Two Kinds Of Metaphysical Movement?

There was only 20% of rain predicted, but after the mind quieted in passive watchfulness in the backyard, you could feel the imminence of a storm. An hour later it hit, one of the most intense thunderstorms I’ve ever experienced.

The lightning didn’t come in jagged streaks, but in global bursts that momentarily lit up the room. At times the lightning and thunder were almost instantaneous, and you felt you were taking your life into your hands standing on the patio and watching the spectacle. For nearly two hours there was a deluge.

Even though I grew up on the Great Lakes, where thunderstorms are frequent and you’re taught early to respect them, only in the tropics have I witnessed natural fury like that storm. During a walk the next day, neighbors commented on it, with the unspoken feeling we had come through something together. A sizable portion of the city was still without power at noon.

The storm lingered for so long, with thunder booming over the house at times like artillery, that it had a marked metaphysical quality about it. Is that possible, or just some echo of ancient superstition?

There are two kinds of metaphysical movements. Except during states of complete negation during meditation in nature, I’ve only known one, what I call the dark metaphysical.

A funny story to illustrate what I mean by the ‘dark metaphysical.’ Just before the pandemic I was feeling particularly besieged by darkness, which came in all forms. One beautiful afternoon, I rode out to one of my favorite meditation spots along the creek that used to define the periphery of the town (the city has since expanded beyond the stream with cheap, retro-tech office buildings and cookie-cutter houses).

At that time, the only structure within a half-mile was the recently built courthouse, complete with jail cells on the top floor, which at least afforded inmates a stupendous view of the foothills and canyon beyond town.

As I neared the dirt path down to a great sycamore (since fallen) from the paved bike path, I had the thought, tinged with self-pity: Darkness is throwing everything at me but the kitchen sink.

Lo and behold, as I neared the meditation spot, there was a double kitchen sink right under the tree where I take my meditations! I laughed, but it felt like gallows humor.

Of course, though there wasn’t another house or apartment within half a mile, there were rational explanations. But the ‘coincidence’ was too much to discount as mere chance.

A working definition of the dark metaphysical is an intentionally directed movement of darkness in human consciousness. Given how dead this culture has become, most people are blind conduits of it, while some apparently are targets. (I say that without self-importance or self-pity.)

So is there another dimension, a true metaphysical movement, composed of intelligence and goodness beyond the mind of man? In recent years I’ve doubted it, but I now tentatively feel that it too exists, though it’s much less discernible.

For one thing, good and evil are not opposites. They aren’t ‘two sides of the same coin.’ That would make good part of evil, and evil part of good. So they have no relationship, and are completely distinct.

Evil does not exist in nature, only in the consciousness of man. Darkness and evil are man-made, and to paraphrase Pascal, what is made by man I will not fear. So if a metaphysical movement of Intelligence exists, where does it come from? Clearly from beyond thought.

After delving into the abuse and neglect of her childhood one afternoon, and confronting the evil of her mother and complicity of her father that she has avoided all her life, my friend went out to sit in the backyard near sunset. After a few minutes she felt a greater clarity and release from her childhood demons.

At that moment a big white egret swooped down below the treetops and soared in front of her over the backyard. Egrets are a rare sight, especially in an urban area, and she felt there was a strong message of healing in it.

So what might the intense thunderstorm mean? Perhaps, as the old verse and song go, God’s going to trouble the water. Indeed, s/he already is. Start listening.

Martin LeFevre

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