn’t anymore unknowingly hinder you and steal your
joy in finding it: for in finding it, there was light!
The wind picked up. A thin, ethereal veil of salty sea mist was blowing
in from the waves. I climbed carefully, by hands and feet, as the children
were; and as I did, I was looking down, to see my way, and noticed the tiny
dried out rock pools we passed nestled in the tops of the boulders and how they
were encrusted with salt around their edges. We scrambled on. We reached the next bay and its bit of pebbly beach.
Beyond that was the sand again and we ran down to the sea-edge, skipping along
the delicate filigree of its lacy petticoats - its scalloped pages - its white
edges. I looked and read them: Where their frothy white edges met the sand
there was the distinction between ‘water’ and ‘earth;’ and the earth standing
out of the water and in the water; and the distinction between the
‘nothingness’ of a fluid thing, and the ‘something-ness’ of a solid thing -
where they met.
‘Edges,’ I thought. Edges do help, sometimes, to define things, to tell
you the difference between them, even their endings and beginnings and where
they are. Well, the edge of ‘life,’ moving into ‘un-life,’ where was that? I asked
myself. At the point where there was no igniting. I was answered. At the point
where there weren’t any more micro explosions of light out of darkness: there
the ending edge of the one and the beginning of the other! And they were
important, these borders, for they were places of ‘fire,’ and ‘un-fire’ . . .
life-edges . . . by which you could tell, which was which, when they try to
merge, and cloud and confuse, because they look like nothing!
Of course, they did! Because we are not so accustomed to reading
invisible things, and to standing on them, and having everything, thereby! But
I had been whittled down to zero; down to having nothing; and there I had been
offered a banquet and given a feast!
We knew that it was not possible in the natural World to stand on
nothing and that hold you up, but we weren’t so sure that in the spiritual
World, the invisible World that was really there, it was completely possible,
and that you could walk on ‘air’ and ‘fire’ within you, and feast upon it, and
drink there from a well of living water, ever springing up inside of you.
I recalled the questions of my senses that I
had asked earlier: What was the nature of faith? Its look? Its sound? Its taste? And
fragrance? Its feel? Its home?
Well, it looked like you had nothing, in your own eyes. But all the
while you had it, you had, everything; and with it, no baggage. Nothing to
carry. You travelled ‘light!’
Oh, the nature of faith! …Here it all was!
Like the sea and the wind together was its sound. I had heard it. Real
believing sounds just as exhilarating; full of life and fire and purpose. I
understood: As the wind needs the sea, so
the life a body to sound in. I saw a new body had been prepared for you in
being made over again; it was completely a new state of being with new
abilities; for with it came a new batch of senses with which to explore and
apprehend all things.
And
faith’s taste? The taste of it? That was all delicious. Having everything by
revelation that was as melting as sweet wafers of nectar and honey; rich as
butter! Back of your palate, you tasted a comfort in it. It satisfied something
in you… something indefinable, that was ever desperate . . . or just out of
reach.
And as for fragrance? It could frame the lily . . . the lilies of the
field, and the amaranth and make of that unfading flower’s scent, the merest
hint of what it was that it had been foreshadowing that was so much greater.
Where you remembered the experiences of its living functioning, it brought back
memories, just as any kind of real scent, will bring.
Not only that, but it could be real in this natural World, too: it could
manifest anywhere where you were at one with it in your heart; coming as a
wonderful confirmation and comfort to you. I had smelled this heavenly
fragrance a few times in my life; and these times were intimate, full of love,
and very precious; and everlasting; you could never forget them. Now I
understood them more, and why they had come.
And faith’s touch? …and feel? Why, it was as light as a feather and as quick as lightning! …You felt so
light inside you it was like being physically lifted and walking on your
tiptoes just to be able to reach the ground; and joy, such joy, it was like you
were being spread-eagled and turning cartwheels in the air… being tipped over
and over, and over again…dying and living: …and joy upon joy, and over and
over!
And its home? Its true environment; where it thrived? Where was that but
wherever you were alive and at home
in love’s Everland. Its continuous realm wherever you were continuously in it!
And forever in Everland you were ever Home.
There, completeness and love,
where all was one when the light ran through. ...Liberty and freedom! Rejoicing
and laughing! Where was it? …It was in every place of the finding out!!
I heard the sweet piping of the oystercatchers. I stood perfectly still,
listening. The liquid cadence of their calling pierced and entered my
consciousness and made its way into my heart. I caught sight of them further
along the rocky shore. How perfectly balanced they were, though they had such
overly long and comical beaks. Their bright orange colour, set against their
jet-black bodies was compelling; even stunning. ‘…Contrast,’ I thought; and I
weighed this in me somewhere. Things defining by being opposite. In your seeing
two distinct things, side by side, there was a pleasing for some inner
something, in you, somewhere. I observed the oystercatchers’ antics, and how
they spoke with one another by their movements. There were four of them down
beside the low rocks wading at the sea’s edge there. In pairs, they were.
I stayed awhile, not thinking, and just watched them; listening for the
occasional winding of the delightful little penny whistle in their call. I felt
the salt air and the sea and the sand beneath my tiptoes in the lightness of
the inner rising. Love rose, filling me with a glowing communal joy with all
around me, gripping and turning over in my middle in a sweetness there that was
almost like sorrow; *
my continuous companionship with the way the truth and the life was a warm and
burning joy, all through me. I was
never, ever alone: intimate with him, whom I knew, not to name: that he would
do that, himself, manifesting himself wherever he could, and wherever it
pleased him to do so; and not in word, but in deed; for in him we live and move
and have our being.
A flash of orange! A tiny flicker of wings! And a monarch butterfly flew
close by. I must go. Just live. I could no longer stand still and think; not
for another moment. I called the children to me, and we climbed quickly back up
and over the dark basalt rock of the promontory and alternately ran or
scrambled back the way we had come until we reached the mouth of the stream.
Here we found it deeper. The flood tide waits for no man. I picked up the
smallest child and with the
______________________________
* Our deepest longing is one side of the desire
for that which we know not, but which we know is there; and the consummation or
the satisfying of that desire is on the other side. The two sides complement
each other and fuel each other; creating in us a continuous un-satisfy-able
desire having its only possibility of fulfilment, elsewhere than in this World:
for it is beyond it. Hence our ineffable joy is experienced as a faint and
tantalizing echo and a yearning sorrow.
other three, close by me, waded across.
As we did I remembered the live cockleshell and laughed. I was glad. For the
only living shell, I had given back, to the only place it could live, and that
was where it was meant to be . . . in the sea of life.
The stream’s mouth was deep. We got very wet.
Hurrying along the shore we listened to one another’s excited chatter
and planned the things we would do next. Back home, perhaps we would make
unique little picture books, together… in the hidden creativity of the micro
worlds we had discovered... Solitude having made us all the richer in ideas for
interesting ways in which to record our findings: lone time for ‘me’ always a
friend and helper. The capacity to be alone was something to be nurtured.
Sadly, though, in ‘normal’ life, solitude was a road to inner riches largely
un-travelled. But our homeschooling had become a way of life that could safely
accommodate solitude; being entirely an holistic experience, unbounded by
scholastic traditions, daily we discovered, new wonders.
Running along the beach, silently singing, alive, alive, O I dug out all the seashells from my pocket and
scattered them loosely on the glistening sand . . . where they belonged . . .
where they fitted seamlessly into the living scheme of things, irresistible
there for being in perfect harmony with the speech of every created thing
whispering wisdom to any who would stop and notice. . . . We are all our lives
in the midst of an open book telling our own story. The World all around us is all the time
speaking to, or mirroring our own inside condition; and
according to the level of our inner responsiveness - conditioned upon our
acceptance of the light even where it pierced through the camouflage of our
pride and hurt - we can read the Book of the World, which has no words, that
all the time is telling us of our own inner state of being: lightening our
darkness, bringing us completeness and joy, and direction and deep purpose in
our lives.
*
____________________________________________________________
* But
like anything else that is mysterious to us, and unique and precious in the
World this wonderful connection can be abused and corrupted; its proper
functioning is dependent upon the seeing eyes of a pure heart and a pure mind.
N.B. Concerning the
interconnectedness of all created things, as evidenced in my story, perhaps it
is just a deeper and inner and far reaching application of Albert Einstein’s
equation: E = mc2 which, in essence, showed that matter was nothing more than a
form of light. And being light it was all connecting: light being always one with light: which was again a deeper, inner
and far reaching application of John Bell’s theorem, ‘which stipulates that once connected, atomic entities are always
connected.’ And this: that ‘thoughts
are living energy.’ - Dr Caroline Leaf. And energy cannot be created or
destroyed. ‘For in him we live and move
and have our being.’ - Acts 17: 28; and ‘by him all things consist.’ -
Colossians
1: 17
