By Amaya Gayle Gregory
Sedona News (July 29,2021)What is the sound of a tree falling without the ear to hear it, or at least a mechanical ear, a sound recorder? What is the sparkle of starlight without an eye to perceive it? Does one exist without the other? They are intimately woven together. The idea of one without the other is a plagiarism of real understanding, a lie against nature.
The smell of rich deep chocolate or the spray of orange as you break open the rind, the musky odor that draws you into that insatiable desire to make love — those sensations that tempt your body — what are they without you to know them? Do they have purpose and meaning on their own? Would they if you were the last person on earth?
What is your love, the welling up of emotion that you feel without someone to receive it? Does it exist on its own or does it only come into being with elegantly connected lives?
Connections run through everything, sides of infinitely-sided coins. We are holyfractatgraphic existence, connected to everything, not just connected but The Whole experiencing Itself. Nothing stands alone. It is impossible to miss this truth when you genuinely look.
The idea of individualism is the lie. No one is anything at all without the universe which holds the earth, the earth upon which the divine dance plays out, the animals and plants that sustain and enrich the earth, and human beings to interact with and give meaning to life. Even if you were the last man standing you would still be connected to a living breathing planet — or you wouldn’t be standing — and dependent upon your perceptions, sensations and feelings to experience anything at all.
A complete life exists when we stop right there, a delightful, peaceful bundle of experiencing. What if that is the garden of Eden we seek? Add thought and no harm enters the garden. It is simply another aspect of experiencing. Thoughts arise and fall, sharing their wealth of possibility, opening the mind to other options, to new ways and things to experience. They are not evil at all. They are simply creation creating, expanding and enhancing, informing the experience of Its Life in form.
Were we to stop there paradise is revealed. The Fall would remain a thought, nothing more. the potential of Its program unexecuted.
Turning thoughts into beliefs is The Fall. A belief always belongs to a separate self and a separate self is a denial of Reality, of what many call God — omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient. The idea of a self is blasphemy of the highest order. It assumes an abdication of power and presence that is an impossibility.
No beliefs — no self. It’s the absolute dissolution of individualism, which in all its forms is the antithesis of that which is not two. When thoughts come and go, untouched by belief, uncrystalized into form, they are no different from the ever-changing kaleidoscope of life. They are faces of experience, features of the virtual reality program each design encounters.
The reason individualism feels so inaccurate is that it denies itself. It sacrifices the totality for the sake of the fictitious, no different than the stomach revolting against the throat. It’s a slow form of suicide. Seeing friends, family and strangers — all myself — in turmoil, in opposition to each other, is heartbreaking, how could it not be, and yet reminds me of the times I too could not see my connectivity, of those times I missed the not two-ness, and that gives me great peace. If I could find my way, and I was as broken as many, others will too.
So This I am writes to stoke the fires of remembrance, to echo who we are, knowing that echo will reverberate through the illusion of time and space, through the idea of me and you, past the judgments of worthy and worthless, past the lies of God and other until life right here, right now, stands revealed in its splendor.
And then, writing will continue. If there is a point, creative fun is it!