At the Middle of Infinity

03 22, 2012

You just said, ‘I am at the middle of Infinity.’

“Oh… Yeah, I did say that.  I guess that’s true.”

When I said it on that warm, sunny late-winter day, meeting for a rare in-person conversation with my friend in the park, it seemed unremarkable then, so…well, just an explanation of how I saw things in that moment.  Kinda’ normal, really.  Not all expansive and transcendent and spiritual-y.  I saw a diagram in my mind’ eye and I was describing what I saw.

Each of us embodies the limitless, the vast, the boundless.  Seems bold, like I’m saying we contain the uncontainable. That’s not what I mean by embody.  We enliven it. We give it an experience of singularity, a nexus point of expression.  And yet, it remains limitless, vast and boundless, the same in front of the point that is me as behind, beneath and above.

The diagram looks like this:  The symbol for infinity (a sideways figure 8), at the center of the symbol where the two lines intersect is me, or you, or anyone. In equal measure there on the diagram there is the physical 3-dimensional material experience of living, along with the energetic spiritual experience of aliveness.  The center of it all is the portal to both, and simultaneous experience of both is the whole point.  True Equilibrium. 

So, what happens?  

On these days like I’ve been having for the past couple of weeks, I feel a looming tendency to notice things unwanted. 

On these days I don’t remember what it is that I do want, except that I want to be free of the unwanted.  There’s a line from a poem by Jeffrey Foster, the way I committed it to memory was this:  “you do not want what you think you want, what you want is to be free of wanting.”  Even as I write this I think, “True, that.”  And it all goes to hell when I believe that what it takes to be free of wanting is to have what I want.  And what I want is some unrecognized, unnamed thing or experience or circumstance or quality of condition. 

On these days I don’t remember the diagram.  My attention is on the accumulation of small differences that shift perceptions a bit here and a bit there, like a chip in the windshield that I overlook, look past and around, as it works its way halfway across my view of the road.  And until I see it, the world looks cracked, and then my feeling and thinking is cracked.

On these days I don’t remember what’s possible.  But then I catch a moment of the numinous out with the horses because they embody the boundless, they are a continuous expression of who they are, their true nature uninterrupted even by the noise of my frustration, disappointment, aggravation from unmet expectations and my learned responses to that.

On the days that I do remember, I notice the crack. 

On these days I remember what it means to be in the middle of infinity.

On these days…peace even here.