The universe is a singularity. A single, unfolding event made of billions of unique singularities. This is not unlike what is true in our bodies. Trillions of cells in our bodies make up organs, tissues, skeletal systems, all of these different parts working as one. That’s an awesome thought: our bodies inherently know how to make one out of many. It works the other way too: our bodies grew from a single cell, made many out of one. The origins of the universe are such as well - a single moment provided the potential for all of this.
What does it take to be who you are? Fully one with with multiplicity of your human-ness?
Poet David Whyte posited that we are the only species who resists being ourselves. No other creature fights its nature nor has to think about what it means to be an elephant, a hummingbird, a tree. It just is. What is at the core of our resistance to be ourselves? Fear? Self consciousness? In the ancient text of The Bhagavad Gita Krishna tells Arjuna, “Ignorance is destroyed by knowledge of the Self within. The light of this knowledge shines like the sun...Those who possess this wisdom have equal regard for all. They see the same Self in a spiritual aspirant and an outcaste, in an elephant, a cow, and a dog.” So once we really start acting like ourselves, we are no different than a cow acting like a cow, a dog like a dog...you get the idea. And then our inner being shines like the sun whose gravitational pull slings the planets around in perfect elliptical formation. It is the energy and life giver of our entire solar system. The Self shines like the sun, leaving light and love in its wake. Perhaps this is what the Buddha meant when he claimed flowers sprang up everywhere he walked - his inner light gave them life. The very same sun that made the Buddha and Jesus made you possible too. Imagine what can grow where you walk.
Essentially, every single one of us receives this beautiful, heart wrenching invitation to unbecome who we think we are in order to become who we really are. Our essence lies in recognizing we are part of - not separate from - this great web of life. We would never get a dog hoping it would turn into a horse. We get a dog because we want a dog. Perhaps our dogs are waiting for us to become fully human.
I’ll close with a poem by David Whyte, The Bell and The Blackbird
The sound of a bell
Still reverberating,
or a blackbird calling
from a corner of the field,
asking you to wake
into this life,
or inviting you deeper
into the one that waits.
Either way
takes courage,
either way wants you
to be nothing
but that self that
is no self at all,
wants you to walk
to the place
where you find
you already know
how to give
every last thing
away.
The approach
that is also
the meeting
itself,
without any
meeting
at all.
That radiance
you have always
carried with you
as you walk
both alone
and completely
accompanied
in friendship
by every corner
of the world
crying
Allelujah.
