Take the Next Step...I Dare You

I am delighted that the teachings of oneness are becoming increasingly popular. But as I travel around performing my ‘stand-up philosophy’ shows, I encounter some profound misunderstandings. I often hear people say that life is some sort of inconsequential illusion, that the personal is the problem and the ego is the enemy, that there is nothing to be done, because nothing really matters. I want to suggest that to become conscious of oneness we don't need to reject separateness, but to celebrate our individuality.

Waking up is not a state of disembodied ‘enlightenment’. It is an ecstatic state of individual ‘enlivenment’! It is living as the one appearing to be someone. Our individual identities are to be celebrated, because it is only by appearing to be separate that the one can become conscious of itself.

- Timothy Freke

I've spent enough time now in the online sanctuary of seekers and travellers to know that so many get stuck on the first step of awakening. In their dissatisfaction with whatever spiritual path (or lack thereof) they are travelling, they search for something more. And they find it in the many streams of online spiritualism, gnostic and otherwise. They read and search and read some more and they come to some startling, and seemingly revolutionary ideas about the nature of reality and of their own identity. They embrace them in a sweeping moment of enlightenment and faith and...that's as far as they go.

Here is what the conclusions that many draw look like:

1) We are not our physical bodies. We are spirit with a body.
2) The physical world is an illusion. It is not who we ARE.
3) At our root, our true "I", we are all one.
4) Find our way back to identifying with our spiritual "I" and we find gnosis.

Tic tac toe, there you go. The problem is that this is an elementary understanding, with no true depth, no shape. And no praxis. How do we get there? Where do we go? Do I pray? Do I meditate?

And this is the key point, this is where you need to take that next step. The next step says that I'm here. I'm me, I don't have a choice about that. You think this is all an illusion, try not eating for a few weeks. Not much of an illusion now is it? So I guess I'm going to have to make the best out of being me because from where I'm standing, the chances of me being absorbed bodily into the "One" and disappearing is rather slim. You will have to conclude then that any joining with the Oneness will have to occur in death and that will come when it comes, again no choice about that. So it would seem that you have a life to live after all.

So celebrate it. Your uniqueness, your individuality is an emanation of the Divine, the Universal Consciousness recognizing itself. In order for an entity to be conscious, it needs something to be conscious of, like in order for light not be darkness, needs something from which to reflect. So live, be alive, be aware of the consciousness of the divine within you, at the root of your being. This is where I am at. The physical is not an illusion, but illusory (a wise man explained this to me recently) which simply means that all the signals making their way to my senses are not all being computed by my limited little brain. I am not getting all of what reality is, and therefore my impression of it can be somewhat suspect, and should never be considered final.

But there are just so many left at the first step, still totally convinced of their brilliant enlightenment, convinced that they "get it". You see them, you know who they are. They are the ones that creep around blogs, forums and chat rooms spouting such things as "We are all One" and "The world is an illusion" and other such nonsense to all questions, to all topics. Their's is a one trick pony, quickly exhausted, eternally repeating. And more often than not since they have not begun the process of circumventing the ego and learning true humility, they are superior, aloof and condenscending. Many become the hated firestarters, believing they are doing everyone a favor by shouting their truths at you, and deriding you for disagreeing with them and not understanding the truth they are telling you.

We are precisely as we are meant to be. Is this an easy place to be? No, but it isn't meant to be. What meaning does joy have without pain, love without hate. We need the opposites to understand the depth and the importance of the positive. What is God but the uniting of all opposites in perfect harmony? And what else is gnosis but this uniting within ourselves, thereby bringing ourselves into alignment and in-sync with the divine? It is through this parallel that we catch the glimpse of the Pleroma in life that is gnosis, that saves us from the ignorance of seeing our individuality as being separate and alone.