Knowledge Passes Away

 I think it will one day become clearer that Oneness is whatever God is.

Also, intervals are very important to our experience.
What is the definition of an interval?
It is that which falls between two points.

As we go to sleep, the night becomes the interval, separating one day from the next. The point? There is no point. We do not actually stand on a platform called "today" and then jump over our interval to land on "tomorrow." Instead of ending Sunday in order to begin Monday, nothing at all happens. The two days are actually identical to one day, with varying, correlative patterns. Time is not a distance between points—it is the pattern that gives rise to the feeling of points being present and separate.

When I tell you that today is not separate from 1973 in any way, you would consider the patterns that make you feel otherwise. The truth, however, is not that any points prove a thing, but that we perceive points that are simply not there.

It is much easier to believe this if you’ll try a simple thought experiment: consider your own environment, second by second. You cannot sense the radioactive decay of the chair you are sitting in—not in one second, anyway. It’s very likely that the patterns around you are not doing enough in one second to create the perception of time passing.

What, then, is changing?

Alan Watts brought our attention to a whirlpool. He said that it keeps its shape, but the water is not the same water. As a common man on this typical sofa, I continue to observe a particular shape that seems unchanged—but I am swirling, even as I type.

That which flows through me is not me, but that universal, eternal consciousness—arriving to observe all that I observe, and then departing to carry on observing.

The interval is only there for me, but God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
The consciousness I am experiencing is only God, pretending to be me.
He does not die when I close my eyes—He goes on seeing.
Death is an illusion.

Do you open your closet door and see yourself in there? No. You see clothes you have worn and will wear again. Why is that not you? Because you are not wearing them. As soon as you don an outfit, the outfit takes the shape of you and begins to move when you move. Later, you’ll take it off, launder it, and hang it back up.

When God opens the door to His closet, one thing hanging there is you. He took that hanger, held it back and considered you at arm’s length—and then He put you on.

For this seemingly critical interval, you have gotten warm. You are probably around 97 degrees right now. Your arms move. Your legs move. You’ve probably learned to talk. You have eyes. You have a heart, and it beats.

But these are the vital signs that only tell others that you are being worn by God.
Does it really work this way?

Let us consider my mother. I love that woman, and she is physically lying in a hospice-like bed over at Ross Memorial. I fully expect her to expire soon.

What happens when that happens?

Consciousness abandons that outfit. The material begins to decay, and the body begins to cool. It does not move on its own accord beyond that. No thoughts go through her material brain after that. The heart does not pump blood after that.

I actually have proof that she does not die when this happens.
The evidence has always been there, but it’s too simple to notice. Here it is: I will go on loving my mother, even as consciousness departs from her form.

What is happening there?

Love is without intervals. Finally, when my mother dies, I will not feel differently about her. I won’t see myself as one point and her as another, with an interval between us.

Time can be measured by considering intervals.
Space can be measured by considering intervals.
But Love cannot be measured—for there are no intervals.

“Love never fails. Stories fail, words cease, and even knowledge passes away.”
~ I Corinthians 13:8 MCV

Emotionally speaking, I will miss my mother’s story immensely. But not one drop of water that once took her shape will ever die.

It is not just that I love my mom—it is that Love has been in the shape of my mom for a measurable interval. When the very last drop of Love goes out of my mother’s form to return to the eternal river, it will be that which I go on loving forever.

No humans are harmed by the passing of Life through them.

Finally, I know this to be true.

As with Watts’ whirlpool and Barfield’s rainbow, I also have a way of thinking about the perceived intervals between conscious beings:

It will be very important for me to think about my mom’s condition as God begins His exit from her form. I’ll miss seeing her in the familiar form. She once held me in those arms. She once fed me and clothed me. I was formed inside the very womb that is presently looking like a ghost town. Those blue eyes once peered out the windshield of a blue car and saw a blue sky, contrasted with all that stood in the intervals.

From the time I left her womb, what we shared was Love.

She had to stop driving a while back. But that didn’t change my love for her. In the same way, her body will need to be parked over off Austell Powder Springs Road, right next to the body of my father, in a yard full of human bodies. But I can tell you, from my experience between today and the last time consciousness occupied my father’s form: Love goes on.

I actually have even more love for my father today than I had 16 years ago, when God exited his body.

It was God that wore the outfit of my mother, and it is God that I will go on loving—for God is Love, and He looks like consciousness to a conscious being.

What have I been loving since my daddy died? God.

I had a relationship with God as He played the part of my daddy. Every ounce of who my dad was is very real—and only God.

I am an entangled particle, separated by an illusory interval from my father.
I know when he spins up, because that’s when I spin down.

If my father is dead, then tell me what it is I love?

Love is the water that held the shape of a whirlpool for a while.
Love is the rainbow and all its colors while it held a form in the sky.
Love—this same Love—is what held the shape of my father for a while.

And for me, I see Love as a flock.

The birds are all black and they fly like winged ink against a blue sky.
Each bird is an expression and very unique, but all birds are only one species—and the species is Love.

For 90 years, measurable in intervals of days and nights, winters and summers, nows and thens, a beautiful flock has been flying against the blue sky of my own experience. It took a particular shape and developed many characteristics and flew in a really familiar form. I have interacted with the flock, and I have referred to it as Mom.

The birds departing, one by one, have not escaped my attention. From where I observe this flock, I see it dispersing and getting smaller and smaller. I am very much aware that Mom is dying. She will completely disappear before my eyes.

But I will tell you from experience how this works after that:
I will see a bird that once flapped its black wings and held the familiar formation of Mom with the other birds.
Then I will see another one, and another.
I’ll see Mom perched on fence posts. I’ll see her as one bird, feeding her brood. But she’ll be everywhere.

Whenever Mom flies apart, she goes from being right there to being everywhere.

So many of my mother’s birds have flown to become a flock I call Jackie.
Several have become Harper.
Some are Myra, some are Jeffrey, some are Bill, some are James, some are John.
Some of Mom’s birds are a memory, flittering in my head.
Some are building a nest in Bill’s head.

And finally, some of my mother’s best birds are presently flying in a wonderfully organized formation with some of my daddy’s birds, along with some of Lori’s birds, and some of my siblings’ birds—and some from the years I’ve known. I call this flock me.
Susan has birds in my flock. Julian and Evan fly in and out of me daily. Uncle Roy has a great group of his birds in me.

Now, I wouldn’t even believe in this true and precise metaphor if I didn’t still have a growing love for my father in my own heart of experience.

The flock of black birds? It is a myth—and it is the truth.
I only tell it this way because Love cannot be expressed in words.
I have to paint signs and say, “It is like this…”

I can keep pointing, but Love is felt and believed in—not seen.

But do not be saddened. Just because you cannot see it does not mean it is not there.
You can love a person while they are visible to you, and you can love them when you cannot see, hear, touch, or even contact them.

Pretty soon, my mom will be completely out of sight.
I promise you that I will love her even more on that day than I do today. And the day after that, I will love her more.

For 16 years, my relationship with my dad has done nothing but improve.
God exited my dad’s body 16 years ago—so who is it I love?
I love God.

It was God I got to know as He pretended to be my dad.
God loved me just as much as I loved Him.
The joy of the relationship I had with my dad is the joy I still have—now shared with God instead.

God is not anything I can show you. He is identical to, and one with, Love.
The only constant there will ever be is Love.

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What a wonderful thing, Love. And yet, we know it is not a thing.

Love is that from which consciousness arises, and it is consciousness that creates phenomena.
It is consciousness that appreciates what it creates.

Take comfort in the fact that Love is unchanging.
Consciousness is how we experience Life—which is another word for Love. (All words fail to reveal Love.)

Consciousness is the contrasts we perceive.
Joy is the purpose of creation and that which can be felt as points, with intervals between.
This is why it is referred to as bread, and this is why it is gathered daily and not all at once.

Every role God plays is being played in order to expand Joy.
Joy and the Universe are synonymous.

Here is the obvious point I would like to close with:

God is Love, and Love is forever and cannot be added to.
Consciousness, however, is Love’s expressiveness and creative side.
Consciousness wants Joy, and it wants to fill the universe with it until the universe bursts with joy.

And this is what is happening.
This is what you are designed to do: Gather as much joy as you can, and give away as much as you can live without.

We’ve got to do our part as Joy-Creators.
We cannot add to Love, but we can add to Life’s Consciousness by increasing the level of Joy.

We are only here to give and gather Joy. That’s all it could be.

I know that some people already know this better than I do—even if they don’t even know they know it.