A few days ago I realized something I intuitively understood when I was very young, yet somehow managed to forget. Or perhaps more likely, the grindstone of life gradually wore those memories away. That sudden intuition unlocked the memory of my former knowledge, a strange sort of Déjà vu that prompted a condensed version of this post.
Where look the wise, to their feet, or to the skies? Seek heaven everywhere, in the earth, and in the air.
What I’m talking about, is unity.
When still a toddler I knew the world was alive, and the sun, the stars and moon, and every comet too. Everything I saw, and all the things too tiny for me to see, or too vast to comprehend was one. No division of ground and sky, of living and not alive, of heaven and earth. Those divisions all came later, and as I learnt them, I forgot the truer knowledge of unity.
Unity… In another word, oneness.
How do we forget that we are one with nature? How have we forgotten that the world on which we dwell is a sibling to the other planets, which in their turn form a single solar body? See beyond the limits of your eyes and you will see that we are one – one, with the sun itself. Then gaze further, into infinity itself – realization soon comes that our sun, in unity with a myriad other stars, forms a singular galaxy. Open your mind still further, and comprehension comes that our galaxy combines with billions of others to form a single universe.
Everything that is, is one.
We are, therefore we are one.
If you’re still here…
{Believe me – I understand fully if you left a while back. Until a few days ago, I’d have done as I’ve somehow been taught… I’d have snorted derisively and thought, “Metaphysical gobble-de-gook.” That thought would have closed my mind and led my attention elsewhere.}
… if you’re still here, you might be interested to know the circumstances in which this revelation came. I shared this with a confidante on Twitter, however I know she won’t mind my disclosing parts of our conversation. {How do I know that? I’m confident you’ll figure it out soon, if you have not already.}
Anyway…
Feeling trapped in a bad place in my life, I sat down and cradled my head in my hands. That motion caused me to gaze downward, downward at the inanimate tile beneath my feet.
When things seem terrible, it’s good – for better times must come.
Within that inanimate tile, I perceived a face. A living face cast in stone. As I looked into its eyes, they looked into mine.
In that instant I realized we are all connected. Not just that stony face and me, but all of us. All, of everything.
Soul is not only of the living, it is of all, it encompasses us completely and permeates everything. Yet we don’t see it. I wonder how we lost that capacity? By closing our hearts to things we think don’t directly affect us?
How foolish is that?
Everything affects us, and everything affects everything else.
We are not and cannot be alone.
However, we’re alive, and stone is not. But stone is from where we come, and to whence we will return. And that stone? From dust it came, and to dust it will return. And the dust? That dust once coalesced from space. And space? Space is not as empty as we think, for space bonds planets to their sun, suns into galaxies, galaxies into the universe we know, and perhaps the universe we know is not as limited as we make it seem.
Within us lie enormous quantities of empty space, in the eerily similar downward spiraling scale of size. How can that be? And what do I mean by “eerily similar”?
We’re alive! We’re not inanimate matter floating through empty space!
How certain are we of those assertions? Look deeper than the surface using a magnifying scale and you’ll see. Rivers flow through our veins, they empty into the lakes of our hearts and our sinuses. Air seamlessly traverses the walls of our lungs, bonds with the iron in our blood, and is transported throughout our system where it is released only to be recaptured and returned to our lungs where it is exhaled as carbon dioxide, a product the trees consume. Within us, within our actual physical bodies, air and water are everywhere.
Now increase the scale of magnification a million fold and look at molecules flowing through the murky soup that is…? Well, that soup is “us”.
A million fold again, or some number undefined, and unknown, least to me, and the atoms we are come into view. Those atoms are our inner solar systems. Their nuclei are as powerful as suns, and their electrons are their planets. Measured on such a scale, the empty space between our component atoms is as vast as the distances of our universe.
We are one.
Without the elements that comprise the universe we are nothing.
And that so-called “empty space”, either the monstrous, or the miniscule and minute?
Why, that is our soul.
Formed from the dust of dead stars, we are.
May you find peace.
I hope you enjoyed this post. If you did, please sample Beltamar’s War, which I can promise you it is like nothing you have ever read. I would really appreciate your support.
