More Of This

And then what happens is that you want more of this. Don’t you. More and more of this. Oh. You become a this connoisseur. You become a this aficionado. A this devotee. A this gourmet. A this habitué. A this addict. Don’t you. You structure your life around this. You become this obsessed. Monomaniacal about this. Single minded in your search for more and more of this.

You keep thinking about that mountaintop. That life-defining mountaintop. And everything arranges itself around this. As you live your life now, you imagine your comings and goings in the context of this. You imagine your comings and goings taking place in the valley, along the banks of the river of clear ideas, in which is reflected the mountain you have climbed. In which the mountain that took you there is imaged. Is imagined. The mountain that took you to this. To the thisness of this. To your penetration deep into the thisness of this.

And now you are lost. You are lost to all your friends and family. You are lost to your neighbors and your coworkers. You are lost to your psychiatrist, your proctologist, and your lover. All of these fall away from view. All of these are somewhere in the trees below. They are a part of this, but no longer significant players. No longer principals on the main stage of your life. This occupies the main stage now. This is the protagonist, if there is one anymore. But this protagonist does not so much act as be. This is, and by being provides all the drama, all the action, all the meaning and interest one could hope for.

And the odd thing is. The truly weird thing is. Your coworkers in the vineyard of life, your family and friends, and so forth think you have changed somehow. They don’t know exactly how. But something is different. And better, they tell you. Something has shifted in there, and it seems for the better. They seem. Oh. They feel more. I don’t know. Appreciated, maybe. Loved, maybe. Encouraged, maybe. But from your perspective, they’ve diminished in importance. Oh, don’t get me wrong. You love them. You like them. More than you did before. You respect them. You cherish them. You honor them. More than you did before. But they are less important also. Just as you are less important. Just as you are lost in this, they are also lost in this. Wanderers, merely, in the context of this. In the presence of this. In a world that you have suddenly discovered to have this in it and all through it and around it and under it and over it.

This is everywhere you look. Because you retain that experience. That perspective. That mountaintop prospect that gave you insight into the thisness of things. The thisness of the world. Of the universe. Of the cosmos. The thisness that provides an explanation. Constitutes a context. A frame, if you will. For everything. A frame that is so large. That includes within its scope so much. So much that is perplexing and terrible and lovely and mad and ugly and beautiful and imperfect and asymmetrical and various and empty and deadly and cruel and tender and affirming and courageous that you find yourself a little weepy. You find yourself a little teary-eyed. A little moist around the window shades. You find yourself crying some when you hadn’t so much before. You wonder what this is. What this is about. And then it suddenly occurs to you that this is this. That this is in the nature of things, but you hadn’t realized it until now. That everything all put together like this is. Well. Overwhelming. When you consider the whole kit and caboodle like this. All simultaneous. All happening at once in the thisness of the world. In the thisness of history. In the thisness of all of us and all our acts and all our thoughts. In the thisness of natural history and artificial history. In the thisness of language, both spoken and unspoken. In the thisness of the cosmos, with all of the dizzying numbers and events and possibilities out there in here. In the thisness of here and now. And you are joyful and sad at once. But mostly you are joyful and grateful to be here in all this. To partake of all this. To be one very small player in the context of this. And so your eyes leak a little more than they used to. But this is okay, because of this. Your eyes leak a little more than they used to because you are beginning to get this. You are beginning to allow this to penetrate. You are allowing the thisness of things into your heart and mind and soul and spirit. You are allowing the thisness of the not you to penetrate the thisness of you. And to overwhelm you. To surround you and suspend you and buoy you up like a sea. Like the sea into which all good things flow. Like the sea into which the earth melts under the epochal rain. The rivering down rain. Like the sea from which the earth emerges, steaming and black and hot.

You’re teary-eyed, and you’re no longer ashamed. You no longer try to hide this activity. This expression of the wonder and the love that has now overwhelmed you like a sea. Like a tsunami sea. You abandon yourself to the great broad cosmic sea of this. You abandon yourself to the cosmos of this. You fling yourself on this new understanding of things. That will not go away. That will not diminish. That will not be refuted. That will not be discounted. That will not be modified. That will not be marginalized. That will not be forgotten. Because this. This is everywhere now. It is everywhere you look or listen or smell or taste or touch. When you silence your inner activity. Your self-made words and sounds and tastes and shapes and colors and textures and futures and pasts and smells and. When you slow and pay attention as you did on the mountaintop. When you allow the thisness of this to be everything now.