06/07/2016
I wrote this a few years ago and it came back to me, so thought I'd share it here. A bit long, but here goes...
Quick little post last night from a quote by Meister Eckhart about the Oneness of all things, the immanence of God. Another one I've read, the author's name escapes me, is that this woman, another mystic, said that she no longer thinks that God is out there somewhere; she also no longer believes that God is only within. God is everything; as much in the trees and the air and the rocks and water as within and part and all of me, and of you. Again, what room does this allow for hatred and selfishness and racism and war? If you are I and I am you, why don't I treat you as I do myself? Why do some of us even hate ourselves? I remember reading once that when the Dalai Lama was first learning about the west, and he found out that one of the major problems of people in the west was self-loathing, he was shocked. How could we hate ourselves? But we often do. We are unhappy about our body or our life or our looks and many things about ourselves. Back to the quotes mentioned above, there is simply no room in them for not being happy with ourselves, with our world, with our neighbors; whether these neighbors be next door or in Iraq, Iran, Africa, China, wherever. We are all One! And so, our work is to meditate on that. And we don't even need to make it a metaphysical, beyond physical, meditation. Modern physics tells us that we are all One. Our fundamental make up is the same as that of a rock, soil, plants, animals, stars, everything. So it is not much of a stretch to consider our inherent Oneness with everything. Meditating on this, it is not a great leap to change our beliefs about our neighbors in other countries; to begin to understand that however we worship God, it is of course the same God that we worship. The God of the Jews and the Muslims and the Protestants and the Catholics is all One. There is no difference, and yet we fight wars and we kill and we hate those of other religions. We see the madness that goes on in the Middle East. This hatred goes back millennia. If it wasn't so serious it would be comical. We even teach our children to hate. I heard recently on the radio that one of the common su***de bombers these days is young, as in nine year old, girls. What in a child could generate this hatred, other than that they have been taught from infancy to hate by their parents? What a horrible way to raise children, who would never hate another unless they were taught to by their parents and by other adults. If left to their own means, children of all races and religions would play together happily, never knowing that there was any "difference" between themselves. Rather than teaching our children to hate, we should, rather, be learning from them how to Love. The nearest thing we experience to truly unconditional Love is that of children for each other and for their parents. That is where we can begin to learn about true Love. We love our spouses and somehow turn that love into need instead. And when that spouse no longer provides us with that need we have, we get tired of them and turn them in. All is One. That leaves absolutely no room for hatred and war and racism. Imagine, as Ram Dass once said, looking at a tree and disliking it for the color of its bark or the way it was shaped. We don't judge trees. We judge other people. What is the difference? Trees and people, no difference except that trees simply sit, patiently watching the world and allowing it to unfold as it will. Perhaps we could learn from trees. Perhaps, rather than reaching out and grabbing our world, we should simply let it come to us. That is a concept so foreign to the modern human. We need to seize the day! Make it happen! Rather than getting up and allowing what happens to unfold as it will. We should try this on days when we have nothing truly important to do: try simply allowing what will happen to happen; no plans, no agenda, just an unfolding of events as they occur. No forcing at all. See where the river of life takes us on a day. We may very well be surprise where that is. And so, yes, of course all is One. Modern science and mystics of all times tell us so. Our work is to begin acting that way; to begin treating everything as if it is an inherent part of us. It is. Namaste.
