You can seek to move towards pleasure and away from pain without losing the appreciation of the symphony that is both or losing the deep understanding of their interdependence.

To express my agreement with this statement: Both pleasure and pain are equal parts of a unity which might be called “the being of feeling”. This being includes pain, pleasure, the feeler, the object producing the feeling, and the setting in which it occurs. It is all of these things.

But this only pictures that unity within a single moment of time. The being of feeling also includes the movement of feeling, which is the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure. All that “pain” means is, “a feeling we seek to avoid.” It is “pain” because of our aversion, and “pleasure” because of our attraction.

So to avoid pain is also the being of feeling; it is part of the drama that makes up feeling. The attractive nature of pleasure would not be as sweet if there were not other feelings to repel us just as strongly. Pulled between like and dislike, these opposites become part of another being, perhaps “the being of desire”. Without attraction and repulsion, the being of feeling would be disconnected from the being of desire.

The critical difference lies in whether we love the being of feeling as a unity, or only some of its parts. Take for example the contrast between good and evil: A being arises which is both good and evil, as well as the movement of championing good and battling against evil. However, without evil – though we seek to defeat it – the greater unity of which they’re a part would not be (in the sense of becoming a being of consciousness). The champion of good, whose true love is this greater being, will honor evil even as he defeats it for the role it plays toward that being.

Another example: Illness and health are, together, the being of life, which is a constant movement from birth to decay. A doctor who serves the being of life, plays his role by championing health and fighting disease. However, it is critical to the being of life that he not succeed completely. If a doctor were able to eliminate all illness from birth, he would leave the patient incapable of facing other, unknown illnesses that also exist in the world. By granting perfect health, the patient would cease to be robust, and thus real health a would be impossible.

For a genuinely healthy person must face illness. It is never desirable to seek to become ill – part of the movement of the being of life is that we encourage health and promote illness – but without facing illness, a person could not be hardy. A doctor who strives for the being of life will champion health, but also honor illness for the role it plays in that being. It is because we fall ill at times, that we are healthy the rest of the time. In this way, as a unity, the being of life is able to be.

The same with pleasure and pain. If we desire to feel deeply, we must seek out pleasure and avoid pain, but also honor pain when it comes, because it must come if we are to really feel. If we grow too comfortable with pleasure, to the point of feeling nothing at all, we (or God) must push us from our confinement to seek other pleasures, an activity which carries the risk of encountering other pains. To be truly alive – a lover of life – we must embrace all the parts of experience, honoring them for their role, even if the function of those roles seems contradictory.

I am not saying pain and pleasure are equal, or to be regarded equally. Such an identity would end the very being I refer to! The idea is that all parts – even those whose roles are diametrically opposed – are together that being. The movement of being means relating both to the parts (avoiding pain and preferring pleasure) and the whole (appreciating that both pain and pleasure are the life of feeling). In this way we honor injustice even as we strive to defeat it; we honor illness even as we develop medicines to counter it; we honor pain even as we take steps to avoid it. In fact, if we did not seek to avoid pain, we would be denying its role in the fuller aspect of its being! If everything were pleasant, feeling would start to diminish. So the love of being is a love of all its parts, even if some of the roles of those parts demand that we fight against them.6

Since some of the parts of unity require the behavior of opposition, we see how necessary it is to being that we fail at times. Without imperfection, there could not be a consciousness of the higher being of which imperfection and perfection are both a part. That is, it may be the role of imperfection that I constantly seek to improve it, but it is also necessary to that greater being that sometimes I fail at this task. If ever I were to perfect my elimination of imperfection, I would also eliminate the unity I seek, since it is by imperfection that its being becomes known to me.

This does not mean that I will not continue, for the rest of my life, to seek perfection. The movement of the greater being of perfection and imperfection is that I struggle from one to the other. But it does mean that I will honor imperfection, even love it for the role it plays in making me conscious of my goal – even if that love is expressed by my seeking to undo imperfection; for by seeking to undo imperfection, I play my role in the movement of being.

This is fundamentally a philosophy of love, where even hate is loved because both hate and love together – and the lover, the beloved, and all the other parts – make up the greater unity to which this philosophy addresses itself. The being of true love could not be known without hateful things to test it (see “The steed of pain”, below). Thus, what is hateful is also loved, because its role in the being of love is that love will seek to overcome hatred with itself.

This is a world-view in which destruction and upbuilding are both one being. It does not matter that building destroys destruction, or that destruction lays the foundation for building. The two principles are, in their separateness, opposed; but as parts of a higher unity, they are interdependent. The two are intimately bound; just as with the Yin-Yang, they are two, but two aspects of one symbol, two sides of a single coin. They depend on each other, even though that dependence requires the giving way of each to the rise of the other.

As separate parts this could never make sense. The parts describe a universe fundamentally at odds with itself, an unresolvable paradox. But as members of a common unity, the parts are shown to serve the being of something more than themselves – which is also themselves. Through their opposition, the many in fact fulfill the being of the One.

It requires such a higher unity to resolve these warring parts, or else the paradox would never end. If creation and destruction are always at odds, as they must be, how can there ever be harmony? It is in the higher unity – the being of which these two are a part, and which they express by their conflict – that resolution is found. If that be the case, it argues for a resolution of all the manyness and inexplicability of life in a greater unity encompassing them all: a unity that includes temporality, limitation and finitude, as well as eternity, boundlessness and the infinite. Whatever that being is, it is what all this chaos and paradox refers to, in which they must all find their fulfillment.

The many and the one

Alan Watts, in his book The Wisdom of Insecurity, wrote:

The sense of unity with the “All” is not… a nebulous state of mind, a sort of trance, in which all form and distinction is abolished, as if man and the universe merged into a luminous mist of pale mauve. Just as process and form, energy and matter, myself and experience, are names for, and ways of looking at, the same thing – so one and many, unity and multiplicity, identity and difference, are not mutually exclusive opposites: they are each other, much as the body is its various organs. To discover that the many are the one, and that the one is the many, is to realize that both are words and noises representing what is at once obvious to sense and feeling, and an enigma to logic and description.

Previous to reading this, I had been looking for an experience of reality underlying all my perceptions of it. Now, I wonder if my perceptions are that reality – if not in essence, then in being.

For example, my heart is me, in the sense that if I lost my heart, I would perish. My life and my heart are synonymous. But my heart is not what you read in these sentences. The personality you read is a reality more uniquely me than any physical part. This intangible me, in one sense, is distinct from the physical; this can lead me to see the two soul as utterly different, sometimes at odds with each other. Yet, I have never had an experience of life other than a bodily one, which means that my body is as much me as my soul – at this point in my experience of life. The two depend on each other. This creates a unity from the two, which is what people think of as “John”. Since no one can see my soul, that is not “John”; and if my body were laid under the ground, that also would not be me. My reality is neither one, but the unity of the whole. The many are the one.

It might be said that what is most real is what can endure death. In the scheme of my separate parts, this is certainly true. But the part of me that does survive cannot become what it will without the part it leaves behind. Without this mortal, physical life, my soul would be a very different soul. Thus, in the scheme of my being, there is no part more real than another. To call the physical experience unreal would imply that what my soul has learned here is unreal; yet if I suddenly undid the whole experience, the being that I am – who has learned all these things – would also vanish.

The ultimate reality, then, of which all my perceptions are but shades of glimpses, is also what I perceive of it. Because without those perceptions, there would be no “thing perceived”. “It” might still continue, but it would no longer be an “it”, any more than a thing unexperienced can ever be real to anyone but itself. In the scheme of the many, what is truly real may forever outreach me; but in terms of our unity, how I perceive it is very much a part of what it is.

For example: everyone reads a poem differently. There is the author’s intent, which no one can truly understand but him; and there are all the opinions people have of that poem. It could be said the author’s intent is more real, because his intention is what created the poem. Without him, there would be nothing to read. Other people’s views did not bring the poem into being. But are they less real? In the sense of unity, those opinions are also the reality of the poem. It is both what the author intended, and what other people read into it. If they never read it, it would not be a poem. It would rather be a nameless experience shared between the author and himself. To call it a “poem” would mean no more than calling it by any other name. It becomes a “poem” only when there is an audience to hear it. It’s reality, then, is both in itself – separate from the reader and nameless – and in the reader, in the form of a synergistic whole we call “a poem”.

All of this, of course, relates to our connection with the One Who created us. In the sense of being separate, I could no more say, “I am God”, than a cell of my body could claim to bear my identity. But in the sense of the-whole-in-the-parts, we are very much “God”, for without a creation He would not be a Creator. His essence would still endure, but He would no longer be “He” without us. “His name, the Creator, presupposeth a creation, even as His title, the Lord of Men, must involve the existence of a servant.”

To use another example: Every father was also a son. As a man, the father is separate from the son, but as a father, he is linked. Without the son, he would not be a father; without the father, there would be no son. Father and son are thus two sides of a single being: a greater unity made up of the two. Take either away, and both disappear. They are each other. Separate in one sense, but of one being (“fatherhood”) in another.

So when I look up at the sun or the clouds, I am more than the eyes that see them, or my sight of them. I am something which includes me as the seer, and the sky as the seen. We cannot be separated without destroying the two – nor can we be merged. We must be distinct even as we must be one, just as the moments of my life make up the unity of who I am, without any moment ever being the duplicate of another. Even unity and distinction are parts of a whole, for if there were no distinction, there would be no unity.

All of this completely changes my view of what is “real”. There is no underneath, anymore. There might still be, in the existential sense, but not in the experiential sense; because although I can never know the essence of reality – how to see without perception? – I am always part of it by my role in the greater unity. I am what I seek, as the son is the reality of the father. It is not the world which makes me feel apart, but my seeking to be united with it! It is a goal which, because it’s already met, cannot be satisfied if one doesn’t believe it. It would be like seeing a person who should be happy, but isn’t. What can you do? It’s not the circumstances that need changing, but their basic relationship to life. How that happens, I think, is the next step along this path…

Meditate on what the poet hath written: “Wonder not, if my Best-Beloved be closer to me than mine own self; wonder at this, that I, despite such nearness, should still be so far from Him.”…

Two sides of a coin

If I seek pleasure, and reject pain, I lose what both are a part of: my depth of feeling. But to an artist, depth of feeling is all. If pain and pleasure both contribute to it, how can either be shunned? It depends on what one seeks: feelings of pleasure – which must diminish in the absence of contrast – or a greater depth of feeling itself.

The interplay of opposites hones awareness. Nothing makes a meal taste better than hunger. Anyone who has fasted knows the sublime taste of water at the end of the day. What could compare to it? But it needs a day of toil to reach that moment of perfection; a day of loss to feel the beauty of the gain.

Always moving from opposite to opposite, what is the point? Perhaps it is the unity these two are a part of: consciousness. Repetition of one state leads to familiarity, which breeds forgetfulness. They say, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Our fondness for life would diminish without its trials, just as our amazement at the sunrise would lessen without the endless monotony of physical existence. Between extremes we are shaped, formed, and bred to a higher state of being: an awareness of the reality pointed to by those extremes. That is, not just a keener sense of pain, or of pleasure, but “the marrow of life”: the depths we reach by the interplay of the two.

In the book Zen and the Art of Archery, Eugen Herrigel talks about his experience learning archery from a Zen teacher. At one point, the teacher talked about how the archer and the target are two parts of one thing. In one sense, the archer shoots an arrow at the target; in the other, the target draws the arrow from the archer. They are not contending opposites, but two parts of a single thing: Archery. When the archer acts as if he were apart from it, he is not able to manifest “Archery” by his actions. He can only do it if he gives himself up to what he wishes to be a part of. At that moment, Archery comes into being. It cannot be said where it begins or where it ends. It is the man, the bow, the arrow, the target, all of it. To say it begins at the bow, and ends at the target, only divides it again. As Archery, it is one, indivisible; as separate parts, they each have their role.

Sometimes, when Eugen would allow Archery to appear by his actions, the teacher would stop and bow, saying “It” had shot. If Eugen thought he had done it – as if the man alone were Archery – the teacher would tell him all their practice was for nothing. He was not learning to shoot a bow, but to become a part of Archery, until there could be no distinction between himself and the target, or any other part. There is only Archery, if the archer allows himself to participate, and to share that reality with all the other parts.

This is my understanding of what the book was saying; I’m paraphrasing because the book is in storage, but it seemed also to be saying: the many and the one are the same; we only go wrong is by disbelieving this.

I am going to put these thoughts to the test by seeing if I can participate in the systems of life. I’m accustomed to thinking that I’m essentially separate from them, which means I do not easily accept my role. What would happen if my foot rejected playing its part in the operation of my body? But I do something similar when I separate myself from the unities I am a part of. Let’s see what happens if I yield, and stop trying so hard to establish “myself” as apart…

The movement of being

Both pleasure and pain are equal parts of a unity which might be called “the being of feeling”. This being includes pain, pleasure, the feeler, the object producing the feeling, and the setting in which it occurs. It is all of these things.

But this only pictures that unity within a single moment of time. The being of feeling also includes the movement of feeling, which is the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure. All that “pain” means is, “a feeling we seek to avoid.” It is “pain” because of our aversion, and “pleasure” because of our attraction.

So to avoid pain is also the being of feeling; it is part of the drama that makes up feeling. The attractive nature of pleasure would not be as sweet if there were not other feelings to repel us just as strongly. Pulled between like and dislike, these opposites become part of another being, perhaps “the being of desire”. Without attraction and repulsion, the being of feeling would be disconnected from the being of desire.

The critical difference lies in whether we love the being of feeling as a unity, or only some of its parts. Take for example the contrast between good and evil: A being arises which is both good and evil, as well as the movement of championing good and battling against evil. However, without evil – though we seek to defeat it – the greater unity of which they’re a part would not be (in the sense of becoming a being of consciousness). The champion of good, whose true love is this greater being, will honor evil even as he defeats it for the role it plays toward that being.

Another example: Illness and health are, together, the being of life, which is a constant movement from birth to decay. A doctor who serves the being of life, plays his role by championing health and fighting disease. However, it is critical to the being of life that he not succeed completely. If a doctor were able to eliminate all illness from birth, he would leave the patient incapable of facing other, unknown illnesses that also exist in the world. By granting perfect health, the patient would cease to be robust, and thus real health a would be impossible.

For a genuinely healthy person must face illness. It is never desirable to seek to become ill – part of the movement of the being of life is that we encourage health and promote illness – but without facing illness, a person could not be hardy. A doctor who strives for the being of life will champion health, but also honor illness for the role it plays in that being. It is because we fall ill at times, that we are healthy the rest of the time. In this way, as a unity, the being of life is able to be.

The same with pleasure and pain. If we desire to feel deeply, we musta seek out pleasure and avoid pain, but also honor pain when it comes, because it must come if we are to really feel. If we grow too comfortable with pleasure, to the point of feeling nothing at all, we (or God) must push us from our confinement to seek other pleasures, an activity which carries the risk of encountering other pains. To be truly alive – a lover of life – we must embrace all the parts of experience, honoring them for their role, even if the function of those roles seems contradictory.

I am not saying pain and pleasure are equal, or to be regarded equally. Such an identity would end the very being I refer to! The idea is that all parts – even those whose roles are diametrically opposed – are together that being. The movement of being means relating both to the parts (avoiding pain and preferring pleasure) and the whole (appreciating that both pain and pleasure are the life of feeling). In this way we honor injustice even as we strive to defeat it; we honor illness even as we develop medicines to counter it; we honor pain even as we take steps to avoid it. In fact, if we did not seek to avoid pain, we would be denying its role in the fuller aspect of its being! If everything were pleasant, feeling would start to diminish. So the love of being is a love of all its parts, even if some of the roles of those parts demand that we fight against them.

(On a mystical level, I believe one can develop a deeper appreciation of pain and pleasure so that, despite avoidance and attraction, we bear a deep appreciation for both. When pain must come, we cherish it even as we avoid it; and when pleasure comes, we cherish it similarly even as we revel in it. This is when the soul relates directly to the being of the two, while the body relates to one or the other part).

Since some of the parts of unity require the behavior of opposition, we see how necessary it is to being that we fail at times. Without imperfection, there could not be a consciousness of the higher being of which imperfection and perfection are both a part. That is, it may be the role of imperfection that I constantly seek to improve it, but it is also necessary to that greater being that sometimes I fail at this task. If ever I were to perfect my elimination of imperfection, I would also eliminate the unity I seek, since it is by imperfection that its being becomes known to me.

This does not mean that I will not continue, for the rest of my life, to seek perfection. The movement of the greater being of perfection and imperfection is that I struggle from one to the other. But it does mean that I will honor imperfection, even love it for the role it plays in making me conscious of my goal – even if that love is expressed by my seeking to undo imperfection; for by seeking to undo imperfection, I play my role in the movement of being.

This is fundamentally a philosophy of love, where even hate is loved because both hate and love together – and the lover, the beloved, and all the other parts – make up the greater unity to which this philosophy addresses itself. The being of true love could not be known without hateful things to test it (see “The steed of pain”, below). Thus, what is hateful is also loved, because its role in the being of love is that love will seek to overcome hatred with itself.

This is a world-view in which destruction and upbuilding are both one being. It does not matter that building destroys destruction, or that destruction lays the foundation for building. The two principles are, in their separateness, opposed; but as parts of a higher unity, they are interdependent. The two are intimately bound; just as with the Yin-Yang, they are two, but two aspects of one symbol, two sides of a single coin. They depend on each other, even though that dependence requires the giving way of each to the rise of the other.

As separate parts this could never make sense. The parts describe a universe fundamentally at odds with itself, an unresolvable paradox. But as members of a common unity, the parts are shown to serve the being of something more than themselves – which is also themselves. Through their opposition, the many in fact fulfill the being of the One.

It requires such a higher unity to resolve these warring parts, or else the paradox would never end. If creation and destruction are always at odds, as they must be, how can there ever be harmony? It is in the higher unity – the being of which these two are a part, and which they express by their conflict – that resolution is found. If that be the case, it argues for a resolution of all the manyness and inexplicability of life in a greater unity encompassing them all: a unity that includes temporality, limitation and finitude, as well as eternity, boundlessness and the infinite. Whatever that being is, it is what all this chaos and paradox refers to, in which they must all find their fulfillment.

If I seek pleasure, and reject pain8, I lose what both are a part of: my depth of feeling. But to an artist, depth of feeling is all. If pain and pleasure both contribute to it, how can either be shunned? It depends on what one seeks: feelings of pleasure – which must diminish in the absence of contrast – or a greater depth of feeling itself.

The interplay of opposites hones awareness. Nothing makes a meal taste better than hunger. Anyone who has fasted knows the sublime taste of water at the end of the day. What could compare to it? But it needs a day of toil to reach that moment of perfection; a day of loss to feel the beauty of the gain.

Always moving from opposite to opposite, what is the point? Perhaps it is the unity these two are a part of: consciousness. Repetition of one state leads to familiarity, which breeds forgetfulness. They say, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Our fondness for life would diminish without its trials, just as our amazement at the sunrise would lessen without the endless monotony of physical existence. Between extremes we are shaped, formed, and bred to a higher state of being: an awareness of the reality pointed to by those extremes. That is, not just a keener sense of pain, or of pleasure, but “the marrow of life”: the depths we reach by the interplay of the two.

In the book Zen and the Art of Archery, Eugen Herrigel talks about his experience learning archery from a Zen teacher. At one point, the teacher talked about how the archer and the target are two parts of one thing. In one sense, the archer shoots an arrow at the target; in the other, the target draws the arrow from the archer. They are not contending opposites, but two parts of a single thing: Archery. When the archer acts as if he were apart from it, he is not able to manifest “Archery” by his actions. He can only do it if he gives himself up to what he wishes to be a part of. At that moment, Archery comes into being. It cannot be said where it begins or where it ends. It is the man, the bow, the arrow, the target, all of it. To say it begins at the bow, and ends at the target, only divides it again. As Archery, it is one, indivisible; as separate parts, they each have their role.

Sometimes, when Eugen would allow Archery to appear by his actions, the teacher would stop and bow, saying “It” had shot. If Eugen thought he had done it – as if the man alone were Archery – the teacher would tell him all their practice was for nothing. He was not learning to shoot a bow, but to become a part of Archery, until there could be no distinction between himself and the target, or any other part. There is only Archery, if the archer allows himself to participate, and to share that reality with all the other parts.

This is my understanding of what the book was saying; I’m paraphrasing because the book is in storage, but it seemed also to be saying: the many and the one are the same; we only go wrong by disbelieving this.

I am going to put these thoughts to the test by seeing if I can participate in the systems of life. I’m accustomed to thinking that I’m essentially separate from them, which means I do not easily accept my role. What would happen if my foot rejected playing its part in the operation of my body? But I do something similar when I separate myself from the unities I am a part of. Let’s see what happens if I yield, and stop trying so hard to establish “myself” as apart…

The sea was somber, almost somnambulant --  
the waves, even, unaware of their motion.

I used that silence to hear the quiet,  
to watch the milky moonlight  
pour upon the waters,

And gaze into a dark so deep  
it seemed to fathom me.

Alan Watts, in his book The Wisdom of Insecurity, wrote:

The sense of unity with the “All” is not… a nebulous state of mind, a sort of trance, in which all form and distinction is abolished, as if man and the universe merged into a luminous mist of pale mauve. Just as process and form, energy and matter, myself and experience, are names for, and ways of looking at, the same thing – so one and many, unity and multiplicity, identity and difference, are not mutually exclusive opposites: they are each other, much as the body is its various organs. To discover that the many are the one, and that the one is the many, is to realize that both are words and noises representing what is at once obvious to sense and feeling, and an enigma to logic and description.

Previous to reading this, I had been looking for an experience of reality underlying all my perceptions of it. Now, I wonder if my perceptions are that reality – if not in essence, then in being.

For example, my heart is me, in the sense that if I lost my heart, I would perish. My life and my heart are synonymous. But my heart is not what you read in these sentences. The personality you read is a reality more uniquely me than any physical part. This intangible me, in one sense, is distinct from the physical; this can lead me to see the two selves as utterly different, sometimes at odds with each other. Yet, I have never had an experience of life other than a bodily one, which means that my body is as much me as my soul – at this point in my experience of life. The two depend on each other. This creates a unity from the two, which is what people think of as “John”. Since no one can see my soul, that is not “John”; and if my body were laid under the ground, that also would not be me. My reality is neither one, but the unity of the whole. The many are the one.

It might be said that what is most real is what can endure death. In the scheme of my separate parts, this is certainly true. But the part of me that does survive cannot become what it will without the part it leaves behind. Without this mortal, physical life, my soul would be a very different soul. Thus, in the scheme of my being, there is no part more real than another. To call the physical experience unreal would imply that what my soul has learned here is unreal; yet if I suddenly undid the whole experience, the being that I am – who has learned all these things – would also vanish.

The ultimate reality, then, of which all my perceptions are but shades of glimpses, is also what I perceive of it. Because without those perceptions, there would be no “thing perceived”. “It” might still continue, but it would no longer be an “it”, any more than a thing unexperienced can ever be real to anyone but itself. In the scheme of the many, what is truly real may forever outreach me; but in terms of our unity, how I perceive it is very much a part of what it is.

For example: everyone reads a poem differently. There is the author’s intent, which no one can truly understand but him; and there are all the opinions people have of that poem. It could be said the author’s intent is more real, because his intention is what created the poem. Without him, there would be nothing to read. Other people’s views did not bring the poem into being. But are they less real? In the sense of unity, those opinions are also the reality of the poem. It is both what the author intended, and what other people read into it. If they never read it, it would not be a poem. It would rather be a nameless experience shared between the author and himself. To call it a “poem” would mean no more than calling it by any other name. It becomes a “poem” only when there is an audience to hear it. It’s reality, then, is both in itself – separate from the reader and nameless – and in the reader, in the form of a synergistic whole we call “a poem”.

All of this, of course, relates to our connection with the One Who created us. In the sense of being separate, I could no more say, “I am God”, than a cell of my body could claim to bear my identity. But in the sense of the-whole-in-the-parts, we are very much “God”, for without a creation He would not be a Creator. His essence would still endure, but He would no longer be “He” without us. “His name, the Creator, presupposeth a creation, even as His title, the Lord of Men, must involve the existence of a servant.”

To use another example: Every father was also a son. As a man, the father is separate from the son, but as a father, he is linked. Without the son, he would not be a father; without the father, there would be no son. Father and son are thus two sides of a single being: a greater unity made up of the two. Take either away, and both disappear. They are each other. Separate in one sense, but of one being (“fatherhood”) in another.

So when I look up at the sun or the clouds, I am more than the eyes that see them, or my sight of them. I am something which includes me as the seer, and the sky as the seen. We cannot be separated without destroying the two – nor can we be merged. We must be distinct even as we must be one, just as the moments of my life make up the unity of who I am, without any moment ever being the duplicate of another. Even unity and distinction are parts of a whole, for if there were no distinction, there would be no unity.

All of this completely changes my view of what is “real”. There is no underneath, anymore. There might still be, in the existential sense, but not in the experiential sense; because although I can never know the essence of reality – how to see without perception? – I am always part of it by my role in the greater unity. I am what I seek, as the son is the reality of the father. It is not the world which makes me feel apart, but my seeking to be united with it! It is a goal which, because it’s already met, cannot be satisfied if one doesn’t believe it. It would be like seeing a person who should be happy, but isn’t. What can you do? It’s not the circumstances that need changing, but their basic relationship to life. How that happens, I think, is the next step along this path…

Meditate on what the poet hath written: “Wonder not, if my Best-Beloved be closer to me than mine own self; wonder at this, that I, despite such nearness, should still be so far from Him.”…

In the mystical journeys of the Seven Valleys, a point occurs in the valley of love where Bahá’u’lláh says, “The steed of this valley is pain; and if there be no pain this journey will never end.” I think pain is a steed here because it offers proof to the lover: it is his foil, his trial by fire. Until he experiences the transmutation of pain, he has not passed the final test of love.

What I mean by a test of love is: If I met someone who claimed to be in love with someone or something, I would ask a few questions:

• Do you lose sleep thinking about him or her?
• Do you lose the desire for anything else?
• Are your thoughts only of him or her?
• Does time stop when she or he is near?

And then the real question:

• When you suffer pain for his or her sake, how does it feel?

To the true lover, pain suffered for the beloved is sweeter than pleasure. I look at programming, in my case. Programming is arduous, requiring long hours of thought and debugging. This Friday I spent ten hours tweaking a bit of code to run 20% faster. That’s all; something users will hardly notice. It took time pouring over tiny details, debugging each problem that came up. It was exhausting – it was exhilarating. I looked at the movie times that night, but decided the joy of coding was more attractive than sitting in a theater. The pain of the effort was more appealing than the pleasure of being entertained.

This is a proof of love: how one experiences pain in the path of that love. If bitter, one’s love is not complete; if sweet, his love is true. Thus, pain is the steed by which we know if we’ve found our love, the barometer that measures the rarity of our devotion. Even the least hint of bitterness should spur us on, telling us we have not found our goal. Because when a person finds what they seek, all the world disappears… He might walk through a valley of gold, but not know it was there.

The next time you meet someone with passion, ask about it. Listen to how they describe it, what they say. What parts do they leave out? What do they tell first? It may sound as if, by talking about it, they become impatient to return. They will talk about the experience of it, the joy, the possibilities. There are no limits, no stumbling blocks. The world they describe can seem an infinite place of goodness and light.

Because I think, from reading the mystical literature and some other experiences, that when we love God and life to this extent, pain no longer finds a place in our hearts. Should it come close, it is transmuted into something else, beyond pleasure and pain. Bahá’u’lláh writes:

A lover feareth nothing and no harm can come nigh him: Thou seest him chill in the fire and dry in the sea…

Love’s a stranger to earth and heaven too; In him are lunacies seventy-and-two.

[Love] hath bound a myriad victims in his fetters, wounded a myriad wise men with his arrow. Know that every redness in the world is from his anger, and every paleness in men’s cheeks is from his poison. He yieldeth no remedy but death, he walketh not save in the valley of the shadow; yet sweeter than honey is his venom on the lover’s lips, and fairer his destruction in the seeker’s eyes than a hundred thousand lives.

We are taught to see the world in terms of what it isn’t. This is why traffic bothers us: because we see our destination invisibly laid over the current scene, and the difference as a gnawing lack. We evaluate events compared to what they might have been. We live one life in the body, and countless possible lives-that-aren’t in the mind. Looking at things in terms of their negative – awareness by contrast – I stop seeing what is, which cannot be understood in terms of what isn’t. Could I learn a language, studying the words it doesn’t contain?

People in a silent room seem to unconsciously hear the music that’s not playing, the sounds they aren’t hearing. The omission of sound is what troubles them. If they listened to the silence, what could be wrong with it?

Thinking about what is not cannot inform me about awareness, since the negative of awareness is exactly that of which I cannot be aware. If the negative of my being cannot inform me about being, how can the negative of life inform me about life?

Perhaps our awareness is the present, is reality, is God as manifest. What reason do I have, other than my education, to separate them? Wherever one is, there’s always the other. Could I be aware without that of which I’m aware? Can that of which I’m aware exist without my awareness of it? If they are inextricably linked, perhaps they are the same thing.

When I think I know something, I stop looking at it. It’s ignorance, in which a person wants to learn, that causes us to look. Thus, ignorance is more beneficial to awareness than knowledge. Knowledge is useful for increasing the scope of our curiosity, granting us access to a greater and more profound ignorance, increasing our thirst to know. But if it remove our sense of ignorance, knowledge defeats itself. Awareness swims in the unknown, moving from intrigue to intrigue; it dies without breath on the shores of what is certain.

What comes below follows directly from earlier essay, The Hidden Door, which had a profoundly unsettling affect on me (and my sense of “me”). That essay led to several weeks of feeling strange, and jumping at shadows, disturbing as it did many long-held notions I’d had about what was real.

Then this, two weeks ago, with an even greater affect. It opened floodgates of past and present sorrow, which had been held off for so long by not accepting them. Some of it was even unleashed on the dearest people in my life, before I knew what was happening. Which leaves me today staring out over a black pit – but one with a bright and growing center…

I appreciate everything I am given, to the extent I do not ask for more. If it all must end today, I accept. If I lose everything and everyone I hold dear, one by one, I do not regret. Anything beyond the present moment is unexpected, unknown. Everything is His again, though I thought them mine for a time. But how can I lose anything? The fear of loss – the things in my life; the people, relationships, freedoms; the capacities of mind and body – their loss reveals only my belief in their possession. All was lost to me some fifteen billion years before I knew it was here; and everything I know must escape me.

Hold your breath and you will lose it;  
set it free and it must return.

I love life enough to no longer wish it; because by wishing, I wreck the very thing that makes it wonderful. Trying to preserve what I think to be my life, I fail to see its nature. I cannot both be and seek to be. Always looking for the dangers, I fail to see the rest. A life that seeks security, secures itself against life. Is happiness possible while worrying about unhappiness? Thus, to live one hundred percent is to be just as willing to die.

Willingness to be anxious is relaxing, because the anxiety is no longer troublesome; guarding against anxiety is the most anxious. There seems to be in life a fundamental paradox: that we gain through loss; that knowledge is useful primarily in revealing our ignorance; that the difficulty of being detached is the striving for it; that the distinctions we use to understand life blind us to its essence. According to this paradox, the Perfect can be found in the midst of imperfection; the self separates us from God because “we” love “Him”; our “life” is the veil that keeps us from living; our desire for security is what makes us insecure; our search for God is what makes it impossible to find Him. “Leave thy self behind, and then approach Me.”

I think the answer to joy lies, like a hidden door, in the very heart of pain. “Joy” and “pain” are, after all, distinguished by me, not in reality. In fully embracing all, I no longer need to escape one part in favor of another. By accepting self, it must dissipate, because it was never real to begin with. Our contention with life is like fearing shadows: the fear itself is what makes demons of them. In loving those demons, they return to the mere nothings they always were.