“As a follow up to the meditation, here is an exercise—a mudra—to implant the vesica in your body: Lift your hands straight above your head, touching fingers together. Push your elbows out beside your head into a vesica shape made with your arms. Your heart center, inside you, is the lower point; your fingertips form the upper point where there is an eighth chakra—the sky. Between heart and sky is your head, at the center of the oval made by your arms and represents the ‘iris’ of this eye-vesica. The mudra you are holding, brings together head, heart and hands in a divine union of vision and expression.
“Let this exercise bring in tangible energy to your body. Feel it flow and center in your single eye—the pupil of the iris. As you drop your arms, allow the impression from the mudra to enter your entire energy field. With this infusion you may see the world as one and as two—within and without; this is the way the soul sees. You are creatively joining forces between the formless—one—and the form—many. Duality is actually a divine gift to you from your own Oneness of being. That is what the portal is—the divine joining of heaven and Earth. A primary function of all mudras is this joining.”
The abstraction of these exercises makes me feel a little restless. It’s a kind of resistance, I know. My mind is regaining dominance again. “V, I think it’s my job in this dialogue to do the same thing I did with O—to ask questions, to bring the abstract a little more down to Earth, and to be a little resistant even. It’s like creating an intentional separation. Do you think that’s appropriate or not?”
V answers, “It is, to a point. But there’s more. While you play the skeptical role, at the same time you can bring in your own inspirations and intuitions, stimulated by the counterpoint. This is one of the values of resistance—stimulation of its antipode. In addition, resistance has a higher function in the world of spirit and core values than in the world of form. In the higher world, resistance is not a blockage to the flow of inspiration. It’s a ‘stopping’ of the illusion and the constraints of form. It filters out the superfluous debris and opens clear access to the evolutionary field.
“In addition to the resistance-stimulus, your role can be to provide a grounding function—that is, you can take the abstractions and clothe them with your own experience and understanding. To follow the metaphor into a pun—as in ‘in the ground’—I know you have recently been inquiring into the meaning of death.”
“Hah. Funny, V!” I smirk. “That’s a bit of deep humor, I must say!”
“And the pun is ever more profound. Seriously—if not gravely—it would benefit us all if you would share what you’ve learned. And in your sharing, I might add, you will draw out further inspiration from yourself.”
I reply, “But I don’t understand what ‘death’ might have to do with the subject of this conversation?”
“Hmm. A natural question, I suppose. Are you asking, ‘What does death have to do with the Life of Source?’”
“Yes. Assuming Source is eternal and never dies. What does it have to do with death?”
V answers promptly, “Death is an important illusion held within the field of expression; and it has a powerful function there. That field, as you know, is a projection from Life eternal. Illusions—forms—of every kind are functional attributes of this field. Why? Illusion is part of creation itself.
“Nothing is created in this world without duality, without the primordial yin and yang. In short, projection produces illusion—images on the screen; projection generates the ‘material’ world that we all know. Nothing can be projected without duality; and this brings up our old friend, ‘resistance’ again. The essence of duality is resistance. And death is the key to understanding all resistance in your world; it is the lens to intimately visualize the projection of illusion and form.”
I respond, “How is that? How is death a ‘key’ for this?”
She responds, “It opens the door—the portal—to the other side. It lifts the Veil of Forgetfulness. Understanding ensues.”
“Oh.” I sputter. “But why is it the key to understanding resistance.”
“The word ‘resistance’ comes from Latin, sistere, meaning ‘to stop’. Death is the great stopper of each incarnation. It shows each soul what ultimate resistance to form looks like. Revelation!”
“OK. I guess I’m following you. One more thing,” I persist. “Why is resistance the ‘essence of duality’?”
“I suppose I should have expected all these questions,” she answers. “Without the ‘stop’, like the blank spaces between words, there would be no differentiation between material and space. Nothing would make sense within the Illusion. Duality demands and generates counterpoint—opposing polarities. Resistance provides that fundamental quality.
“Creation takes from Oneness an essential, formless blueprint and clothes it in form. Formlessness to form is duality.”
I interrupt yet again. “I won’t ask about what you mean by ‘formless blueprints’.”
“You just did. Picture a pattern that has no form. It is the essence, the emptiness behind the pattern that appears in the world. Formlessness—Void—does not have a form; it is ‘no thing’. Yet it does have essence and integrity, the germ of creation, prior to duality. This explanation will have to do for now. Maybe we will get back to it later.”
V resumes, “In Newtonian physics, there is the ‘equal and opposite reaction’. In this model, resistance is the friction present during the passage of any form upon another, including time upon thought. In the movement of time there is friction. Ego and mind rely entirely upon friction and resistance to exist. However, when your awareness is present, in the moment, it detaches from the ego-mind, from the past and future, and you detach from the friction they generate.
“The peace you feel arising in the Now is essentially freedom from friction. Ego dissolves in that field and so does thought. Thoughts are created through friction. Without them your awareness is free. The friction and resistance I speak of may not be obvious to a mind conditioned by linear reasoning and logic, however. The mind would tend to disregard them and chock it up just to thinking itself.
“For example, a thought may come to you about a situation remembered from the past or imagined in the future. That thought must push against the Now in order to originate and sustain itself. You can feel the resistance in any thought you have. Examine it for yourself: Think about an event or an idea—anything at all, positive or negative—and at the same time feel what it does to your sense of presence. There is a subtle, or not-so-subtle, tightening in all the energy centers in your body.”
I try it for a minute and report back, “Yes. I definitely felt it take me out of presence; it was a kind of ‘pushing’ or ‘tightening’, like you said. I was about to say that writing these books might do the same thing, but when I took a closer look, I realized it wasn’t true.”
V responds, “Indeed. You mostly remain ‘in the moment’ for this, because you are streaming instead of thinking. You often have no idea what you will write next, as the messages simply pass through your mind temporarily. They lodge there just long enough for you to frame and give form to them; then they flow onto the page. You often do not even remember what you just wrote. Am I correct?”
“Yes. In fact, when someone asks me to talk about this stuff, I don’t really know what I will say. When I go back and reread your messages or O’s it often feels brand new to me, like I didn’t even write it.”
“That’s exactly right, because you are not thinking it up as you go. You’re streaming it from essence. It’s not like you’re an unconscious medium, of course, but the message is definitely being propelled by its own life force—the Life of Source. Now, I would like you to exercise your intuition and ‘streaming’ talent again—in particular, tell us about ‘finding death before death finds you’.”
“All right. Streaming it is then,” I finally agree. “Let’s see, uh. This has become an important topic ever since I heard Eckhart Tolle say those words casually, in passing, a few years ago. But it’s been particularly important for me lately—and perhaps it has been that for my whole life. I remember discussing ‘death and art’ often with my closest high school pals. We were always thwarted, though, from reaching any final consensus.”
“Of course. You and your friends were thwarted; That was the consensus. That was then; this is now. That was the beginning of your never-ending ‘die-alogue’!” V puns again. “This, now, is the consummation of your always-beginning Life.
“Just one more thing before you begin. Our dialogue here is explaining the process of creation and formation. It may seem that we are jumping around a lot. Our intention in this is to assist readers in knowing the Life of Source from many different angles. One of those angles is what you’re calling ‘presence’. The Life of Source is a two-way movement—into and out of form—hence it represents the most fundamental duality. Our writing is primarily a movement back and forth to Source, along the line of Life. When we follow the projection in reverse, we are moving from duality into the non-duality—the Oneness of Source.”
ⓒ 2014 Robert Lee Potter
CLICK HERE and you will find all the chapters posted from Life of Source. I will be updating each week with new chapters till we reach the end of the book. It will then be available for download from this site. Stay Tuned…
Letters From 500 