Javier Casals, la rana y el escorpión, Acrylic on canvas, 0.5 x 0.5m, 2014. More here.
Lata Mani
We are all betwixt and between, at all times and in a number of ways. Fragment from a teaching in The Tantra Chronicles. Lord Mary, December 6, 2006
We are all betwixt and between, at all times and in a number of ways. We are all betwixt and between in a very literal way: between what just happened and what is about to happen. Thus, depending on who we are, we strive as best as we can and as consciously as we can, to be as present as possible in the instant as it unfolds. We are also all striving to grasp and enact that which, to the extent that we can ascertain it, most closely approximates the essence of our isness, whatever that isness might be.
There is at all times a glorious dance between the isness of one’s location and given identification point, one’s made-ness by the Divine Mother, and one’s capacity to draw upon that made-ness and uncover, discover, unfold and create one’s synthesizing beingness. Each of us has an isness and a beingness; each of us is isness and is being. Each of us has the capacity to remain as conscious as possible. Indeed, each of needs to reside in such awareness.
As has been said many times, by me and by others, the human subdivision has the greatest challenge in this regard. At first sight a member of the human subdivision seems to have more options, more choices. However, this is not so. The human does not have any more choices than does the leaf on a tree, or the blade of grass in the ground. Did you hear the cow that mooed outside as I was just speaking? That cow had the choice as to whether to moo or not to moo in that moment. Likewise the human individual has the option in each second of whether to do “x” or “y,” or not do “x” or “y.”
Now, if the human is constrained as is the cow, we now know that, in point of fact, the human and cow are as one in the sense that each was created and designed with boundaries that contain their possibilities. Thus, the cow is unlikely to sprout wings and fly. Likewise, the human is unlikely to develop four readily available, permanently usable, legs. In other words, each subdivision is contained or constrained; each is sheltered in its constrainedness. I put it this way because all beings inevitably face the infinity of it all. And infinity is dizzying. Given this, the near-infinite potential of a lack of containment would be unnerving. I say “near infinite” because potential is not infinite in the outward direction. By contrast, it is more than infinite in the inward direction.
… Whether one is a cow, or a human, or a fragment of rock, it is the same. In terms of possibility and potential one exists in context of a constrained outward motion. And in the inward direction one has an infinite possibility of transformation.
Humans are thus more like than unlike other isnesses. This is a very, very important thing, and I think possibly for some beings this is a very comforting thing. Now suppose one is a human, as I have been and as you are now. Again we have more in common than you would imagine... What we have in common is that we are asked to learn the rules of the game for the human subdivision and to play it. At the same time we are offered the possibility of creative activity. And that which shelters and honors us providing the possibility of both struggle and snuggle is the notion of dharma. For it is dharma that helps to provide the direction and structure that any being needs.
Do bear in mind that any being who knows about dharma also has the potential to violate it. Nonetheless, that being would know that they are violating dharma. As you know, when a being is unknowingly adharmic, or does not seem to know the difference between dharma and adharma, we regard them as suffering from psychosis...
This definition of psychosis is important as well as comforting. If it is the case that you will act in a way that is unconsciously adharmic only if you are psychotic, this suggests that it is your psyche that is guarding dharma… Or to put it the other way around: your dharma is sheltered by your psyche. This is a very beautiful learning… It reassures those who are concerned, that in reality every being is born, made and created with a psyche that is harnessed to dharma. Your psyche is sheltered by dharma and dharma is sheltered by your psyche.
Dharma dances with all beings, humans included.
For the whole teaching, The Tantra Chronicles, 297-302; for an explanation of the prefix Lord, The Tantra Chronicles, 281-2.