by Robert Mertens
Dear Subud California Brothers and Sisters,
I just returned from the helpers meeting in Los Angeles and had (as usual) a satisfying and expanding experience. At one of our post-Latihan sessions (with the men) one of us told this story:
A motivational speaker was delivering a workshop at a mental hospital. As is common with motivational speakers (and at Subud gatherings) he introduced his opening remarks to the inmates with the question; “Why are we all here”. One of the inmates promptly stood up and answered, “Because we’re not all there”.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m all there. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not, but more of me is landing every day as my experiences on Subud committees demand that I expand my capacity and understanding, sometimes turning my long held beliefs on their head.
For example; I used to be ardent about achieving material results in Subud to demonstrate to the “world” the “fruits” of our Latihans. I now imagine that these projects are mostly important to tighten our bonds of affection and love.
So what is the “world” anyway? We experience it as being both without and within. All my experiences of the world “without” are brought to me by my senses and actually experienced again; “within”.
I now believe that the important happenings that I have with all of you are shared in a common “within”. And, that the experience of our outer relationships is saved in the “within” of each of us for the times when we become aware of it, as the most permanent part of our lives here on earth.
As Rilke said, “We are bees in the visible making honey in the Golden Hive of the invisible.”
I believe we are connected in our unconscious awareness and know at some level how each of us is in that shared space that I imagine (and to a small extent have consciously experienced).
So what’s down there, trying to emerge into our daily experience?
I believe it’s what Bapak asks of us in the quote selected for this issue of the California Sun:
“To develop your life, you must strive for something more than what is normal.
Find something that is “extraordinary” for you,
Something new, something never done before.
That is how to make God’s Love and Grace real for you.
Undertake and fulfill something without fear.
Choose a road and stick with it.
Never deviate from what is right, human and correct.
Plan, calculate, work.
Success will come unexpectedly, in a way that can not be foreseen.
I see and feel signs everywhere that Bapak’s wish and urging are becoming manifest both through the evolution of our bodies and the indwelling of a higher and wider soul.
Our bodies have been developing for hundreds of thousands of years to house souls that become ever wider and embrace the bodies and the souls that came before. Within the human body, there are worlds of cellular life and awareness harkening back to bacteria and protozoa that respond to energies in our environment.
Embracing these souls and worlds are structure, awareness, and function that can experience and manifest wider worlds such as found in worms and insects (analogues can be found in our intestines and nerve impulses).
Then reptilian qualities were developed in us with instinctual awareness and a brain that can pass survival reflexes to our offspring, and can react with great rapidity to a shadow, sudden noise, or movement that may threaten our survival.
Then came the mammalian parts able to experience emotions and attachment. And now, our frontal lobes house a brain evolving to guide and reflect on our emotional urges, helping us to live in wider and closer community.
All of these bodies and brains are now within us and evolving as we move into new epochs.
I believe that Subud is a catalyst for a big body/brain jump that will make us and this world wide enough to hold a more beautiful and embracing spirit and that we are going through the labor pains that are birthing it.
So we are “not all there” yet but more is landing and becoming embodied with our every Latihan and every action that is guided by it.
Love to you all, Robert
PS- Here’s one of my most recent pictures, that I am calling “Soul of a Wild Turkey”. It is inspired by the interference patterns that generate the shimmering colors in many birds.
I generate waves with a tool in Photoshop, incorporate them into the elegant proportions of Sacred Geometry, and improvise until I find something beautiful, surprising and new.
