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"Listen to your heart. It knows all things, because it came from the Soul of the World, and it will one day return there."
Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a treadmill is work, while rolling tenpins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.
But it isn't true. It is impossble to live a whole life sealed inside the constraints of a complex body. Sooner or later, and sometimes by accident, someone is going to reach out a hand or a tongue or a morself of genital flesh and enter that valved darkness. This act can be thought of as a precious misfortune or the ripest of pleasures. The skin will break open, or the cell wall, and all the warm fluids of life will be released - whether we wish it or not - to pour freely into the mixed matter of the world, that surging, accomodating ocean. Larry Weller is disturbed by this notion, but oddly comforted, too. He is recovering; in a sense he's spent his whole life in a state of recovery, but has only begun, at age forty-five, to breathe in the vital foreknowledge of what will become of the sovereign self inside him, that luxurious ornament. He'd like that self to be more musical and better lit, he'd like to possess a more meticulous sense of curiosity, and mostly he'd like someone, some thing to love. He's getting close. He feels it. He's halfway awake now, and about to wake up fully.
"I feel so sorry for myself and so sorry for you. I love you, myself, and everyone so much. But life is the enemy. It's a cesspool, a swindle. Damn it! It is good, though, to have someone to say 'farewell' to, and 'thank you,' and 'forgive me' for all the trouble I've put you through. Don't cry my dear, dear, dear girl! Don't cry."
No. What lives deep down inside me is full of profound meaning that I don't understand. It's inside me, only I can't understand what it's for. Time is passing and life is gradually chipping away at this meaning, and eventually it will be meaningless because I couldn't understand it. Things might have been different. I might have been given not only this power but the ability to comprehend its meaning, its purpose and significance. Like a mandala... If things had been different, life might have let me blossom, let everything open up and grow fragrantly into something grand and beautiful and, most and importantly, meaningful, powerful, significant. Maybe the fundamental sin is that I was given tranquility and perception instead of action, instead of concern, holy concern, and a capacity for suffering. I ought to have taken a difficult and dangerous journey to become wise, but I didn't. The way I am, I always had inside myself a refuge from everything. Truth be told, I was too content too long.
We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lungs the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother’s birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us.
The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being. It is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable and indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name and form. The inability to feel this connectedness gives rise to the illusion of separation, from yourself and from the world around you. You then perceive yourself, consciously or unconsciouly, as an isolated fragment. Fear arises, and conflict within and without becomes the norm.