Life is an interplay of stillness and movement, silence and sound.
The Self (Christ, Atman, soul) is stillness and silence. It’s void of all material things but full of immaterial love, joy and bliss.
But the Self is also a fragment of the All-Self (the Father, Brahman, Mahashiva). “I and my Father are one,” Jesus said. (1) The Self and the Supreme Self are one. Both are still and silent, full of light and love.
Movement and sound are what Christians call the Holy Spirit and what Hindus call Shakti, Kali or the Divine Mother.
The Mother is “in part” (the Mother has no parts) a universal creative vibration, whose sound Hindus characterize as Aum and Christians as Amen.
The three of them form the Trinity.
Hindus see life as a cosmic dance between Shakti and Shiva, movement and stillness. In statues depicting them, Shakti is shown dancing on the recumbent, still body of Shiva, communicating the essence of the Mother as movement and of the Father as stillness.
Krishna refers to this very basic relationship and the impact of realizing its participants when he says: “He who sees the inaction that is in action, and the action that is in inaction, is wise indeed. Even when he is engaged in action he remains poised in the tranquillity of the Atman [Self, Christ].” (2)
The inaction that is in action is the Self inside the Mother’s creation – the body, the temple she built with seven pillars or chakras. (3) The inaction is the Self, which I’ve often called the Child of God and the action is God as the Mother.
The action that is in inaction is God as the Mother nestled as an island universe of constant change in the inactive God the Father.
One who knew the Child, Mother and Father would be tranquil indeed.
I had an experience of the inaction that is in action at a meditation retreat some years ago now.
I found myself in my higher-dimensional nature for about half an hour and I experienced myself acting without acting. Archangel Michael later described the incident as “an experience of the Oversoul.” (4)
At that time, I saw that Lao-Tzu’s descriptions exactly fit what I was aware of:
In all the world but few can know
Accomplishment apart from work,
Instruction when no words are used. (5)
The Wise Man
Knows without going,
Sees without seeing,
Does without doing. (6)
I never questioned the experience while it happened. Acting without acting seemed perfectly natural. After the experience ended, I couldn’t retain the knowledge of what it was like to be so.
Undoubtedly lots of people have also been having brief glimpses. We are, after all, all of us originally from the higher realms.
And now we’re letting go of everything that no longer serves us. A civilization that’s been so addicted to accumulation is now letting go of all all illusory attachments, all false grids, vasanas, core issues, etc.
I read a channeled message the other day that asked us why we insist on holding onto possessions when we’ll be able, in the Fifth Dimension, to create all we need and recreate whatever we had that we continue to want. But for now, on the ascending journey, we’re to let go.
Lao-Tzu describes this part of the journey:
The Way is gained by daily loss,
Loss upon loss until
At last comes rest.
By letting go, it all gets done;
The world is won by those who let it go! (7)
Lao-Tzu once described himself as sitting at the edge of the road with a small pot of weak-meat soup (the non-dual philosophy), which he offered to anyone who approached him. But no one did.
All the travellers congregated across the highway at a steaming noodle shop (dualistic and worldly philosophies), where they gossiped and traded news on conditions down the road. Very few in the world wanted to know the deepest mysteries of life.
Lao-Tzu pointed at emptiness, at the void, as the prize of life. “Touch ultimate emptiness,” he counselled. “Hold steady and still.” (8) But very few listened to him. He sold emptiness. He proclaimed the void. Nowadays we’d say that he was pointing at the Father, whom the Mother leads the devotee to. But no one had an interest in these things.
His sayings were filled with references to the usefulness of this nothingness that the Father was. Like this teaching, which is one of my favorites:
Thirty spokes will converge
In the hub of a wheel;
But the use of the cart
Will depend on the part
Of the hub that is void.
With a wall all around
A clay bowl is molded;
But the use of the bowl
Will depend on the part
Of the bowl that is void.
Cut out windows and doors
In the house as you build;
But the use of the house
Will depend on the space
In the walls that is void.
So advantage is had
From whatever is there;
But usefulness rises
From whatever is not. (9)
Usefulness arises from whatever is not there, from the void in the hub of the wheel, the emptiness inside the bowl, the space inside the room.
We are at the moment emptying ourselves of everything illusory, every attachment to the old Third, every way of being that keeps us contained. And we’re being told, over and over again: Let go, let go, and love, until at last comes rest.
Footnotes
(1) John 10:30.
(2) Sri Krishna in Prabhavananda, Swami and Christopher Isherwood, trans., Bhagavad-Gita. The Song of God. New York and Scarborough: New American Library, 1972; c1944, 52.
(3) “Wisdom [Sophia, the Mother] hath builded her house, she hath hewn her seven pillars.” (Proverbs 9:1.)
(4) Archangel Michael in a personal reading through Linda Dillon, Sept. 13, 2011.
(5) Lao Tzu, The Way of Life. The Tao Te Ching. trans. R.B. Blakney. New York, etc.: Avon, 1975, 43, 96.
(6) Loc. cit.
(7) Ibid., 48, 101.
(8) Ibid., 16, 68.
(9) Ibid., 11, 63.