A Hidden Axis

There is a hidden axis that goes through my inner world, an axis of love. It is a column of timeless and subtle energy that has always remained there, although often I do not perceive it.

Usually my thoughts, and my thoughts about my thoughts, create a kind of vibration that, when it is more intense, inevitably removes me from that axis. Like a pendulum, it takes me from one extreme to the other. So, in each fleeting pass through the center, I briefly touch my own being, my own immortality, only to immediately abandon it again.

Robert Fludd, Integra Naturae Speculum Artisque

In that brief passage through the center, in moments of self-remembering, a deep and wordless conviction arises, a sense of rootedness in the present moment, in myself and in the universe I inhabit.

As many times as it is possible for me to remember to do it, I yearn every day to return to that center, to the invisible axis of energy in me. Whenever it happens, the encounter with that interlude of consciousness deepens an emotion or a state that, for lack of a more precise idea, some time ago I began to call ‘love.’

Rumi: Never abandon your innermost core even for a moment,
So the Beloved will always find you at home.

The Encounter with Stillness

“I discover that stillness is not a state; it is an inner place. Like a hub at the center of a wheel, it accommodates quietude and movement with equal ease. This is a mystery. It is the opening through which subtle vibrations can reach us. Remembering oneself is the act of creating and maintaining this opening.” 

~ Shimon Malin

Something in me is quietly fed during that fleeting touch. Something in me gives up, like a thirsty and dying pilgrim who, about to lose faith or life, takes his last step at the gate of his mecca. Something dies, and by dying, knows love. There is no further step to take, nor even a new breath. At this point, I no longer belong to myself. Or rather, I understand that I have never belonged to myself.

I could not, in any way, walk the path towards inner stillness, without that love having been there long beforehand. Its power of attraction is what leads me to open the eyes of my presence and my heart when the endless swinging gives me a new opportunity to touch the center.

Every time I meet this axis of love in a present stillness. Here the world of my thoughts, appetites, and passions vanishes. And I can see that world as a distant scene taking place at the end of a dark street, or as a song playing on an old radio that someone forgot to turn off.

Dante and Beatrice in First Heaven, Canto 1, 14th century

Who am I?

So, who is watching all this? Who has been possessed by a sweet and loving clarity that transcends the irritating noise of the many ‘I’s? Noise that, as an unwanted visitor, I find every time I look?  What, in me, has known how to stop right at the point where consciousness is possible?  What, in me, knew it existed? Who, in me, will remember it when I have forgotten it, the next instant?

It is the part in me that is and has been touched by the influence of that love.  A small particle in my interior, touched, ignited, and forever transformed by a force foreign to me. A force not mine, but it lodges in a space of stillness, lovingly created as an offering, deep inside of me.

Dante: But my desire and will were moved already — like a wheel revolving uniformly — by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.

Elisa Edner is a long-time Fourth Way student. Recent articles from Elisa can be found here: https://fourthwaytoday.org/author/elisa-eidner/.