Tales: A Look at Looking

Let's start by looking at a bunch of quotes...

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

What's Going On Here? 3 Quotes by Einstein

"There are two ways to live your life- one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle."

This remarkable quote by Albert Einstein addresses what is usually considered to be the most important question of life: Is the universe and life as we know it a big random accident, or is there an underlying and energizing intelligence behind the formation of everything we see and know? Could both be true? The probable confluence of coincidental factors necessary for the spontaneous creation and continued existence of life on earth is infinitesimally small. So what's really going on here?

The world has certainly been shaken lately, what with all this consciousness pouring into it – more now each day than in thousands of previous years. The picture we have of "reality" (back when we were taught that everything was smaller balls orbiting bigger balls) is completely different than it was not all that long ago, so it's a bit difficult to have faith in conjecture, even if you do call it "science," seeing as it generally turns out to be wrong. We can only base our understanding on what seems to work or not work. Newtonian physics work up to a level that lowers a bit every day. Einstein's relativity advanced the ball down the field, out the door, and right into a different stadium that had an additional dimension. Planck, Bohr, Heisenberg and Schrödinger made that a stadium in dynamic constant motion, waves in the field.

 Now it seems, consciousness is being recognized as the creative, unifying factor in all our forms, bringing science into accord with what the mystic wisdom of the ages, from Hindu Vedas to The Tao to Buddha's awakening to Gnostic scripture, has been telling us all along.

In a few great books, like Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics, Lynne McTaggart's The Field, Greg Braden's The Divine Matrix, and Ernst Laszlo's Science and the Akashic Field, we get a heads-up as to what our latest science tells us about just how "non-ordinary" reality really is. Here's some of it, very simply put:

In one experiment, photons are placed in a vacuum. DNA is introduced. The photons arrange themselves around the organic material. When the DNA is removed, the particles remain in the same configuration. Matter is being arranged by organic in-form-ation.

In another experiment, genetic material is divided equally and separated by a great distance. One sample is subjected to specific stimuli. Both samples respond the exact same way simultaneously.

It means that there exists a medium or means of communication through which information is transmitted instantaneously at any distance. Psychic contact and remote viewing are constantly documented to take place with an accuracy that exceeds margins of terror. "Transpersonal consciousness" is documented to occur regularly. Group meditation has a measurable influence on physical events on a large scale. Have you ever thought of someone (had them "enter your heart"), and very shortly received a call or email from them, or "bumped into them" in some highly unlikely place? It happens more often when you know it will.

Medical and pharmacological science has a problem here too. Many chemical treatments approved of by the FDA are effective with significantly less consistency than placebos. It's not the substance that's effecting the condition, it's what we are thinking and feeling. Non-local "remote" healing energy transmission, like reiki, can create measurable positive physical results.

This is not your grandmother's reality, unless she was an 'indigenous' person, or a mystic.

So, what to do about our clinging to Newton like those who clung to edge of the flat earth? Einstein again:

"We can't solve problems using the same consciousness that created them."

If the thoughts and feelings, the consciousness and intentions that conceive and manifest a situation that goes awry are continually exercised, the situation will worsen. We all see it happening. A new consciousness that allows for this intuitive understanding of our world needs to be applied to create a reality based in the "miraculous," where everyone eats, energy is free and non-polluting, and people heal each other, themselves, and the planet's natural systems.

 Unfortunately, we can't always communicate this to others (except through love and compassion) because though we all share the same consciousness in our thoughts, feelings, and experiences, we all have our own path, our karma of life action, that leads us to these realizations. These processes can't be controlled willfully, they must be accepted willingly. You don't breathe your breath, it breathes you. You don't make your heart beat go, your heart beat makes you go. Joseph Campbell said: "You don't live life, life lives you." It can all change very quickly at the instant we realize we, and all the life on earth, are that one life being lived.

And finally Einstein again:

"A human being is a part of a whole...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...Our task must be to free ourselves...by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in it's beauty."

Read about concepts like these and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it at your local bookstore!