Seeker Magazine

Between the Grains of Sand

by: Joel Metzger

TWO KINDS OF EXPERIENCE
You can experience things outside of your body and also experience things inside. You can think about things that have touched your life, and about things you have never directly encountered. You can see yourself in the mirror, and also sense your body's movements and sounds. You can see someone and feel love for them, and also feel the strength and sweetness of the love itself. You can think about your life, the things in it and the things you do, and also you can feel the life itself, as it animates your body and thoughts.
Things far, things close. Experiences come in two flavors: there's an outer, there's an inner. The two are clearly different. The outer realm is everything I see and sense. I think about this realm, and deduce and decide. The deductions reside, of course, between my ears. But even though they are thoughts that are in my head, they are thoughts about the outer realm.
And also I can feel. Without thought, I can sense (feel, intuit, perceive, experience, know) a deeper realm. This is the realm of subjectivity. It can not be examined or measured. It can only be experienced. The inner realm is not discussed in the sciences; it is often taboo in medicine. Noetic vision is the perspective that sees the primacy -- immediacy and importance -- of experience itself. This is the realm of the Online Noetic Network*.

INSIDE THE INNER
The inner realm is not a defined physical territory. To talk about the realm within is to talk about a direction, not a place. I would describe it by saying that within me is a central point. That center is empty and sweet stillness. That stillness has become, to me, a presence. It is the presence of peace, strength, and beauty in my life; the anchor around which my life game revolves.
I can see this wholeness and know it will always be present. It is mine, *mine* as nothing else is; it is me being with myself, owned by me and never to be taken. When all else is taken away, this remains. It is the moments between the events, the consciousness between the thoughts, the presence between all spaces. It is the fluid surrounding all aspects of my life, the sea that rushes in. It's the juice of my life.

MINDWALK
Recently I watched a movie that reminded me of this juice. Here is a segment from the movie "Mindwalk."
Tom, a politician, is talking to Jack, a poet, and Sonya, a physicist. They are discussing the understandings of physics, scientific paradigms, and the evolving worldview. They are talking about the nature of matter, and to me it is a metaphor of the presence that fills my moments.

** Sonya: To understand the nature of light, you have to know what matter is made of.
** Tom: I thought it was made of atoms.
** Sonya: What's an atom? Well, Newton thought it was small solid particles. But that's not what scientists saw when they observed atoms for the first time. What they saw was totally unexpected and shocking.
** Jack: You mean they saw that an atom was made of even smaller particles -- a nucleus with electrons whirling around it.
** Sonya: Not only that. They were moving in relatively vast regions of empty space! That's what shook the scientists up. Atoms consist mainly of empty space.
** Jack: What does that mean? "Vast regions of empty space." Atoms are tiny.
** Sonya: Yes, they are. This is what's so hard to visualize. See, the size of atoms is so far removed from our ordinary sense of scale and proportion, that it's extremely hard to get a feeling for the relative sizes and distances of their particles. Ask yourselves: How many atoms are there in an orange? Now, to answer this, you will have to blow up the orange to a size where you can actually see the atoms. You will have to blow up the orange until it has reached the size of the earth. The atoms inside it will then be the size of cherries! Myriads of cherries, tightly packed into an orange the size of the earth.
** Tom: Wow, what an image! ... What about the nucleus? There is a nucleus in there, right? How big is that?
** Sonya: Invisible is the answer. If we blow up the atom to the size of a football, the nucleus would still be invisible. If we blow up the atom to the size of a sphere that would fit into this room, the nucleus would still be invisible.
** Jack: What if you blow up the atom to the size of this island, to the size of the rock we're standing on?
** Sonya: Okay, we would blow the atom, the cherry, up to the size of this island. Okay. Then the nucleus would be the size of a small pebble. And the electrons would be much smaller still. We would have to look for them all the way down there, at the edge of the island. And the whole space in between would be empty!
** Jack: So, what you're saying is that if there were a sphere large enough to contain this whole island, what it would actually consist of is a pebble and a few grains of sand. That's all this huge sphere contains? In other words, nothing. It's empty! But, if this rock is made up of spheres like that, then what makes it so solid? Why can't I pass my hand through it? Why don't we fall through it?
** Tom: Yeah, why don't we fall through everything? Why doesn't everything fall through everything?

LOOKING INSIDE I am not a scientist and I know little about the complexities of physics. I did not include this dialog from "Mindwalk" so I could talk about subatomic particles. This conversation reminds me of the way I see my own consciousness. An interesting parallel.
Like matter, these thoughts look real. I perceive where I live, and with that I construct my life. My thoughts are walls, my own personal walls. They make up my conceptual environment. They give solidity to my self-image and my situations. From them I construct my fortunes and problems. How real are they?
And, what about the inner realm? There is a direction that is personal and not measurable. Down the inner path is a frontier without thought. It leads to an exploration of the space and ground-base that is between thoughts. This ground is a river of creativity, just like "Mindwalk's" description of atoms.
What's between those thoughts? That's the treasure! That's the question I want to spend my life asking. And answering. Because in that space, that little, quiet gap between the things and thoughts and business of my life, there is the beauty of life itself. Simple and subtle, quietly calling, announcing its fullness, life is an entity of calm strength.
At the seashore. On the beach. Digging a hole. Deeper you go and water begins to fill the well. Carve a space and liquid streams in. When I am conscious of life, I cannot feel emptiness. All space between the grains of sand is filled with the juice of life.
Copyright 1998 -- LightSpeed Publishing; Joel Metzger, Coordinator of the Online Noetic Network (ONN)
Editor's Note: The ONN website can be reached at www.wisdomtalk.org. It is a membership-based site and joining will allow full access to all of its articles and interviews. You can get sample articles and find out more about the site through the following E-mail autoresponders:
ONN Information: intro@wisdomtalk.org
ONN Library Catalog: library@wisdomtalk.org
Frequently Asked Questions: faq@wisdomtalk.org
Sample ONN articles: sample1@wisdomtalk.org, sample2@wisdomtalk.org, sample3@wisdomtalk.org

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