Tag: oneness

The Price of Love

On By Just StephIn Touching the Infinite1 Comment

As strange as it may seem, it is possible to love without attachment.  I’ll grant you, that is an alien concept in a day and age when the concept of love has been watered down to the point where it is used in regards to your like of soft drinks and computer games.  But it IS possible.

Love without attachment is also love without expectation.  The object of your love is not required to do or be anything other than exactly what it is.  If it should change from one moment to the next; if, like a rabid dog, they suddenly turn on you and attack for no reason other than the fact that you are there, it won’t change the fact that you still love them.

Most people can get to the point of wrapping their brains around the idea of unconditional love; of love without expectation and attachment when it comes to a parent’s love for their child, but what about love for a perfect stranger?

For love to be truly unconditional it has to be based on more than what the person (or object) can do for you (give you love back in return, provide you with financial or emotional support, give you validation for your choices or provide you with a justification for being alive).

Truly unconditional love comes from a realization that all of us; you, me, the person standing next to you, the homeless man on the corner, the obnoxious politician – all of us; that each and every one of us is instrumental to the well being of the universe and of life on this planet.  It comes from an acknowledgement that even though we may each seem completely different, at our deepest core WE ARE ONE.

The True Price of Love

 

True love comes with a price – the price of pain;

 Of giving up a tiny bit of yourself to the one you love,

Knowing full well that you will never get that piece back;

Of knowing that as long as they live they will hold a tiny piece of your heart and soul.

 

And the true cost of living a life of love – whether it is the one love of a lifetime

Or many loves throughout your life – is that by the time you are done;

By the time your heart stops beating; there is nothing left of your heart.

It has been spread across the world – across the universe.

 

It has become a part of everyone and everything you have ever interacted with.

No matter how large or how small a part they played in your life,

You loved them; and in loving them you gave them a bit of your heart;

And in them your heart beats on and loves forever.

~SSHenry

The Smelting Pot

On By Just StephIn Metaphysical MussingsLeave a comment

Why is it that so many people have such a deep-seated fear of oneness?

Honestly, you say the word and you can feel people cringe; that is when they are not jumping all over you for promoting ‘New Age claptrap’ or un-American sentiments.

Un-American? Really?  Last I heard America was the ‘Great Melting Pot’ where Peoples of different races and religions came together and became something more together than they were individually; a place where thoughts and concepts and ideas could mix freely and homogenize into something altogether different; something stronger and more unique.  Well, that’s how we billed ourselves, Once Upon a Time.

Times, it seems, have changed.

Once upon time the concept of the Great Melting Pot actually made sense.  It didn’t matter who you were, or where you were from.  You could come and add your own uniqueness to the mix; you could learn new ways of thinking and doing and being and, out of them, create a life for yourself that was richer and stronger than would have been possible if you had continued to go it alone; like taking a plate of Iron, melting it down to its most basic, fundamental levels, removing the impurities, oxidizing it, and ending up with steel; something far stronger and more durable.

The problem is that over the years the concept Great Melting Pot has turned into the great Homogenizing Plant, and homogenization isn’t about increasing strength and stability of any one person or group of Peoples.  Homogenization is where substances are brought together and emulsified until what made them “them” is distributed evenly throughout the mixture and there is no uniqueness or individuality left.

Steel is still Iron; just iron that has been purified and strengthened.  When you homogenize milk, on the other hand, while it loses its impurities, it also looses much of the richness and flavor that made it so enjoyable to begin with.  If you don’t believe me, stop by a farm sometime and take a drink of milk fresh from a cow, there really is no comparison.

Believe it or not, this is the same problem that people run into when they think of the concept of spiritual unity and oneness.  Instead of seeing oneness as a smelting pot; a process that enriches the individual; a process that not only removes your impurities but strengthens you with concepts and ideas that you might never otherwise have encountered, they see it as homogenization; as a loss of everything that made them an individual.

They have somehow got it into their heads that when you subscribe to “oneness” you give up all of your individuality; all of your flavor; everything that made you “you.”  Actually, they couldn’t be more wrong.

Oneness isn’t about becoming the same as everyone else.  It isn’t about losing your distinctness or merging into some sort of protean soup where you give up your ability to think for yourself.  In fact, as long as we live in this physical universe and subscribe to physical duality that is patently impossible.  Our very existence as human beings here on this planet indicates that we are here to live as individuals and to thrive, each of us in our unique and distinct physical package.

What oneness is about is acknowledging that at our most fundamental core, each and every one of us is made up of the same substance.  Oneness is not something that we strive for; it is something that we remember because it is something that already happened.

We all come from that great smelting pot where the iron was crafted into steel.  Through the process of living, each of us takes on different strengths and weaknesses.  We’ve had different alloys added into our mix to make new and unique metals.  We’ve been cast into beams to hold up sky scrapers and into fence posts and belt buckles and kitchen kettles.  We find our place as cookware or flatware or decorative objects that have to be highly polished.

But underneath it all; underneath all of the polishing and decorative coats of paint; underneath all of the plaster and plumbing that have been built up over us; underneath of the circuits and computer chips and plastic casings; we’re all the same.

No matter how we may fight the knowing, we ARE all one.

There is no getting around it.

Acknowledging the fact that we are all, at our core, spiritual beings and that we are made up of the same stuff does not mean that we will stop being who and what we are, that we will have to melt down the sky scrapers and the flatware and the belt buckles and the jewelry and give up our individuality for some sort of homogenized boredom.

All it means is that by acknowledging that we are all made up of the same stuff we will go about our lives with a fresh perspective; the knowledge that no matter how different we may seem, at heart we ARE one.

And that, my friends, can make all the difference in the world.

A Sea of Ones

On By Just StephIn Metaphysical MussingsLeave a comment
All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.
~ Swami Vivekanada

Go on, say the word out loud.  Whisper it if it makes you feel better: Oneness.

Did you shudder?  Did your stomach turn over and give you a vague sense of queasiness?  Were you forcibly reminded of the various cults whose members followed their charismatic leaders to untimely deaths? Did you suddenly get a vision of new age self-help gurus descending on you while waving copies of their books and tapes for you to purchase like a hoard of invading Visigoths?

It is strange; the very concept of merging one’s identity with another person or group has become an anathema to humanity.  We fight it tooth and nail and create stories and legends which we turn into books and movies to remind us just how frightening of a concept it is.  Hollywood is full of them.  They make for excellent science fiction and horror thrillers.

What’s really strange is while we hold up individuality as the end all be all of existence, we only live that way in our spare time.  When it comes to work, any business person will tell you that the collective or hive mindset is far more profitable to a company than having each employee thinking (and acting) for themselves.

But overall as a society we are obsessed with individualism; with the belief that the interests of the individual are ethically paramount and that we are better off acting in our own self interest than in considering the needs of humanity as a whole.  And this belief tends to spill over into the way that we view others and their place in the world.

Whether it is our employees or our significant others, our friends or our acquaintances, the result is the same, most of us are focused on ourselves and on how those around us can make our lives better.  How can you increase my quarterly earnings?  How can you make my life more interesting?  What can you do for me?

It is this attitude that will be our undoing.

Oh yes, I know, individualism is the cornerstone of capitalism.  Every marketing executive and advertising specialist on the planet knows that appealing to one’s individuality and uniqueness sells products and creates a desire for more things that will set you apart from the crowd and mark you as one of a kind.  But when it comes right down to it, it’s not a very cohesive way to live.

When applied to countries as a whole, the attitudes and beliefs embraced by individualism become nationalism (the belief that nations are better off acting in their own self interest than collectively and with international or global goals and/or ideals) with each country promoting its own self interests regardless of what it means for those around them.

While both individualism and nationalism may seem like logical choices on the surface, the fact is that we do not live in a bubble, either as people or as nations. What we do impacts those around us and the impact we have on them in turn rebounds on us.  There is a reason for this, though most people don’t like to think about it.  It is because we are all connected.  We are all one.

No, I’m not talking about some sort of all-inclusive mish-mash of thought and belief and personality where everyone gives up who they are in order to pursue some sort of hive mentality.  I’m talking about the kind of oneness you get when you have billions of drops of water coming together to form an ocean; an ocean where millions of cresting waves carve themselves out of the oneness that binds them all together and gives them their coherence and purpose.

Each wave, each drop of water is individual and unique.  Each drop of water contains a universe unto itself.  Each wave is formed just a bit differently than each of its brothers, and yet they share an underlying cohesion; a sense of unity and of oneness that create the concept of an ocean; that endless sea of possibilities and potential; a world where you can become one without having to give up yourself; where you can stand on your own but where you never have to stand alone.

Dancing in the Rain

On By Just StephIn Metaphysical MussingsLeave a comment

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain!”

There is nothing like a good thunderstorm to stir the soul

Seriously, there is just something about the power of an approaching storm that holds me in absolute awe.  Not terror; awe.  The pure majesty of it; the strength of it; the promise of release in the whipping of the wind and the scent of wonder and possibility that fills my head with its overpowering fragrance; what’s not to be amazed at?

When the dark clouds start rolling in and the pressure starts building and the leaves start turning themselves inside out and glinting silver against a darkening sky, most people head for cover after checking to make sure they’ve rolled up the car windows and brought in the dog.  I on the other hand (and much to my husband’s annoyance) go around throwing open the windows as far as they will go and then head out into the yard to welcome it.

I’ve done this since I was a little girl, and I can remember my grandmother (who was deathly afraid of thunderstorms) calling after me frantically as I’d dash out the back door as the first thunderclap rattled the clouds on the horizon in order to dance like a gypsy around the big blue spruce that grew behind our house.

I’d dance and dance in wild abandon, letting the percussion of the thunder serve as my rhythm and as the wind picked up I’d end up twirling through the tall grass and the lupines that grew on the hill beneath the blue spruce until I’d fall flat on my back and watch the towering clouds in their never-ending patterns take over the sky.

Eventually my gram would send one of my aunts or more often my grandfather out to collect me (he did not have the fear of storms she did) but even so I’d beg him to not to make me go in until the lightning was almost directly overhead, and it was he who taught me to count the spaces between thunderclaps in order to determine their distance and explained why it was that the leaves turned inside out.

Even once I was back inside I’d be glued to the window; staring in amazement at the streaks of lightning and the power of the whipping wind as it would throw the trees into complete disarray.  Of course once the storm front would pass by and it started to seriously rain, I’d lose all interest and wander off in search of other pursuits, but during the storm itself, you couldn’t tear me away.

Even once I started school and learned about weather systems and barometric pressure and electricity and Ben Franklin and his kite (yeah, they still taught that story when I went to school) I still couldn’t seem to shake my fascination with storms.  It didn’t matter how many statistics people would throw at me about the number of people to be hit by lightning every year; or the dangers of flash floods or how expensive it was to replace furniture that had been water damaged because I’d left the bedroom window open while it was raining, the power of storms has never lost their hold over me.

Of course part of the fascination that I had was in the building sensations inside of my own body; how my own energy would build in proportion to the storm itself, and how it would dissipate as the storm would break, with the tension and the excitement pouring out of me like a could burst.

And part of it was the underlying feeling that there was something else lying just beneath the surface of my mind; a bigger, stronger part of me; a knowing of myself that went far beyond the little girl in jeans and braids who was laughing manically while twirling around the spruce tree, because for just a minute I could feel that connection with everyone and everything.

I could feel myself as the wind whipping through the trees and through my hair and filling the sails of the boats on the harbor.  I could see myself as the lightning; as the skin tingling energy that filled the air and lit up the night sky; I could sense myself as everything from the grass between my toes to the huge towering clouds.

For just a moment I was part of something far greater than myself; my little individualistic and independent personhood was gone.  For just a moment I could feel the universe inside me; moving through me.  And maybe, at the heart of it, that is what most people are afraid of.

Perhaps they are not really afraid of the lightning or the flash floods or of losing power.  Maybe it’s not the rain that they are shutting out when they go around closing the windows.  Maybe what they are shutting out isn’t the lightning or the whipping wind or the furniture ruining rain.

Maybe what they are shutting out is the fear of experiencing what they have known (even if subconsciously) all along; that they are part of something far bigger than themselves; that at the fundamental heart of things we are all connected and that all of those things that we feel make us “special” and “different” are just the imaginations of a fevered ego that is trying desperately to justify its reason for being.

Maybe it’s time to stop fearing the storm and throw open the windows.  Or, better yet, perhaps it’s time to go dancing in the rain.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

On By Just StephIn Metaphysical MussingsLeave a comment

You hear a lot of things about duality; most of it negative.  But when it comes right down to it, dudality is a very necessary part of our existence.  Or rather, duality is a very necessary part of our being able to experience our existence.  But what exactly IS duality?

Quite simply; duality is the act of being twofold, of each thing having an opposite.

It is the dualistic nature of the world is what allows us to exist as individuals – separate from each other; “Me” as opposed to “you.”The dualistic nature of the world is what allows us to experience one thing by comparing it and contrasting it with its opposite, ‘hot’ as opposed to ‘cold’ or ‘light’ as opposed to ‘dark’, ‘male’ as opposed to ‘female’ and even ‘living’ as opposed to ‘dead.’ Without comparisons there would BE no experience.

The very fact that we are in a physical body – a body created to experience – means that we are, physically, completely immersed in duality. It is what helps us to function, to think, to be able to disassociate ourselves from the quantum soup of possibilities form which we arose and get on with the experience of being human.

And yet – and yet – the spirit cries out for more. It cries out to be separate, yes, but still a part of something. It yearns to belong, to have a place – a purpose in something bigger than itself.

But how do you connect opposites? How do you merge light and dark? How do you combine hot and cold? To do so is to negate the light and the dark, the hot and the cold. To merge two opposites, it was argued, was to lose the integrity of both. You may have more by combining the two, but they will have lost their definition, their delineation, their ability to experience themselves AS themselves and so become (from the view of physicality) worthless.

And there were still others that argued that by combining two things together you get something more than you had to begin with – something greater than you had. That combining two opposites you entered a third, greater realm, a realm of oneness where yes, the two objects have lost their individuality, but they have but become something more than they were.

But both the idea of absolute separateness and combining opposites to become something “more” have their drawbacks; primarily that of their being both still based in duality. And neither does anything to truly satisfy the spirit’s need to belong to something greater than itself – BUT AS ITSELF.

Instead, let’s look at this from a different angle, and to do so I’m going to use an example.

It is coming on winter here in the Northern Hemisphere. Days are getting shorter and colder. All the crops have been brought in from the fields and people are unpacking their winter clothes. But in the Southern Hemisphere it is coming up on summer. The days are getting longer and hotter, the gardens reaching full bloom, the growing season is well underway and shorts and summer dresses and being worn.

Opposite sides of the same coin, yes?

Opposite sides of the same planet.

And there is the key you see, for these opposite sides of the same coin ARE part of something bigger than themselves. They are both part of the planet, even though taken separately they seem like completely separate and individual states of existence. The planet is what unites them and ties them together. It is still summer there, and winter here, but together they make up something greater than the season in their half of the hemisphere – together both hemispheres unite to create one WHOLE sphere, or the planet.

Duality combined in “oneness.”

Being a part of the “oneness” of the planet does absolutely nothing to diminish the seasons in either hemisphere; the illusion of being completely different “things” or “places.” So too, being part of the “oneness” of all that is does nothing to diminish your individuality, but merely reminds all individualities that we DO have a part in something greater than ourselves; that we DO belong. We always have.
In one form or one shape or one season or another, we always have and we always will.