Spiritual Sisters of the Internet Cafe- spiritualsisters.com

Unity of Life and Creation

We experience life as an unbroken continuum of consciousness and observation from birth to death. This is made most clear by the experience of ourselves as "I" a constant that cannot be defined by itself but is described in relation to the body and its associated characteristics. Ten years ago, it was "I" who experienced my life,twenty years ago it was "I" who experienced various events and situations. Now, it is "I" , the same "I" who is experiencing my present situation. Throughout the movement of time, through the cycles of day and night, the seasons, the aging process of the body, the changing mind and intellect, my life is based on an unbroken constant "I". Who am "I" ?

The unbroken constant of "I" is based on a continuum of consciousness and observation, unattached to name and form. It remains unaffected amidst riches and poverty, joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain. Yet, it is undefined and indefinable. It is unmeasured and immeasurable. It is unnamed and unnameable. If one imposes a definition, a name, a measurement, a value on our sense of "I", then there is a resultant image in the mind, a limited and distorted sense of self identity based on our particular attachment and identification. Since our identifications with name and form frequently change, our self image is similarly fleeting and changing. Yet, it derives its strength and owes its very existence to the indefinable constant, the substratum of awareness, a nameless and indefinable source of identity "I".

At its source, this is the very ground of creation, the very core of our being, our every breath and every step is based on this fundamental awareness. This awareness is the fundamental unbroken unity of all life and creation. The awareness animates various creatures and objects in a magnificent panorama of creation. Yet, the moment this becomes self conscious by attachment to or identification with name and form, a limited, conditioned awareness, a fragmented and separative self identity, the impostor of an ego with an exclusive sense of self importance is created.

I am fat, I am thin, I am beautiful, I am ugly, I am white, I am black - in all these and in a million different ways, attachment to name and form distorts our awareness and creates a mind boggling maze of conditioning, a confusing multiplicity of notions, a fragmented and separate sense of self accompanied by fear and conflict. Yet, all these are merely reflections of an unbounded, unitive awareness creating a distorted appearance by identification with name and form. It is like looking at ourselves in a hall of mirrors with different surfaces. We see distorted reflections of a constant and undistorted reality. Thus it is that appearances deceive and the limitations of our body, mind and intellect present us with a mind boggling multiplicity of phenomena that provoke innumerable questions but provide no final answers.

As long as the movement of thought continues, there is no end to questions and there are no final answers. The process of seeking, questioning, thinking arises by a process of separation between observer and observed. In a unitive awareness and understanding free from thought, there can be neither questions nor answers. There is neither word nor thought. There is neither name nor form. Nothing is sought and there is none to seek.

All that exists is an unbounded, unitive awareness the fountainhead of our very consciousness. It is an infinite awareness complete in itself. All desire springs from an imagined separation from it, an imaginary sense of standing apart. With definition, with measurement, with name and form, with conceptual knowledge, thought and words, the one reality is seen as many and the dichotomy of "I" and "world" (not I ) is imagined to be. On this notional split is played out the drama of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, ignorance and knowledge, bondage and liberation. The dream continues till the dreamer wakes up. With the awakening, the dreamer has ceased to be.