To be One, Be One with All

To be One, Be One with All

When the whole world is your friend, fear will find no place to call home. And when you make the mind your friend, you'll know what trust really means. Listen. I have followed this path of friendship to its end. And I can say with absolute certainty—it will lead you home. − Mitta

In my normal state of consciousness, I am controlled by my many ‘I’s through association, through my different lower functions perceiving the world, and through my mental to-do checklist - my many ‘I’s rule my state of consciousness like a ping-pong ball. I am unsettled and disconnected from true reality. I bounce here and there.

If I take my many ‘I’s as my friends, however, then I could find unity like the ancient Buddhist nun Mitta, who entered the Way and found peace at its terminus when she reoriented herself to the world and people around her. Unity is a universally unique and identical experience. It is not my usual state, but it is available with some effort.

When I quarrel with myself and the world as I find it, I lose the connectedness of everything. I lose myself in the part. Borrowing from nature observers and the environmental or Civil Rights movement, I can see that the world is an interconnected place. One thing is connected to another, and all parts are interconnected. Our internal world is no different.

I need to look with my head held up at the world and people around me to properly see and relate to my externals and to recognize similarly in my inner world that my many ‘I’s are merely bricks in this diverse palace I call the world. Seeing both the brick and the palace reminds me to be real. Releasing identification with any single ‘I’ produces the objective, unifying relationship of self-remembering. This higher consciousness is possible if I employ every bit of my fiber.

When I remember myself – I re-member or rebuild myself anew. I reconstruct myself into a whole. I am not any one ‘I.’ Real ‘I’ is the whole, the realm of Higher Centers. I am that which sees the entire landscape near and far and sees my many Henrys as one. Seeing the world this way is not just an exercise, it is a liberation from the ties that hold me down. I want my ties to be loose and supple and able to lift me like a kite string does. A reunification or unity or oneness makes this possible.

A recent early morning walk in an azalea grove reminded me that I am living in an inextricable web. In the still and calm of morning, every few steps I was greeted by either a fixed or floating thread across the path, a gossamer thread or sticky spiderweb net, telling me that I am connected and gently tethered to the plants and animals around me. I invite you to experience this unity. The next time you walk into a spider web or a gossamer thread from an inchworm, remember in that very moment that you are connected and that you are the whole and not a part. You are one, if you choose to be.

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Gopis Search for Krishna, Master of the Moonlight (Freer Collection)