Punctum Saliens

Your search for “the perfect mango” or “the hottest sports car” has at its core a feeling of unsatisfactoriness. Then there comes the moment of satisfaction. The moving from not having to having that comes as you catch a glimpse of that longed-for mango. You become exhilarated. “Oh, it’s yellow. Oh, what a beautiful mango!” And the mango is in your hand and there is a moment of peace. For a split second there is no desire in the mind and the body feels very light. Peace is experienced not because of the object in our hand but because for a moment desire does not obstruct the joy and quietude of our underlying nature. What we call satisfaction is the momentary experience of the vastness which lies beneath. All of a sudden the clouds part and the sun shines through. The painfulness of desire does not exist. The mind for a moment experiences its wholeness. In that moment of nonwanting, the mind becomes like a clear pool no longer ruffled by the prevailing winds and we can see through the still water to what lies beneath. We experience a moment’s participation in the joyousness that arises as we approach our true nature.

In a split second this satisfaction disappears as other desires arise to protect what it has just acquired. To hide the mango, to plant its seed, to get as much out of it as possible. Freedom is lost in the density of yet more wanting, of yet more protection and self-interest.

—Stephen Levine, Who Dies? (Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1982), pp. 44-45. (Emphasis mine)

What we usually call happiness is the ability to re-create previous pleasures. The pursuit of happiness is the attempt to satisfy old desires. The very nature of desire is a feeling of unwholeness, of being incomplete. We see that this thirst creates what could be called the “if only” mind. The yearning that says, “If only I could get my sports car, I’d be happy.” “If only I could get that job, or that date, or that money I need, then everything would be O.K.” But to the degree the mind wants that object yet unmaterialized in its world, the less it can be present for what is happening. It is drifting off in future pleasures or musing on satisfactions past. The whole world narrows to just that desire, just that sports car, that prize, that pretty face. The whole world disappears into expectation and life is missed once again, traded off for a mirage floating in the mind. We seldom make direct contact with reality, but instead live only in the flat silhouettes that it casts in the mind.

— Stephen Levine, Who Dies? (Anchor Books, 1982), pp. 43-44.

From chapter 2, “Being Born,” of Who Dies? by Stephen Levine:

The body dies, the mind is constantly changing. But somehow, behind it all there is a presence, called by some “the deathless,” that is unchanging, that simply is as it is.

To become fully born is to touch this deathlessness. To experience, even for a moment, the spaciousness which goes beyond birth and death. To emerge into a world of paradox and mystery with no weapon but awareness and love.

When I read this, I was struck by its similarity to “born again“? Deathless. Beyond birth and death. A dying body but a living presence.

But Levine is not talking about Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus from John chapter 3. Earlier, he says:

Discover yourself. Because you are the truth. And no one can take you there except you. Buddha left a road map. Jesus left a road map. Krishna left a road map. Rand McNally left a road map. But you still have to travel the road yourself.

No. Levine is talking about the essence of things that is everyone. “Being” itself. Our bodies, our minds, our joys, our fears, all that we attach to are not “us” but are outside “us.” This essence is the church or the body of Christ or the kingdom of Heaven or … One body but many members. One body of which we all are a part.

God is not “out there.” God is “in here.” After all, Jesus said that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” and what’s closer to us that our Self, our Being?

Just a thought …