Steadiness

I note (with what I hope will soon be sang froid) that a state of steadiness is only present when hormones do not flood the body. Some dreams produce emotional states, indeed the most complete, because in dreams awareness does not mitigate experience. I awoke from one of those emotional dreams this morning. A hard look showed that my dream arose from a more or less routine reflection on the state of our collective life—a reflection which, when no one’s present to stare it down, can indeed flood the body with anxious emotions. I feel for animals. In them such states must come and go unobstructed, awake or asleep. It is the order of nature: the inner always reflecting the outer—but the outer is not just the inorganic, the winds, the temperature, the skies, the dry, the wet. It includes also the living creatures and their agitation or lack thereof.  Steadiness is being above, meaning beyond, this lower realm, even while within it. But bodies are physical, they need their sleep. The self goes away on long perambulations in heavenly landscapes. It is on returning to the body (no doubt with a sigh) that it encounters psychic states brought about by recent memories, just surfacing again, which flood the tissues with hormonal discharge. And then it’s time to calm everything down. Such observations lead to the notion that beings in bodies have a three-fold nature: body, soul, and spirit. Only the spirit is steady because it isn’t influenced by the endless flux of this dimension.