He motioned for me to sit down, and I did.
“There is something I want to tell you,” Dou Xing said, “but first, you must do as I instruct. Are you willing?”
“Yes.”
“Then you are not ready.”
I looked at him, and though there were no mirrors around, I imagined my face was completely puzzled.
“Tell me about your experience?” he asked.
“What just happened? Did I do something wrong?”
He flashed a smile. “You were ready to take my instructions without question—”
“But I trust you, why wouldn’t I?”
“Trust is fine, but always question. Never give away what is yours, any more than you would take away what is mine.”
I could still feel puzzlement on my face.
“You are sovereign. Your world will try its best to tell you otherwise, but you are this—sovereign. You are also integrated with all others within your realm. So you are both sovereign and integrated. In this state, you are able to operate as a singular being that is connected to all other beings through the network of personal responsibility, which is to say, the virtues of the heart—it is the only covenant.
“Do you understand?”
I nodded. “But questioning… even you?”
“It is not a sign of disrespect. It is a sign that you understand sovereignty. It is not willful disobedience to an authority; it is the practice of your heart aligned to what is called in some worlds, the Sovereign Integral. This is the consciousness that we all aspire to, whether we call it by this name or not.”
“You are aware, I take it, that I’m living in a mental hospital right now…”
“Yes.”
“And I am anything but a Sovereign Integral. Right now, I wear clothes that aren’t mine, I’m locked inside a room, I eat when I’m told, and I have no real freedoms, so how do I live as a Sovereign Integral?”
“You align with it.”
“And how do I do that?”
“Everything is about alignment in a world that is ordered hierarchically. Because there are levels or layers of the world, alignment is critical. I will show you… with your permission.” He nodded to me, and I nodded back.
In an instant we were flying by some invisible means above a place that was absolutely pristine in its beauty. There was a large waterfall, plunging into a dense, tropical jungle, and we flew into a pool of water that was only a few yards downstream from where the waterfall exploded into the river.
The sound of the rushing water was exhilarating. I could feel the power of the water pushing us downstream as we bobbed like apples floating down the river. In a few moments, the roar of the water subsided and the current diminished sufficiently, so we could swim to the river’s edge where we hoisted ourselves up and lay on our backs on the warm sand of the embankment.
“Do you see it?” Dou Xing was pointing upwards to some tree branches that hung high above us like green canopies, blocking the sky. I looked and saw only leaves, nothing peculiar or unusual.
“You mean the leaves?” I asked tentatively.
“Look closer.”
I squinted, but again saw nothing unusual. “I see only leaves.”
“Try not to look at the leaves, but rather, look at the movement of the leaves and what gathers at their lowest point.”
The spray from the waterfall kept the leaves in a perpetual state of glistening green and drops of water were falling from them, and I watched as these drops of water fell down on us. It was hypnotic. I kept watching, occasionally I’d feel a water drop hit my arm or face.
“Keep watching,” Dou Xing said. “Patience is rewarded.”
Then it happened, I was watching one drop form high above me, knowing somehow it would land on me. I watched it curling its energy into enough mass that it would suddenly burst from its leafy post and let gravity have its way with it. It began its descent, and I watched it fall into my eye with great relish. As it hit my eye, I immediately felt my body, such as it was in this world, become like water. It was a very strange experience, I began to dissolve, and I flowed into the river and felt myself merging into the water that flowed downstream.
I rushed by stones and boulders and smooth branches that poked out of the river like bones of trees that had long passed to a new world. I heard the sound of rushing water; I felt the movement, unburdened of any desire or will. It was utterly freeing to flow like this. To feel movement and yet no will. To be separate yet part of a whole. It was ecstasy. It was alignment.
The instant the thought hit me I was back sitting in front of Dou Xing’s modest fire pit with the faint outline of distant mountains in the background.
“I… I understand,” I muttered distractedly.
“Alignment is flow. But what do you flow with?” Dou Xing asked.
“Love?”
“Is it a question?”
“Love.”
“And where does this love come from?”
That was a good question. I thought about it for a few moments as I was readying my answer, feeling like a test was being played out. “It comes from here.” I put my hand over my chest.
“Remember the waterfall?”
“Yes.”
“It’s like the heart, but before the waterfall, there was a source, what was it?”
“The whole river was the source,” I said.
“So we align to love’s unity instead of the small drop—the one ego. We align to the part of us that is the whole river.”
“The Sovereign Integral…” I half-whispered.
“Yes.”
“But if it’s just a concept, if I’ve never experienced this state before, how do I align to something that’s a mere thought or concept?”
Dou Xing looked heavenward for a moment. “This will come as a surprise to you, but you, in your human instrument, are a mere thought or concept, too. You have only accepted it as your reality. It is the only difference. So when you align to a larger picture of your true self—the whole river—you assign a new sense of priority to your interaction with the universe. This can be done on a subconscious level; it doesn’t require you to will it into manifestation with prayers and visualization. Just hold the desire to be aligned… to be the whole river. The rest, as they say, will follow.”
As his words finished I opened my eyes and saw the drab outlines of my room hazy in its darkness. I was once again alone. "
Excerpt from the book Quantusum, by James Mahu
