Sometimes we lose sight of the sheer unprecedentedness of our awareness. We are aware. It’s a worthy subject of reflection. Some would say, perhaps, that at one point in “time” there was no such thing as awareness, and somewhere along the way, there was. Thinking this way causes my neurons to enter states of quantum superposition… and get stuck. I can imagine unawareness, somehow. As if it existed, and maybe still exists. I know that seems an oxymoron, but I daresay most all of us can all relate to the human experience of being born- of a first memory. A beginning.
At some point, for the vast majority of us, there is a discontinuity we feel at the very onset of whatever we think we are right now, that looks and tastes a whole lot like emptiness. Out of nothing at all, seemingly, there came something.
(Has every possible form of awareness been aware already? Or are we making this up as we go? I think there is something limitless and perhaps open-ended about this whole Creation gig. Another subject…)
Another one that makes my neurons go all into rapt catatonia is the answer that eventually comes to a question about Creation that goes something like this: why is it ultimately good? That’s a half-hearted way of stepping up to the plate and saying, is Creation even good in the first place?
I mean, God is great and loving and wise and powerful, but… was that a choice? Leaving aside for a moment the question about whether my belief in God is even valid, the question about whether or not God had a choice leads to corollaries like… did God have a bad attitude and create a buhjillion awful universes before the systematic genius logician in him finally realized there were certain principles, the adherence to which would provide the best possible outcomes? Did God discover Love? If so, did it exist prior to that Discovery?
These are the questions of a separated mind, by the way. They are the questions of a mind that hasn’t yet accepted the inevitability of the Truth within it. Such minds think like this all the time. They think, the cookie could crumble in any direction here folks. Haven’t you read the story of Schroedinger’s Cat? The answer you’ve been waiting for, however, the one that causes my brain to enter previously unmapped states, is that there was never, ever, ever, ever a moment in which Love began, or was invented. There was never a little bit of awareness that went up to the drawing board and flow-charted or sketched up a new invention called Love. There was never an Act of Congress that said, Yup. Good one. We’ll be that from now on.
Never. Love is not the product of design.
If your brain is not growing warm, you may not be with me yet. Let’s restate the Truth in multiple forms that mean the same thing for a few sentences. Love exists and always has existed and you can’t reach back and find that point of Beginning for Love like you can your individual personality. Love never didn’t exist. The possibility of Not Love never existed, and was never subsequently overcome by Love.
Another way to say this: Love is not the product of a choice. That always puts my neurons into auto-de-fibrillation.
How great is that!? We can’t even stick that one in our heads and reflect on it. Not really. You get vertigo, feel like you’re going to pass out, and then you get serious about having your blood pressure checked. Snap! That fast.
Love is not the product of a choice.
That means it’s Real with a capital R. Everything that is the product of choice is flimsy. We know that. But Love is not the product of choice. And this Christ business? It’s about accepting this realization, and allowing it to be the foundation of who we are. I think this is why Jesus said in both A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love words to the effect that “there is nothing we need to do”. Love is. We exist. We are Love. We can’t do anything to make this so. We can’t do anything to unmake this. We can entertain beliefs to the contrary, and simmer in their effects in this temporal experience, but those experiences don’t change the fact that Love is.
Well, yeah, but God didn’t have to come up with you or I did She? Maybe Love is real, but maybe we’re just temporary figments… What can be made can be unmade, no? Maybe we’ll just dissolve back into nothingness… This is how beings who haven’t accepted the inevitability of the Truth within delay its acceptance.
(Stop it.)
(You’re aware, aren’t you?)
(Sometimes we lose sight of the sheer unprecedentedness of our awareness.)
(Sometimes we lost sight of the fact that Love is without precedent. It is a commonality worth reflecting upon. May your neurons quiver in indeterminate states of grace.)
The End.
Embracing Forever 
[“We are aware. It’s a worthy subject of reflection. Some would say, perhaps, that at one point in “time” there was no such thing as awareness, and somewhere along the way, there was. Thinking this way causes my neurons to enter states of quantum superposition… and get stuck. I can imagine unawareness, somehow.”]
Quoting Alan Watts:
“A lot of people are afraid that when they die, they’re going to be locked up in a dark room forever, and sort of undergo that. But one of the interesting things in the world is–this is a yoga, this is a realization–try and imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up. Think about that. Children think about it. It’s one of the great wonders of life. What will it be like to go to sleep and never wake up? And if you think long enough about that, something will happen to you. You will find out, among other things, it will pose the next question to you. What was it like to wake up after having never gone to sleep? That was when you were born. You see, you can’t have an experience of nothing; nature abhorres a vacuum. So after you’re dead, the only thing that can happen is the same experience, or the same sort of experience as when you were born. In other words, we all know very well that after other people die, other people are born. And they’re all you, only you can only experience it one at a time. Everybody is I, you all know you’re you, and wheresoever all being exist throughout all galaxies, it doesn’t make any difference. You are all of them. And when they come into being, that’s you coming into being.”
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Thanks for the link, Wayne. I haven’t listened to Alan Watts before. I made it about half an hour into it, (which I enjoyed immensely), and will listen more soon. It is audibly delicious. I love his laugh. And the way he says billiards.
Michael
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You’re welcome, Michael — I agree — audibly delicious, indeed! I have probably listened to 20 hours of his stuff over the last few years (some of it more than once).
Just in case you– or anyone who happens by –is interested, you can find some of his books at HolyBooks.Com (including a favorite of mine, “The BOOK on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”). And there is a transcript of a good portion of this talk on consciousness available here:
http://terebess.hu/english/watts.html#nat
Keep up the good work, my friend!
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Thank you, Wayne.
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I think it is limitless and open ended and basically good.I would rather use the word evolution than creation with or without a Capital c. But that is a small matter. Otherwise I am with you. Love is not a choice. Except in the denial of it. It was not made and cannot be destroyed. I am still trying to relax enough to really live that. Thank you for your posts.
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Thanks for reading and sharing. I am with you, too. The specific word(s) we resonate with don’t matter, so long as they invite us home to the wordless space of our heart.
It is strange… we cannot try to be the Truth that we are and expect to have any real success. The trying implies we are something we are not. Recognizing that, we “try” to stop trying. As you noted, this doesn’t compute either! We are left with the option of last resort: acceptance.
Michael
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How contrary to “try” to relax!
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Love your ponderings here! We think of love as a noun, other times a verb and always a choice. . . At least for us humans but God is love which is a much bigger statement than God’s nature is love. Hopefully, the choice we make to love will become more and more our nature and less ans less a choice we make.
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This issue of choice is something I’ve circled around once or twice. This notion, that Love and Truth exist in a way that transcends choice, gives me goose bumps every time I think about it. I really find it helpful to remind myself that the things we desire in the deepest core of our being- Love, Truth, etc.- are nothing like the choice-begotten outcomes we are constantly trying to influence. Here is another one I wrote several months ago along similar lines that I just remembered in writing this response. Thanks for reading and sharing!
Michael
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“It is strange… we cannot try to be the Truth that we are and expect to have any real success. The trying implies we are something we are not.”
Story teller Michael Meade put it this way, “There’s no way not to be who you area and where you are right now.”
Lovin’ your blog Michael 🙂
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Thanks, Debra. Very glad you are here. Michael
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As I am currently bored as heck under an Anatomy class and neurons are mentioned many a-times in it, I’m not too excited to get my neurons really goin’ on the topic of love. But you’ve got quite an interesting post here on the topic. Somewhat (okay, a lot) too deep reading for me, but I think I can get a gist of it.
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Here’s the thing about Love. It’s okay to leave your neurons on low fire while you soak it in! Like letting them soak in a hot tub. Thanks for the visit and glad you found something of interest. I am mostly trying to share perspectives that inspire me, admit when they baffle me, and connect with others doing the same. All together we’re going to bump into something extraordinary one day. (I stole that one, but I don’t think Hafiz will mind…)
Michael
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