I was at gathering of kindred spirits, Easter Sunday, just following the full moon in Libra, in Ubud Bali. We were ecstatically singing the refrain “We are all ONE!”
It occurred to me that might be the loneliest statement possible, and the reason for the existence of everything.
Essentially the meaning of Life.
Of course, “We are One” is wholly positive in affirming the common human spirit underlying race, religion and geography. But philosophy and mysticism go much, much further down the rabbit hole than human unity.
The Mystics say there is just One Ultimate Being existent that has become Everything and Everyone, and the source of everything is a Timeless Eternal Now, also beyond space.
The Eternal Supreme Being is all alone eternally
And yet, We are somehow part of that One
In my first Ayahuasca ceremony, I already had a long history of spiritual work and medicine work. I had resolved not to follow any distracting visions that didn’t present themselves with the power of true presence. I just sat motionless past visions and beings presenting themselves, meditating until I felt I had somehow landed in a Space in the Divine Presence.
In that Presence and Silence, I asked?
“Is there a message for me?”
There was a long, deep silent pause,
I felt that transmission in that Silence might have been answer enough, but then a “Voice” clearly transmitted
“Just One”
At first I waited, there was just one message for me. What would it be?
Then it sank in….
That WAS the message.
There was “Just One”
This could have been just an idea, a shape in my thought and concepts.
Or blow my mind and leave me in a space
to partake in a glimmer of the True Being that I am, as One, and yet unable to bring anything back from that eternity for my mind.
Something so vast that can never be known by the mind.
The mind is a tool for facilitating spirits dressed in meat suits evolving in a dense physical reality rooted in time and space on this third rock from the Sun.
“Knowing” has a practical definition that works within the limited realm accessible to the mind.
Vast… Try to wrap your mind around our situation as a speck in a physical universe so immense that just the known universe takes light an ever increasing number of Billions of years to traverse at almost 300,000 kilometers per second.
Our minds can’t even begin to fathom that speed, or that distance, or that time.
But that physical dimension is just a fraction of the dimensions of Being that exist, spheres of Reality on other planes, teaming with life unimaginable.
And ultimately even the time and space we measure that vastness with are themselves illusions.
There is One Eternal now
All Alone
Mystics say,
This One being becomes two.
To experience itself
in human terms, to break the loneliness of being Only One
One polarity of this Spirit is Consciousness, Awareness, Knowingness, Light
The other polarity is Bliss, Feeling, Intuition, Power and Form
Bliss becomes Love when the One becomes Two, creating the path for love to flow.
And these two, the eternal Beloveds, Shiva and Shakti, Yin and Yang give birth to countless beings in endless realms.
In the Indian Tantras, Shiva meditates for a thousand years, as One, Then He and his Shakti Parvati make Love for a thousand years, and then he falls back into meditation, and the cycle repeats
Of course this is an allegory. The One bursts into creation, becoming the Everything and Everybody, evolving and transforming, experiencing facets of being, ever discovering and unfolding and after a very, very, very, long time evolution completes itself and the manifold universe dissolves back into the primeval One.
That One, we will have dissolved in, as that One.
The cycle repeats endlessly In some unknowable timeless way.
Once there is creation, there is time.
It has always seemed simplistic to me for science to think of a beginning, a big bang, as the creation of everything, without postulating that might just be a phase in an endless cycle.
Now, it is true that, despite its beauty and wonder, this Earth is a very tough place for life, were the rule is “Life feeds on Life.” Even plants are rooted in what was once alive.
And we humans, spirits inhabiting animal bodies made of meat, are distanced from the facilities basic to our soul, which know greater compassion and the truth of our nature. We are spiritually neutered to a large degree, and our survival and our other needs are threatened, giving rise to fear.
We mostly go to sleep to our soul nature when we put on the meat suit for this earth adventure.
The world is alike a big drunk party where everyone thinks they can drive but are yet a danger behind the wheel.
On this rock, we imagine things are divided up into the blessings and punishments of God, whom we imagine is like a great parent of some kind. Or we doubt any kind of God might exist who would create a realm with so much suffering and pain.
Some like to say the purpose of life on earth is to gain Enlightenment. I think that’s clearly nonsense as Enlightenment has never been anything but a rare pursuit and even rarer result in human history.
What I do see is that we evolve through our experience on this planet.
However common, however tragic, however painful, …the whole spectrum of life we experience, it churns our awareness like cream churns to butter.
We have to die and repeat this experiencing over and over as we get stuck in the baggage that our experience burdens our mind with. Death resets the process, but we move on with our evolved essence.
Love plays a huge rule in this evolving experience, as does fear. Love and fear empower the churning of awareness activated by our experiences.
This churning of awareness breeds evolution.
Evolution is the timeline of Love Unfolding,
of Spirit limiting itself then rediscovering itself
in endless ways, growing into itself once more
By becoming You and then realizing all that is within You
Spirit becoming Two, and Many, but finally merging into Ecstatic Union as One.
Once again.
A Oneness of Ecstatic Union, not of Loneliness
That’s the “Meaning of Life”
*~*
Now this planet Earth, that’s another story. A story many think they know but maybe nobody does.
Imagine a great zoo were the animals were to evolve into human-like consciousness. They would see the plants, and the stars, and the cycles and perhaps imagine a God responsible for the creation of it all. Their existence and the life around them would testify to the existence of a supreme creator.
The animals would still be in their cages and exhibits, not living their natural lives as if in the wild. They might blame God for that, when it was humans using their power, and having their own reasons, that created those environments, that brought the animals together.
I don’t know who or why this particular earth planet was created, just that evolution is possible here. My experience is that there is a divine perfection to everything and everyone.
This perfection does not match human ideals of perfection or justice, I realized it at a level I don’t doubt but can’t well express.
Whatever this world is… the way out is through, evolving because this is the opportunity we have here.
Evolving, not be valid or justified in life. That Divine Being becomes each of us prefectly and judges us not.
Some evolve to escape pain that squeezes on us in this challenging density.
Some choose to evolve because it further frees our Spirit, unfolds our Love, and brings us closer to the ecstatic Union where
We are One.
~ Karl Baba~
Easter Sunday following Full Moon in Libra
April 17th 2022, Ubud Bali
