Universal Intergration

When I was a child, I longed for something I couldn’t identify. I blamed my parents, teachers, and the world for this longing that never subsided, long into adulthood. I couldn’t have told you what it was I wanted, exactly. I only knew that I wanted.

For the last six years, I’ve worked very hard on myself. The phrase “hard on myself” seems to have a double meaning in that sentence. First, I diligently strove to understand who I really am, and secondly, I have beaten myself mercilessly for nothing more than being who I am.

In asking the question, who am I, I’ve learned much about who I am not.

When we look out into the world, we see ourselves. What happens around us seems to be somehow about us, and happening to us, but the truth is, we create our world through our perceptions and assumptions, and we create a view of ourselves by what we see around us, and in time we come to believe the illusion that we are what the world tells us we are.

It's like a drawing jumping off the page and saying, this is who you are. Whether the drawing is beautiful, ugly, or indifferently blah, the drawing will never be the artist. 

The world I saw came to me through a filter of distrust and blame. While outwardly I proclaimed that it was all the world’s fault, inwardly I was certain that the ugliness I saw, heard, and felt was really my own.

Coming to understand the truth was a milestone in my healing.

In a way, I had created the ugliness I saw in the world. In a way, it was really coming from me. All I had to do to stop seeing it was to stop believing it. Seeing my inherent goodness was as simple as understanding that it was only that filter that made me see the world as scary, evil, vile, or corrupt. The only corruption was in my perception.

No matter what I heard, it was not true that we were purposely destroying our world. No matter what I saw, it was not true that human nature was innately flawed. No matter what I believed, the reality was beauty beyond my comprehension.

I cried.
When I really got it, I cried.
First, for the beauty of reality, for although I couldn't see it, I knew it was there and that in itself was relief worth crying for.
Then I cried for another reason.

When I believed that human beings were causing the world’s destruction and the destruction of our species and likely every other species on Earth, I believed we had some power to fix it. Letting go of that illusion of control was excruciating.
It means having to live with whatever comes along.
It means acceptance in its truest form.

Do you believe in God? Even if that word doesn't resonate with you, do you believe there is some greater force capable of creation? That God or Nature or Physics or whatever word you give to this greater force, has found a way from the nothingness of matter to the reality of self-conscious beings?

If you do, do you believe that we, even in our great numbers and ever-growing knowledge, are capable of anything near that kind of creation?

The Universe will continue on its ever-changing path, in whatever form the future takes.

And, the energy which is us in life will never cease to be.

No matter what we do, we will always be part of the greatness of eternity. And, I believe, when our essence continues without our bodies, we will move beyond eternity. Right here, in this physical existence, we are bound by the laws of physics. Beyond the physical universe there may lie an entirely other way of being. One without time. One without space. One without separation into the boxes of our own, isolated bodies.

In letting go of my illusion that I was somehow personally responsible for the world I existed within – my own life, my own issues and day-to-day struggles – I have learned to accept that through connection with this higher force I am capable of creation. What I saw around me was a lie I told myself. I could, instead, create whatever I wanted to see and be. The possibilities are limitless.

This creation isn’t about my daily routine. It isn’t about reversing time so the lines around my eyes disappear, or about changing the reality of a changing physical world, it is about knowing that whatever happens, whatever shifts occur, that which is most important can never be taken from me.

That longing I had – and sometimes still experience – is caused by my separation from knowing that all that I longed for has always been with me. It can’t be any other way. Because, even though I now seem to exist in this physical world, I know the reality is something more.

All of us and everything and everyone that’s ever been is all part of the great, celestial Oneness. It can’t be any other way. It's all interwoven and intricately connected. Energy never ceases. All matter is energy. We are One without time. One without space. One without separation.

We are One.