The great Tao flows everywhere
It fills everything to the left
and to the right
All things owe their existence to it
and it cannot deny any one of them
Tao te Ching, 34
"I am the light that shines on everyone
I am the All.
The All came forth from me
and the All came into me.
Split the wood and I am there.
Turn over the stone,
and you will find me."
The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 77
"I am ever present to those who have realized me
in every creature. Seeing all life as my manifestation,
they are never separated from me. They worship me
in the hearts of all, and all their actions proceed from me.
Wherever they live, they abide in me."
The Bhagavad Gita, 6:30-31
"To God belongs the East and the West;
and wherever you turn,
there is the face of God."
The Qu'ran, Surah 2
Surfaces create a great many of this world's problems, with the suggestions that they are the most important and compelling part of life, being the most visible, and what we interact with the most; none of which is true. You can neither tell a book by it's cover, nor the content of a person's heart from the clothes they wear. It's impossible for our eyes to see into the whirring masses of sub-atomic particles all dancing inside our supposedly "solid" world. There is an exponential relationship of the outside to the inside of everything.
When we are confronted by surfaces: appearances, behaviors, "final results," we can't compare our insides to those outsides, but only what we don't know of the insides of each. By what we can identify with.
This occupation by spirit is as mysterious as it is miraculous, and it is the most important, the most evident, interactive, and compelling whether we can see past the surface or not. We can see that dance plainly, if we allow ourselves to. So pay as little attention to the surface as possible. Practice seeing the spirit arising as often as you can manage.
All of these quotes from all of these wisdom sources are saying the same thing, aren't they? We display our ignorance by relying on some visible affirmation, when we know that every surface changes, that the mystery within alone remains Eternal. And everything we witness with our minds, and our eyes, and our hearts is actually the proof of our shared composition, the substance of our source and ineffable connection. The "Face of God."
It's just a matter of perception. Of allowing yourself to look past the surface by looking with a vision that's free of judgment and comparison, and so fully engaged by compassion. Here, a couple more quotes, that say the same thing:
"A human being is part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
Albert Einstein
"The disciples asked him:
'When will the Kingdom come?'
Yeshua answered:
It will not come by watching for it...
The Kingdom...is spread out over the whole earth,
and people do not have eyes to see it."
The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 113
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