The Great Secret to All Existence
for Daryl Temkin -- from my upcoming book
LIFE = Creative Food
The great secret is that those things with which we become the most powerful are those
which we do every day, in the tiniest of increments.Every mastered skill -- every gift brought to fruition -- is taken to its fullest mastery in small increments. This is not to say that there aren't occasions for a huge explosion; a Big Bang, as it were, which hurtles all of Creation into Being.
Yet with annoying regularity, those things with contain the most intricate, fullest depth (deepness) -- as well as breadth (distance) -- consistently occur in small, daily, persistent amounts. To any impatient, angry, or unfulfilled person, this fact can be genuinely irritating.
If you objectively examine the shape of your outer being, or body, you will see that its filling of space (how heavy or light you are) takes place from the logical accumulation of every meal. Every single blessed mouthful.
Not merely one stupendous meal where, for once, you ate extremely healthfully -- or stuffed yourself with hedonistic abandon. The gravity of one telling meal is powerless to the accumulation of many repeated meals. Our life is an imprint, and then a permanent print, of the impact from moments, people, and meals, imprinted and dyed into our souls!
Each day (or night) is like a meal in the nurturing feeding of time and space. Each life -- and every person you encounter -- is somewhere between fast food and divine nectar.
Your shape is determined both by the size and quantity of the meals you eat, and is absolutely predetermined by what (or who) you put into your mouth, on a consistent basis. After all, what you swallow, who you take in, becomes part of you! How easily we forget that our emotional nourishment from others is equally sustaining (or draining).
Less obvious, but equally telling, is that your shape of consciousness is determined by that upon which your attention is frequently placed. There's no getting around this: What you energetically charge & engage with, you shall let into your consciousness, and become.
This is why, in fighting enemies, it's easy to become like your enemies, or that which you oppose. The process of engagement (attention) often has this paradoxical effect, that what we most resist we can become. In martial arts, when resisting an opponent, this energy can easily be used against you. Similarly, it's more subtle & skillful to employ the opponents' energies against them without you, yourself, taking on those (negative or undesired) forces.
When you resist an energy with which you're overly emotionally engaged, it can be perilous: That which you despise can become indistinguishable from you. Paradoxically, those situations you run from sometimes resolve themselves when you don't insist on answers before someone's maturity is ready.
And so it is that our meals, which determine our shape, occur daily, in repeatable, habitual patterns, and determine the finality of our outer shape. The inevitability of small actions accumulated over an arc of time should not be underestimated.
Think of water dripping through rock.
It's essential to observe both the amount of foods you are eating and also the quality of nourishment, the virtual life-force (or junk force!) of that which you're imbibing within. This principle applies for TV as well as church or temple. For movies as well as for prayer. For noise as well as for the sanctity of silence. Consider those people with whom you're hanging out.
Life's foods apply both to that which we digest, as well as that upon which we focus our attention. After all, what makes food (and people -- and activities -- and hobbies) so tasty? They feed our appetite. And for every unfulfilled appetite is a lack of connection.
The study of addiction can take volumes. Yet the basis of addiction, beyond its chemical and neurotransmitter components, occurs in the metaphysical void, where connection has not been made, where belonging and making a difference have neither been explored, nor satisfied.
In other words, we are only hungry when we are not connected, or not filled.
Less obvious to what is put into our mouths are thoughts which come out from our mouths. Here, too, that which is manifested into final form occurs in tiny, unceasing increments.
How many times has someone crash dieted, only to gain the weight back?
Individual projects -- like cramming for tests -- are the same. Most often, although brilliant work can take place in spontaneous, intoxicated bursts, the most lasting and consistently lasting work takes place in the following stages:
Note: Aim, the child of intention, is governed within the realms of lightness and touch; intensity and concentration.
In Hiroshima, during one of the first atomic bombs, there were reports of single straws being driven into a telephone poles, so intense was the projectile and concentration of that explosive aim.
Since it isn't recommended that your projects be on the same playing field of such utterly dark destruction, aim is that final level of mastery which allows an arrow to hit its mark; determines whether the apple is split in two; establishes whether you are sued for puncturing an unhappy bystander. Words = thoughts = arrows. Words/sound both summon and destroy.
Every action with which we're engaged tends to have a direct effect on someone ... certainly ourselves. The secret of small amounts, fully concentrated, on a regular basis, without distraction, can build everything from a house of cards, to an entire empire.
FITNESS and stamina come into play, because for the shape of every body, is inherently that underlying tone of muscles, history of exertion, and the muscles' memories of every engaged task you and your attention have asked -- nay, demanded -- that they do.
This is why magnificent athletes and musicians possess a degree of dexterity at which many of us can only marvel. They've continually perfected their shape and skills, their very
achievements, over a huge arc of time, yet in small, constant, persistent measures. Over time, each person's muscle memory returns to a repeated pattern. Some poets consider the brain akin to a thick, electrical muscle. Muscle head!
These minute patterns are changeable. They're the most ubiquitously powerful in their seeming smallness: Every meal that you eat, every small task with which you engage and occupy the sacred dominion, or fleeting trivia of the hours.
Time ceases when you're fully engaged and focused. Then, the secret is this: Time disappears ... and you become immortal ... as you fully become one with your beingness or passion.
The irony is that although inner shape has the ultimate final say (who we are), our shape occurs from daily, repeated activities of what we do, that which we focus on. Outer mark shapes inner indelibility. It's da law! Outer attention mirrors and indelibly marks inner being. So simple.
It's so obvious that many miss this, and attempt change in dramatic, emotional gestures, with New Year's Eve vows, with fervent confessions to nodding therapists or sympathetic priests. More often than not, predictably, that which is the most lasting and stalwart in the holding of its shape is created daily, in small, telling and infinitely tender stages of attention.
Although God rested on the 7th day, the fine print isn't fully explained:
1. How long a day was for God -- undoubtedly God's day was not constrained
by our mere 24 hours. God is the absolute master of creative metaphor, and we can merely
translate into an individual awareness what the Eternal achieves!
2. What God requires six days to do, most of us require a lifetime, unless we can achieve a state which is absolutely divine: To Not Be Distracted.
3. Please note that even God -- on the 7th Day -- previewed His work and saw that it was good. We, too, are asked to sit back and impartially view that which we have manifested into our worlds (or embraced into the virtual inner flesh of our beingness).
4. In examination, and by observing whether our life, and our shared creations, are life affirming rather than life denying to ourselves and to others, we get to stretch and grow, and hopefully to create again. Remember, reincarnation is a privilege, not a right. If you're not concerned about your future lifetimes, and the ways in which your actions weave repercussions into the future, consider this one item: YOUR CURRENT LIFE.
5. Without allowing the creative process (and our own inner character) to gestate and mature, we are the effect, and not the cause, of all our small, daily, repeated actions.
6. If you don't like the repetition, you might consider changing the pattern. And if you are upset and frustrated with the cycles of night and day, construction and destruction, consider the alternatives.
7. Those people who are continually vexed with the patterns of life here on Earth are listened to in ways which may truly surprise them. Be careful what you complain about: You may well have opportunities to serve on committees for future Creations.
8. If you truly desire to alter a pattern, situation, or ability, then apply the "effortless zen principle" for lasting change: Apply your attention in the given area for ten minutes every day, and do not miss a single day.
Letter to the Author at SoulGnosis@aol.com
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