On the Way Toward Vastness

Those of you who have read my words here will know that last January I wrote what I expected to be my last blogpost. Why it ended up getting posted in June, I explained in the one just before it, posted the same day. I have not, since that time, had any urge to write again, until now. From one conversation, a Zoom meeting, and a long walk in the woods, the bits of the following arose. As is often the case, they all felt related and I felt compelled to weave them together.

I have often stated that I sense a particular gravitation drawing me toward what I refer to as a direction: a direction toward silence. But perceiving in to my deepest experience of that silence, I see/feel two flavors. The gravitation that I speak of here lies in the silence of inflowing. The simple taking in of raw perceptions, qualia, sensed as moving through the energy system of this body and away from it, far into the distant stillness behind me. There is also the silence of an outflowing fullness, that which is the origin of the localized expressions of all that this entity is. How I express here is but a muted reflection of that outflow, interacting with, and being impacted by, the local energetic ecosystems and the choices that I have declared into existence while here.

In both cases, sensing “back” toward longer wavelengths, words begin to fail as the sensing of the frequencies’ oscillations do not provide enough distinctness that fall within the range of perception where my mind is currently accustomed to attending. Inflowing, it does not matter. There is nothing to be said about that deep emptiness. On the outflowing, however, there is a range – wherein resides what I have named my “translation mechanism” – that can tune to words that seem to ride within the undulations that, in a way, have something that calls for expression in language.

In one of the calls noted above, I noticed that I have an innate attraction to vastness. In that moment, I remembered a quote from John Verveake where he said that curiosity leads to wonder, wonder leads to awe and awe leads to wisdom. I liked that from the first time I heard it, but when it came to mind this time, it seemed like it was missing the mark. Though not limited to words, wisdom is typically perceived as the ability to articulate, and usually to exemplify, broad ideas that feel true to many. Thus, in my view, unlike curiosity, wonder or awe, wisdom does not convey as a state of experience. Vastness seemed like a more appropriate metaphor to follow awe in that progression. That felt right to me. Wisdom, then, would seem to be the articulation of an experience one has having entered into a current region of vastness.

I have been saying since I began writing that I seem to be moving in the direction of longer wavelengths, and have been for at least most of my adult life. The frequency ranges that I most frequently inhabit at a given time of life have become longer and longer, relatively speaking. In my day-to-day experience, the current range that I tend to inhabit is simply “normal.” Thus, in my frequency-riding experiences, the Vastness of which I speak is like a horizon. It can never be reached. But I can sense its vicinity at times when I am quickly moved in its direction, where my translation mechanism is activated, but my mental articulations have been left behind due to the loss of purchase on the slippery slopes of waves outside its current experiential range.

In the phone call, I had the realization that if the depths of which I speak are the source of me, and my expressions here are mere muted reflections, then “I” am never really here and never have been. That brought the experience of melancholy, as I felt out of touch with my “self.” I have not had that experience of melancholy in many years. But as a very young child I spent a lot of time marinading in melancholy. Looking at it this way now, it makes sense that I was experiencing a loss, a quite fundamental “something is missing.” My essential “I” was not present and an aspect of me knew that. This new perspective of the motion toward Vastness, with its traipsing in and out of experiences of curiosity, wonder, and awe, is another lovely development in this one’s expanding playground in consciousness.

A couple of days after starting this piece it occurred to me that “the infinite” feels unreachable, but vastness does not. The infinite is commonly tossed around in spiritual circles, but that very notion, at least as my mind perceives it, puts it far beyond the reach of my sensings. Vastness, however, I can feel.

Instances of magic seem to increase when in the vicinity of the ineffable.