New favorite quote:
Just as each flower has its own unique color – even though it originates from only one light – each individual, although unique in appearance, comes from one essence as well.
Today, let’s practicing seeing the one essence that connects all of us.
It’s very easy (and often very important) to focus on our differences. Indeed, our differences are worth celebrating. Women’s history month. Gay pride. Black history month. We’re all very different threads forming a very beautiful tapestry.
But today, let’s look at the tapestry. Let’s look at the oneness behind all those differences. When you’re talking to a friend or coworker, smile at the “you” that is inside their eyes, twinkling out at you. Feel the wind you’re blowing through the forest and the waves that you are churning across the ocean. Today, remember that there is nothing outside of yourself.
My actual favorite quote I found in a Deepak Chopra book (obviously!). I’ve posted it before, but it is worth repeating. It is an old Ojibway saying:
“Now and then I go about pitying myself and all the while my soul is being blown by great winds across the sky.”
It’s a very wise quote that speaks to a lot of things, including the oneness that we’re discussing today. Read it a few times and sit with it. It’s probably the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read. I hope it inspires you, too.
November 28, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Coolness…something else I do (which in turn helps me to sorta get to the “oneness” aspecty you speak of…is everyone I come into contact with…I say a prayer or send them peace and joy. It really comes in handy when somebody pisses me off and I wonna snap their friggin neck…I remind myself that even THEY deserve a prayer sent their way, and that hopefully they’ll either get what they deserve or they are affected by my demeanour to NOT combat them. It’s hard sometimes…but it works for me.
November 28, 2007 at 6:57 pm
I enjoyed the quote so much that I googled it, and came up with a depth of meaningful poems:
http://www.satyana.org/poetry.html
November 28, 2007 at 7:56 pm
Hum… just wondering: isn’t it some kind of a “communist” vision of the self? and by that I mean, “communism” is nigh “community”, which itself is neatly related to the “common” adjective … so i was wondering: if oneness is, somehow, and quite unconsciously, seeping through all of our selves, and by that I mean, like we were in some strange skein of the all-round circle of men lives or something (after all, we all come from the same “mold”, in your model, don’t we? we all come from the same manufacture) , if so, I just wonder if we’re still free to be ourselves, if this just leaves us any “leeway” to freedom; isn’t it, somehow, equivalent to repudiating our own liberty, just to pretend the contrary…
I just have it this way: quite dangerous a thing to daresay, and I can do nothing but to object to you, -and in such libertarian country that the one you’re living in, you should be full of this very hum… conception-: which makes us unique, and which paradoxically establishes the only sheer pure connection between us all, is precisely, or so I think, this very capacity that we have to be entirely free to act like we want (given the state of laws, that’s for sure!), to think what we want, to be just ourselves… Never have we been so free, so… unfettered.
So, I was just wondering, and that’s all I meant in fact, the way you’re putting it sounds quite like a communist and negative -that is to say a “non-positive”, or elaborated by “absence” or lack- definition of the self freedom and of the self for itself.
Know it surely sounds quite woolly; I do think it would have been easier to, let’s say philosophize, in my own language, but since I don’t think french is widely shared here… well… next time, perhaps =) I’ll give it another more rejoycing try…
anyway,
feel free to express!
^^
November 28, 2007 at 7:58 pm
Oups… ‘ve just realized that I have been writing much more than what I had originally planned to… sorry! =)
^^
Wasting time to write such galimatias…. such a shame!
November 28, 2007 at 8:44 pm
I love your ACTUAL favorite quote! =)
November 28, 2007 at 9:53 pm
I really like the first quote because I believe it to be true. However, it’s message is not recognized by everyone, universally. We are all humans, and we all come from the same light (whether it be religious as a higher being, or scientific as evolution from a single cell). But unfortunately, as time goes on and we all develop our “unique appearances”, these development casts dark shadows over that light. Even though it is still there, meaning some people still lives by that philosophy, it is mostly forgotten by the mass because it is out of sight —> thus out of mind.
http://hiddenconfusion.wordpress.com
- JD.
November 29, 2007 at 6:19 am
Personality is an aspect of the body. It is finite, mortal and subject to entropy. Essence is an aspect of the Greater Reality, universal, timeless – infinite. Personality, sensing a threat tends to resent and actively block essence. Each has its place and function and cannot replace the other.
November 29, 2007 at 4:28 pm
EXCELLENT!! This BLog made me focus again. I was watching the Republican debate a few mins ago and now, with your blog and quotes, made me realize how far away we are from the ONENESS. Thx
November 29, 2007 at 6:49 pm
thanks… i went to look at the santayana quotes also.
November 30, 2007 at 1:14 pm
actually, what is the source of this quote? i’ll attribute it to you if you don’t remember / won’t tell (grin)!
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