Oneness
I was at church the other day, I must admit a non-traditional one, and the two things that jumped out at me from the sermon, were the use of the words ‘centeredness’ and ‘oneness.’ Afterwards, I wondered if my understanding of the meaning of these terms was similar to what they mean to others. I pondered this for a day and tried to ‘figure out’ how to discover the answer to this question.
For myself, I know I have lived and experienced these words. Truly felt and experienced them within my core spiritual being. I guess what I am trying to say is that I know what my truth is, and I wonder if we use these terms without having that deeper understanding of how they are intended to work in our lives.
So, to get to the point, I am writing about oneness and how this experience leads to centeredness. So, what is oneness? I think a modern interpretation is “being at one with God.” OK, but what does this mean? If we all have the God spark within us, doesn’t it mean to be at one with ourselves, and then one with God? OK, but what does that mean? Being at one with ourselves is to be of one mind in all things. OK, we’re making progress, but what does that mean? I believe it has to do with the dual nature of man.
Light/dark, positive/negative, man/woman, heaven/earth, yin/yang are all representations of the dual nature of man. The concept of one and duality is a common concept within all the faiths of the world. I believe Lao-tzu expresses it well in the Tao te Ching.
The Tao te Ching says,
"The Tao produced the one;
The One produced the two
The two produced the three;
The three produced the myriad beings." (chap.42)
Lao-tzu is speaking about our spiritual progression through our duality. Let me expand on what he says; although words will never come close to doing the experience justice. The Tao produced the one, unified person; that existed during the time of the Garden of Eden; the Taoists refer to it as the time of ‘Great Peace.’ This one, unified person, gave way to the two souls within us, the animal soul and the spiritual soul, when we fell from grace. The two, the duality within us, producing the three is a reference to our connection with the triad of Heaven, Earth, and Man as we work to develop our consciousness through the animal soul to the spiritual soul. When we have duality, and we do our core soul healing work, we develop our connection with the spiritual plane through the Heaven, Earth, Man connection, and the myriad beings are produced. The myriad beings are those spiritual entities that exist on the spiritual plane.
So, for me, oneness is a unified integrated individual that lives in concert with the spiritual plane. Oneness is a reference to the body, mind, spirit concept and the Jewish idea of think, speak, act. When we work through our duality and create harmony between Heaven, Earth, and Man we have integrated the three parts of our spiritual body. Now that we have an idea where the end point of oneness is, how do we get there from where we are? This is the process of spiritual transformation discussed within all the world’s faiths. This is the transfiguration of Christ. It is mysticism. It is alchemy. It is the Ecstatic Kabbalah of Abraham Abulafia from the 1280’s. It is becoming a cosmic being or allowing the cosmic being already within us to shine forth.
The spiritual transformation process involves stripping away all that is human in us, so we may live in the world and be unaffected by it. This is what it means to “be in the world, not of it.” This is the process of removing all our fear-based experiences we have created because of our perception through our humanness; all the false projections we have created as we see the world through the humanness of our eyes, ears, smell, touch, and taste. As we strip away all the creations within our projected (false human based) reality we learn to rely on our spirit soul’s sixth sense and experience the world as it truly is.
An ancient Chinese Taoist Master said it in the following way:
"Still if you practice observation with a mind attached to projected reality, you will never be aware of bad feelings in yourself. Only when your mind is utterly detached from projected reality can you observe the phenomenal world and truly understand right and wrong. In fact, you are just like a sobered man. Freshly awakened, he can now see the evil he did while he was drunk, deeds of which he was completely unconscious before."
So, to review, the process of spiritual transformation is a stripping away of all our accumulated humanness to expose our true divine spiritual selves within. The elimination of this duality within us allows us to accept and live as one with ourselves, and the Heaven Earth world around us. This is Oneness. Armed with this understanding of oneness how does centeredness come into play?
Centeredness comes after we achieve oneness. Centeredness is an individual emotional place within each of us where we feel at peace, in balance and harmony with the world around us. It is where we live at the center of our individual microcosmic universe. Centeredness is the way God would have us always energetically exist. Some of us know what it is to feel balanced and centered. Some of us do not. The goal, and it is possible, is to stay centered from instant to instant. Anything that happens to us, in our emotional lives, that we allow to energetically drag us away from our centeredness, is an opportunity to find and remove, an emotional experience from our core soul emotional self. If we allow any external influence to pull us emotionally off our center, then we have a responsibility to go within to discover what the soul root cause of our choice is and address it. We choose to be angry, we choose to feel anxious, we choose to feel sad, and we choose to be off center and out of balance.
What is our emotional center? We know it when we feel it, but how do we represent it with a visual image? Imagine a circle. At the center of this circle is a fixed point that the rim of the circle revolves around. As the sun is the center of this universe, so is this point the center of our emotional universe. Imagine that on the outside of the circle on the rim exists all out of balance emotional states. Frustration, fear, apprehension, anger, serenity, joy, resolve, sadness all exist in separate quadrants on the rim of the circle around the fixed point in the center.
Do you have this mental image? Now, imagine what happens if the circle is constantly spinning, always in motion. If we stay on the fixed point in the center, we remain motionless and emotionally unaffected by the world revolving around us. If we allow the energy of a situation or person to affect us, we allow ourselves to be pulled from the fixed center, we begin to experience out of balance emotional states. We allow ourselves to be affected by the energetic spinning movement of the wheel. The more off center we allow ourselves to be drawn the more we are affected by the spinning movement of the wheel.
When we act out in anger or feel overwhelming sadness, it is because we have allowed our center to be drawn, by someone or something, to these emotional states on the outside of the circle. The emotional spiritual transformation process is the process of identifying and removing every emotional experience from our core soul spiritual being, so we will be unaffected by the emotional energetic action of the circle. We can remain on the fixed center unaffected, in the world not of it. The energetic emotional circle is the microcosm macrocosm relationship of the universe.
The process of spiritual transformation to Oneness and remaining in Centeredness is the process of spiritual transformation. Spiritual transformation is the blending and mixing of our emotional states to become One and stay centered. There is a tool which is The Emotional Compass and it is intended to aid us in this process.
Centeredness is learning the ability to stay at your center and “be in the world, not of it.” This does not mean to not love or continue to be kind towards others, but it does mean to be detached. Only through the practice of detachment may we remain at our center.
I wonder if my understanding of oneness and centeredness, and their interconnectedness, is the same as others?
I was at church the other day, I must admit a non-traditional one, and the two things that jumped out at me from the sermon, were the use of the words ‘centeredness’ and ‘oneness.’ Afterwards, I wondered if my understanding of the meaning of these terms was similar to what they mean to others. I pondered this for a day and tried to ‘figure out’ how to discover the answer to this question.
For myself, I know I have lived and experienced these words. Truly felt and experienced them within my core spiritual being. I guess what I am trying to say is that I know what my truth is, and I wonder if we use these terms without having that deeper understanding of how they are intended to work in our lives.
So, to get to the point, I am writing about oneness and how this experience leads to centeredness. So, what is oneness? I think a modern interpretation is “being at one with God.” OK, but what does this mean? If we all have the God spark within us, doesn’t it mean to be at one with ourselves, and then one with God? OK, but what does that mean? Being at one with ourselves is to be of one mind in all things. OK, we’re making progress, but what does that mean? I believe it has to do with the dual nature of man.
Light/dark, positive/negative, man/woman, heaven/earth, yin/yang are all representations of the dual nature of man. The concept of one and duality is a common concept within all the faiths of the world. I believe Lao-tzu expresses it well in the Tao te Ching.
The Tao te Ching says,
"The Tao produced the one;
The One produced the two
The two produced the three;
The three produced the myriad beings." (chap.42)
Lao-tzu is speaking about our spiritual progression through our duality. Let me expand on what he says; although words will never come close to doing the experience justice. The Tao produced the one, unified person; that existed during the time of the Garden of Eden; the Taoists refer to it as the time of ‘Great Peace.’ This one, unified person, gave way to the two souls within us, the animal soul and the spiritual soul, when we fell from grace. The two, the duality within us, producing the three is a reference to our connection with the triad of Heaven, Earth, and Man as we work to develop our consciousness through the animal soul to the spiritual soul. When we have duality, and we do our core soul healing work, we develop our connection with the spiritual plane through the Heaven, Earth, Man connection, and the myriad beings are produced. The myriad beings are those spiritual entities that exist on the spiritual plane.
So, for me, oneness is a unified integrated individual that lives in concert with the spiritual plane. Oneness is a reference to the body, mind, spirit concept and the Jewish idea of think, speak, act. When we work through our duality and create harmony between Heaven, Earth, and Man we have integrated the three parts of our spiritual body. Now that we have an idea where the end point of oneness is, how do we get there from where we are? This is the process of spiritual transformation discussed within all the world’s faiths. This is the transfiguration of Christ. It is mysticism. It is alchemy. It is the Ecstatic Kabbalah of Abraham Abulafia from the 1280’s. It is becoming a cosmic being or allowing the cosmic being already within us to shine forth.
The spiritual transformation process involves stripping away all that is human in us, so we may live in the world and be unaffected by it. This is what it means to “be in the world, not of it.” This is the process of removing all our fear-based experiences we have created because of our perception through our humanness; all the false projections we have created as we see the world through the humanness of our eyes, ears, smell, touch, and taste. As we strip away all the creations within our projected (false human based) reality we learn to rely on our spirit soul’s sixth sense and experience the world as it truly is.
An ancient Chinese Taoist Master said it in the following way:
"Still if you practice observation with a mind attached to projected reality, you will never be aware of bad feelings in yourself. Only when your mind is utterly detached from projected reality can you observe the phenomenal world and truly understand right and wrong. In fact, you are just like a sobered man. Freshly awakened, he can now see the evil he did while he was drunk, deeds of which he was completely unconscious before."
So, to review, the process of spiritual transformation is a stripping away of all our accumulated humanness to expose our true divine spiritual selves within. The elimination of this duality within us allows us to accept and live as one with ourselves, and the Heaven Earth world around us. This is Oneness. Armed with this understanding of oneness how does centeredness come into play?
Centeredness comes after we achieve oneness. Centeredness is an individual emotional place within each of us where we feel at peace, in balance and harmony with the world around us. It is where we live at the center of our individual microcosmic universe. Centeredness is the way God would have us always energetically exist. Some of us know what it is to feel balanced and centered. Some of us do not. The goal, and it is possible, is to stay centered from instant to instant. Anything that happens to us, in our emotional lives, that we allow to energetically drag us away from our centeredness, is an opportunity to find and remove, an emotional experience from our core soul emotional self. If we allow any external influence to pull us emotionally off our center, then we have a responsibility to go within to discover what the soul root cause of our choice is and address it. We choose to be angry, we choose to feel anxious, we choose to feel sad, and we choose to be off center and out of balance.
What is our emotional center? We know it when we feel it, but how do we represent it with a visual image? Imagine a circle. At the center of this circle is a fixed point that the rim of the circle revolves around. As the sun is the center of this universe, so is this point the center of our emotional universe. Imagine that on the outside of the circle on the rim exists all out of balance emotional states. Frustration, fear, apprehension, anger, serenity, joy, resolve, sadness all exist in separate quadrants on the rim of the circle around the fixed point in the center.
Do you have this mental image? Now, imagine what happens if the circle is constantly spinning, always in motion. If we stay on the fixed point in the center, we remain motionless and emotionally unaffected by the world revolving around us. If we allow the energy of a situation or person to affect us, we allow ourselves to be pulled from the fixed center, we begin to experience out of balance emotional states. We allow ourselves to be affected by the energetic spinning movement of the wheel. The more off center we allow ourselves to be drawn the more we are affected by the spinning movement of the wheel.
When we act out in anger or feel overwhelming sadness, it is because we have allowed our center to be drawn, by someone or something, to these emotional states on the outside of the circle. The emotional spiritual transformation process is the process of identifying and removing every emotional experience from our core soul spiritual being, so we will be unaffected by the emotional energetic action of the circle. We can remain on the fixed center unaffected, in the world not of it. The energetic emotional circle is the microcosm macrocosm relationship of the universe.
The process of spiritual transformation to Oneness and remaining in Centeredness is the process of spiritual transformation. Spiritual transformation is the blending and mixing of our emotional states to become One and stay centered. There is a tool which is The Emotional Compass and it is intended to aid us in this process.
Centeredness is learning the ability to stay at your center and “be in the world, not of it.” This does not mean to not love or continue to be kind towards others, but it does mean to be detached. Only through the practice of detachment may we remain at our center.
I wonder if my understanding of oneness and centeredness, and their interconnectedness, is the same as others?
