“…the leaves were full of children, hidden excitedly, containing laughter…not known, because not looked for but heard, half-heard, in the stillness between two waves of the sea… We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. Quick now, here, now, always—a condition of complete simplicity (costing not less than everything)…” from 'THE FOUR QUARTETS' (T.S. Eliot)Books have always been doorways for me. This passage found me at a crucial threshold: that vulnerable time when none of the stuff you grew up believing, sticks anymore. It was one of those unmistakable initiation passage-ways. A 23 year old in The Bodhi Tree bookstore (1970, Los Angeles) I browsed those shelves expecting to find the manual designed to escort me personally into my future. Every raw nerve jolted wide-awake as I began to read the first few stanzas of Eliot's book.
His description of our relationship with time, the universe, and the divine, made me feel as if I were pivoting on a razors edge between youthful curiosity and steadfast revelation. One side held my entire past and along with it, my sense of identity. The other side held my entire future—utterly unknown
Living ‘between two waves’ had been the only life I’d known—but until I happened upon Eliot's poetry, I'd had no idea that I was doing such a thing. I had learned how to cope with the continuous strife of navigating a terrain filled with emotional landmines by mastering the skills, which my survival required. At the same time, my confident façade hid a shaken, insecure, driven desperation, deep inside. It often felt as if Life, itself, were having a tug-of-war over my soul. Neither 'wave' was anyplace I wanted to be. The ‘space between’ was my sanity loophole of hidden solitude and guarded privacy. Here I would slip into an innocent secret world where the treacherous waves, on either side, could not find me. Was I actually the serene bastion of capability, upon whom others relied? OR was I really the insecure self-conscious kid whose sense of alienation, rebellion and resistance, must be kept constantly hidden? Such rotten choices seem to be avoidable if you simply 'live' somewhere else.
I had to wait more than two decades to discover this image, but ‘slipping between two waves’ had always been my intuitive way of finding an escape-valve. I continually made the choice to live in a realm that refused to chose sides. Through nature, through imagination, I found ways to ‘remove myself’ from the tug-of-war. In fact, I always felt that the ‘real me’ was the one whom no one knew existed. While neither of the polarized ‘selves’ was truly me.
The Four Quartets illuminated my perception with new understanding, I felt excited and reassured. Instead of seeing my childhood as personally flawed (something to hide from others), I glimpsed how it was simply part of a larger cyclic flow. The sense of being drained, by having to straddle two realities was instantly replaced by a passionate zeal to go deeper—to know more.
I began to read everything I could get my hands on, written by T.S. Eliot. It felt uncanny to me that he knew so much and that upon reading his words I knew that I had known it too—yet I had never known that I knew. Or, in discovering that such knowingness simply IS, a mere glimpse of promise hinted that I also, might gain the degree of insight and understanding, which this amazing poet possessed.
Man’s curiosity searches past and future
And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint—
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime’s death in love,
Ardor, selflessness and self-surrender
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time.
from ‘DRY SALVAGES’ (T.S. Eliot)
So, Eliot opened a dimension for me, which resonated throughout my entire energy field. I would not be introduced to the term ‘energy field’ for many years to come, but at that point in my life, I was keenly aware of it’s existence. All thought my childhood, I had lived in wait of those 'unattended moments' and pounced upon them eagerly every chance I got.
Poets give form to the ineffable. The awareness of this magnificent realm: “…the intersection of the timeless with time…” brought marvelous promise of something I simply ‘knew’ I would ‘grow into’. My path opened before me, unseen, yet strongly recognized and there would be no turning back.
We are all quite familiar with this intimate essence, but mostly, we ignore it because we were never told about its true value. We miss the portal because we mistake it for the Nothing (that it truly is!) thinking that 'nothing' is a waste of our precious time. Everyone touches the ‘space between’ and perhaps the difference is that some of us notice it more, while others pay it less heed. I am grateful that I was ‘driven’ to run from a world where I would come to value, cherish and even guard, this ‘place between two waves’.
Perhaps you 'space out' and then you catch yourself. You 'come back'. You might even look around sheepishly to see if anyone noticed that you were 'gone'. Or you might pause between the in-breath and the out-breath (just letting lifeforce suspend itself on its timetable) and there is a deep letting go. Only then do you realize how tightly you've been holding on.
Next time you come face-to-face with a sense of emptiness, stillness, or 'the nothing', just try stopping. …In the forest beyond sound and silence …On a crowded street beyond the roaring cacophony, as all sound blurs into one droning hum. Zoom out, way out, until the obsessive magnet of 'mind-chatter' is but a tiny spot on a big map. Let everything else dissolve until IT (the vast stillness) is the only threshold in existence. Just for you. Just now. The price is forfeiting familiarity; the reward is touching true freedom.
Slip between two waves of the sea and see what happens . . .
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