Oneness - Part II

This is the Part II in my series of posts on Oneness. The symbol to the left is my symbol for Oneness and in Part I, I discussed the "o". To briefly recap, the symbol is "one" - specifically (little "o", the infinity sign, and little "e").

I also explained that in our physical universe, an illusion of God's creation and ours, we can start by thinking of the "o" as "We are all One." However, in our ultimate reality where we are our purest energy, our souls, we can broaden the idea of Oneness to mean that "All is One."

Now let us look at the second character the "n" or the "infinity" character. And yes, I am saying that "We are all infinite." Some religions, tell us that God is omnipresent, but the concept of Oneness implies that we are all omnipresent.

Let us look at the idea that "We are all infinite" from two perspectives. The first way to think of this is from the perspective of our physical illusion, the universe. In this perspective, the physical illusion implies form (grass, rocks, animals, people, molecules, etc...), and this implies distance (yards, miles, kilometers, light years, etc...). Form and distance can be summed up as our physical universe.

Since we are looking at this from the perspective of the physical illusion, I will start with our Oneness definition of "We are all one." If we are part of everyone, then part of us is where everyone else is at any moment. That means that we are everywhere, hence infinite.

This idea is the basis of many Buddhist teachings. You may have seen quotes that refer to somebody saying that they are "nowhere" or "everywhere and nowhere". That is because if you are everywhere then you can be "nowhere" - in particular.

The second way to think of "We are all infinite" is from the perspective of the ultimate reality where God is everything. In the ultimate reality we are our purest energy - our souls. God is us (our souls) and we are all part of God. We are all part of everything, or put another way, our energy extends to everything and vice versa. Hence, we are one and we are infinite.

You may think that I am over simplifying my explanation of this. Yes, it is true that a deeper discussion of this could and has filled many books, but at some point that is just fun thinking and pondering. I've found that as we move our perspective to the utlimate reatlity, everything does become amazingly simple. It is our physical illusion, our universe, and our individuality (driven by our egos), that causes things to become over complicated. It is the ultimate reality where we find God and ourselves/our-selves/our souls all distilled down to the essence of everything - energy. As Albert Einstein said, "When the solution is simple, God is answering."

So now we have combined "All is one" with "infinite". Hopefully, this is helping to deepen your understanding of Oneness. I will conclude this series of posts in Part III with an explanation of the third character "e". Perhaps you already know where I'm going to go with that. In the meantime, it might be helpful to go back to Part I and re-read how the Mayans, Hindus and The Beatles preceived Oneness.

Consider the possibility that what you do to others, society, or the planet are really things that you are also doing to yourself.

Oh, and I AM still the walrus. koo koo ka choo.

Oneness - Part I

You may have been wondering about this image. The image in my Profile. It is my own creation that symbolizes an important aspect of my personal "spiritual journey of remembering". It symbolizes Oneness. This Post is the first in a series of Posts that will discuss my interpretation of this image and the concept of Oneness.

The symbol is "one" - specifically (little "o", the infinity sign, and little "e").

So I'm going to start at the beginning with "o". Our physical universe, God's creation and ours, is an illusion. In this realm of physical illustion the individual and the ego tend to dominate our perspective. Given that, our first step in understanding Oneness is to define it as "We are all One." If, however, we step back from this realm of physcal illusion to our ultimate reality where we are our purest energy, our souls, our understanding of oneness can deepen. We can the broaden the idea of Oneness to include the fact that "God is everything." God is everything means that god is "all" of the energy, us, the grass, the water, etc. You may think of it as God is in each of us and we are in God and that point Oneness means that "All is One."

For this discussion I will focus on Oneness as it has been, is, and can be understood within our physical illusion i.e. the universe.

Oneness is not a new concept. In Mayan Cosmology (the most recent period starting around 3100 b.c.) there is a saying - "In lak’ech …A lak’en" which means "I am you, and you are me. What I do to myself, and everything that lives, I do to you. What you do to yourself and all that is in this universe, you do to me." Around 2500 b.c. the Vedic form of Sanskrit became stadardized. The Sanskrit word Namaste, which means "The Light of God in Me recognizes and honors The Light of God in You and in that recognition is our Oneness."The dates given just indicate a ballpark estimate by scholars as to when a period began, but does not help us determine - with any accuracy - whan each civilization developed this common concept.

Now, jump forward four or five thousand years. The Beatles sang "Iam you and you are me and we are all together." The time they spent in Indian in the 1960s clearly had a profound influence on them. They brought the ancient concpet of Oneness to the majority of the Western world for the first time. And, they it inserted smack dab into the middle of the mainstream at time of enormous cultural, societale, politcal and spiritual reflection, upheaval and transformation.

Oneness is a universal truth that has been know in many times, places and societies. Many thousands of years and many thousands of miles seperate many cultures that -on the surface - are very different, but clearly they came to the same conclusions and all are One at their core.

Hopefully, this will give you plenty to ponder until my next installment/Post on this topic. I'm curious to know your thoughts.

Oh, and I AM the walrus. koo koo ka choo

Namaste