The Subtle Energy of Everything

Please note that I will be holding my weekly Zoom today, 10 am Pacific time as usual. However, I will be traveling in early July and as a result, unable to host the Sunday meetings on July 6th and 13th.

THE SUBTLE ENERGY OF EVERYTHING

In JD Salinger’s short story, Teddy, there’s a wonderful passage:

I was six when I saw that everything was God. And my hair stood up and all Teddy said it was on a Sunday. I remember, my sister was a tiny child then. And she was drinking her milk. And all of a sudden, I saw that she was God. And the milk was God. I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God, if you know what I mean.

How do we come to see the world the way Salinger describes Teddy, watching his sister? How do we realize that there is only God, only One Thing here? Well, there are many doorways into discovering the sameness or equalness of everything. And here is one.

For the next few moments, I invite you to feel the way in which whatever is occurring, and however you may be describing it, it is all energy. Just feel this, the energetic quality of everything. It doesn't matter what you're experiencing right now, it doesn't matter what you're feeling, thinking, sensing, just feel it all as subtle energy, moving as everything that’s arising.

See how everything is equal in its being an expression of this life force that is palpably here and yet very subtle in so far as our not being able to pin down or determine what it is. Even when you feel something like the body as this concretely present energy, you’re immediately thrust into the subtlety of exactly what that energy is made of.

Everything you hear, feel it as this subtle energy. Everything being thought, subtle energy, every emotion, every sensation, subtle energy. Wherever the spotlight of attention may land, it finds the presence of this subtle energy in the myriad forms it can assume.

In this sense, it doesn't matter where your attention may go, because wherever it goes, it finds the same thing. Subtle energy. Even if you're visited by something that the mind labels as uncomfortable or scary, it’s just more subtle energy, more life.

Feel the energetic quality of everything, how alive each moment is, the dynamic energy that moves as everything. Notice how subtle it is. What is this energy, this life force being felt? No need to think about it. Just feel it. Again, you don't have to go anywhere to find the subtle energy for everywhere you go, that’s what you find! But remember, you’re not standing outside of the energy noticing it, you are this dance of subtle energy, just as everything is.

Everything that constitutes what you may think of yourself—body, mind, personality—all of it, the presence and movement of this subtle energy. From one perspective, we are subjects encountering a world of experience and circumstance. But from another, what’s perceiving is energy and what’s being perceived is energy. It’s all just subtle energy encountering subtle energy. God drinking God, as Salinger put it…

There's no escaping the subtle energy, nor is there any finding of it for it is what's being found as each instant. Every momentary perception is yet another articulation of the subtle energy. Just like the dreaming consciousness presents as all these different characters and events, the subtle energy of life presents as the myriad phenomena being encountered.

It matters not the specific circumstances or experiences occurring for the subtle energy is present in and as everything. There's no missing it. No losing nor finding it because it was never lost in the first place!

The presence of the subtle energy is unconditioned. It remains itself, regardless of how it’s appearing. This all-pervading subtle energy of which everything is constituted doesn't depend upon how it's appearing any more than the ocean depends upon the particular waves it’s giving rise to.

The energy of life doesn't look a particular way, it doesn't feel a certain way. It doesn't appear a certain way. It appears and looks and feels like every way, which makes it the easiest thing to discover because it is everything, even the difficult, gritty stuff.