Imagine that the infinite consciousness that makes up the universe is the ocean. Now imagine that a glass jar scoops up some of that ocean water.
Do the properties of that water change? Is the water no longer classified as being from the ocean?
No – the water inside the jar is still the ocean, albeit a temporarily isolated portion of the ocean, it remains the ocean nonetheless.
That’s what we as humans are – a jarful of ocean.
A seemingly segregated portion of the infinite consciousness that makes up the entire universe, which is where we exist for a finite amount of time, as long as the jar may last.
The glass jar is our vessel that allows us to enter into and interact with the reality we know as the world around us. The reality that is created by the very ocean from which we came.
However, the glass jar doesn’t stay transparent for long.
As we go through life, various labels and decorative items get stuck onto our jar from the people around us and the environment in which we find ourselves. These labels are beliefs, opinions and stories that we mistakenly interpret as the truth, and they start to make our jar seem unique and individual.
We believe this outer appearance to be who we are, establishing a sense of self based on how we believe the world sees us, creating emotionally-charged energy that serves as the superglue keeping these labels bound to our jar.
These beliefs and opinions gain strength the more we find them validated by external forces, our human mind and ego strategically designed to filter out all that doesn’t support our story and then latching onto all that does support it – a rigged feature of the reality we find ourselves in.
If a situation may arise where this delightful barrier of accumulated nonsense might be compromised or under attack, we go straight into defensive mode, generating more emotional energy to further glue these labels to our jar, all the while further solidifying our segregated nature, solidifying the story of ‘me’.
We then continue our finite existence, believing everything that is false, made-up, not-us, to be true and as such, we remain confined, like an eagle in a cage who doesn’t know he can fly. We never live up to our full potential and we never experience the magic that exists all around us when we realise that we are not separate from the universe, and that that same magic exists within us too.
We remain confined, like an eagle in a cage who doesn't know he can fly.
Instead, we go through life thinking the layer of debris we’ve accumulated on our jar is us, constantly seek to cure our feeling of separation by looking at everything outside of our jar. More labels, more decorations, more glue to stick them on with. We think that the more we have or the more we do, the less isolated and unhappy we will feel.
We don’t fully realize that it was never about more, it was about less. It wasn’t about doing, it was about undoing. It wasn’t about becoming, it was about unbecoming.
We go our whole lives never realizing that the key to “curing” our feeling of separation and unhappiness, is by looking inward and seeing that we were never separate in the first place. Realising that any segregation was nothing but an illusion.
Never realising that we were what we were looking for this whole time.
Because when our time comes, when our glass jar can no longer hold us, it will crack and we will be poured back into the ocean from which we came where we will seamlessly merge back into the current, no longer being able to tell where one point begins and another ends. All our labels fading away like the daydream that it was.
This is the essence of who we are.
We are the universe and the universe is us.
And when we can understand that, and truly feel it, everything changes.
Questions to reflect on
