All Is Well

We’ve got some wild turkeys on the farm. They are adorable. I love to watch them moving about in their little cluster. They seem to be quite committed to one another. I imagine that they move in groups for security maybe. They can be referred to as a gaggle, a rafter, a flock or even a run. I will probably go right back to calling them a group. 

After watching a single turkey interacting with another turkey, I lose interest in eating either one of them. That’s where my ability to kill any animal experiences a death of its own. I am very much annoyed by the destruction squirrels tend to cause, but when I see them chasing each other for the pure fun of it, I just can’t imagine taking one of the players out of that game. In fact, I’d put up with a lot in order to be a witness to their fun times.

Do squirrels have souls? How about turkeys?

Well, if I could be a bit more Hindu or Buddhist with my thoughts, I suppose we would say that there is really only one soul and what I call turkeys or squirrels are just imaginative creations of The One Mind. Likewise, I suppose I am just like the turkey, the squirrel, dogs and stars. On some level, I don’t find this very difficult. I imagine Life is just an event, made up in The Mind of God. The dual nature of that event makes it possible for me to experience it with the partitions God has imagined. I tend to equate the entirety of the experience with dreams. In my nocturnal dreams, I populate the stages with props I’ve never seen and people who have never existed. I find myself living in places where I have never lived. So it is not that hard for me to believe that a greater level of consciousness would imagine a world with others; and it is not hard for me to imagine being the observer of the groups, believing they are not myself.

I always come back to this difficult place, where I find myself wondering if the partitions dissolved, would I be God?

Of course I do not think I am God, but I could not really have a mind of my own if I am, in fact, a creation. It seems I would have a mind within a mind and I don’t really struggle with that idea. To me, it is as if God is dreaming and seeing things from my point of view; but when I finally stop being me, I could only be Him. This does not elevate me above anyone, but it equates me with All. And this theory even works for me if I take God out of the equation and use the term Life instead. This is not the least bit difficult for me to imagine. I look at myself and I realize I am not original. I am not the source of who I have become. Life was abundant before I developed a personality, with memories, a body or a story. I did not come to The Universe; I came from It. Life, taking trillions of used parts, clumped me together for a while. In time, my parts will all fail me, one by one, until those trillions of used parts go on to clump in other ways, throughout eternity.

When I think about what remains, I sometimes refer to it as Life. Life goes on. I came out of Life like a tumor, and one day, Life will be miraculously healed of me. If I do anything worthwhile, maybe I will leave a nice little scar on Life.

I sometimes feel saddened when I think that maybe I will forget the people I love. I think of family and friends and I think to myself: how could there be a heaven where I do not continue to love these people? But the truth is one degree beyond my understanding. The truth is that I am contained within the All where they are contained. We arose from One Body and, when the swelling of duality goes down, that one body will still be that One Body. The only thing that will be forgotten is suffering. Suffering comes from the partitions. This is why any and all connections remind us of who we really are.

Think of the ways in which we connect to All. We grow and we feel love. We find ourselves making friends. We will all notice places which make us feel more connected and we sometimes refer to them as home. And as we age, we will find ourselves using the strange term “my” to define the areas where we’ve connected to Life. We’ll say “myself, my car, my house, my body, my friends, and my family.”

But there will come a day when all of the my’s return to their place within The All. it is not difficult for me to believe I am an agent of The All, enjoying this experience as if I were The All, and yet unaware.

Ask yourself: what eliminates suffering?

You will soon realize that healing is the answer. Then, if you will look closely, you will see that healing arises as partitions dissolve. If you meet just one person today, and you share a simple smile and nothing more, that moment was the evidence of the dissolution of the imaginary partition that was previously believed to be between yourself and the other. As that partition dissolved, some healing occurred. When all partitions are gone, All is well and suffering ceases.