I remember years ago chatting to a friend. I was going through a hard patch at the time and she said: Dorna we all understand, empathize and are there for you but, at the end of the day, we all go home close the door and you’re left on your own; implying nobody else was affected but me. Although I knew where she was coming from, I said “that’s what you believe, we’re much closer than you think”.
I knew at the time and still feel it in my bones that it’s not possible to close the doors and live a life unaffected by the whole, even if on the surface all is well and you’re drinking a pina colada by the beach. There are no doors that can stop the flow of consciousness. There is no place, not even in a cave where you are truly ‘alone’. How can you be? Is a drop of ocean ever alone and disconnected? Every thought, every action, every movement, every memory, affects the whole in one way or another. All the stresses and challenges of someone else on a different part of the planet is affecting us now. In the same way that a master can teach by not leaving his room or ever whispering a word. Our knowledge, memories, actions, emotions all go back in the stream of consciousness that we’re all drinking from. This is good news, very good news because it means we don’t have to heal the world to be able to find true peace. That would be a major task! As long as we look after what’s going on here, with us, and heal our own life, we directly affect peace on earth. Even by dealing with and understanding one of our fears, we can dilute it from the system and weaken it, so its grip will be looser next time it catches someone else. In Byron Katie’s words: “You’re the one. If you can undo even one stressful belief, the next baby born comes in with less ability to believe it.”
In the computer age that we live in, I like the analogy of a database. We’re all connected to this database of consciousness that holds everything that has ever been, through the computer of our being. We might not be conscious of this but we are constantly pulling data out and putting data back in it updating different records. The same records that someone else can access and work with. The more conscious we are of this database, the less personal it all gets. We all play a part in the evolution of this database. What we do matters, what we go through and how we go through it affects everyone. Those who know us and those, who we’ll never meet. What we give out comes back to us and this is true on the subtlest levels, subtler than our actions, subtler than our words, it’s what we give out as living beings as we go through our personal experiences.
I trust in this Innernet knowing we’re closer than we think, and it helps! Would it not help give meaning to your pain, if next time it knocks on the door, you know it’s come to you so you can digest it and in doing so serve the rest? Would you be more compassionate to someone else’s pain or negative emotions, if you knew they were here to learn how to deal with it and, were learning it for the rest of us? Would you be more tolerant of those who don’t understand you and less eager to persuade, knowing that what you’ve learnt affects them anyway?
Having said all this, I’d like to add, ‘We are one’ is a concept, a beautiful one too and like all others, has the power to entrap us. I for sure won’t hold on to it should it cause me fear, stress, guilt or shame. Because life teaches me: putting concepts above my inner peace only creates havoc all the way from me to we!
P.S. Found this drawing of my dad’s dating back around the 80s..I think it illustrates the same message. At least for me… 🙂
