The human mind has two primary modes of operation. The first is to dissect and inspect. It follows the path of fraction and fragmentation, peering downward at the infinite multiplication of oneness into many. “The Tao created one, one gave birth to two, two to three, and three to the ten thousand things,” says Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching.
When we stop for just a moment, sit silently and watch the mind, it’s easy to detect this downward and discursive trend in action. It grabs a thought, an idea, a story and begins to take it apart, examining the pieces individually and then breaking then down, breaking them down, breaking them down until it tires of the game and moves on to the next thought. Like a raccoon in a fresh pile of garbage, it turns the pieces over, smells, them, washes them, tastes them, and then drops one to pick up another. Modern scientific inquiry is often just a disciplined extension of this process, forcing the mind to stay focused on one thing and keep breaking it down in a search for the meaning that lies at its heart.
The alternative is an upward trending, unifying course that moves from the many toward the One. We can trace the path from fragment to whole, which is a fragment of another whole, which is a fragment of another whole, and so on in an ascending dance toward the Ultimate Reality that encapsulates all. In this process we become unified with each other, rather than separated. We become unified with the natural world, rather than alienated. All divisive tendencies inherent to politics, religion, morality dissolve as we climb of out the experience of the multitude, seething with competition and self-protection, toward the experience of oneness.
When our conscious attention is directed downward toward the many, we are pulled by the senses outward, away from our depth and wholeness. The magnetic force of desire is activated and it draws us out, beckoning and cajoling. An awful implacable yearning engulfs us and grows stronger the more we acquiesce. Soon the only answer is to mollify the pain with substances that artificially create a sense of peace and meaning in our lives. We are starving, aching, and numbing the pain with artifice. But when the numbing wears off the agony burns even more intensely, driving a cycle of insatiability that leads us further and further down toward separation and isolation.
But when we willfully redirect the flow of our attention inward and upward and toward the One, we open to a source of fulfillment and purpose that banishes the pain. We initiate an ascending motion of consciousness that progressively opens the floodgates of our soul, and our basic understanding of who we are and what we are doing in this strange and complex universe transforms. We draw strength from identification with the One, limitless and boundless and magnificent. We are no longer seeking to squeeze water from a stone, but we have tapped the main line and nothing is unattainable or missing. Isolation ends. Death collapses under the weight of cosmic truth. Existence is redefined.
thelivinglight 