“Think about it, there must be higher love

Down in the heart or hidden in the stars above

Without it, life is wasted time

Look inside your heart, I’ll look inside mine

Bring me a higher Love. 

Where’s that higher Love I keep thinking of?” ~ Steve Winwood.

Happy Sunday!

Last week I was watching “The Voice” TV program and two contestants sang the 80s hit “Higher Love” by Steve Winwood.  I was a big fan of Steve Winwood back in the 80s.  He was one of those artists that Donna had introduced me to so his music had specialness to me as it was recommended by my mentor as hip and intelligent.  I had always thought of the lyrics as being about finding romantic love.  Well hearing the song sung again with my new psyche I heard its message for the first time.  Steve was seeking way back when for what I am seeking today.
I have been asking my guides for the last couple of weeks “what is Oneness?”  I want to understand better what others say of Oneness – to see ourselves in everyone.  I want to experience feeling God in nature.  This awareness is described by so many spiritual people that I follow.  Just this morning, in my reading of Wayne Dyer on the Tao, he quoted Mother Theresa as saying “In each I see the face of Christ in one of his more distressing disguises”.
So I have been taking some notes on the many ways the Oneness is described.
A couple of weeks ago I watched Wayne Dyer’s current PBS special (I wrote about this on 3-16-14)  and he said of Oneness that it is “that place where we leave this world of duality to return to the Source of peace, joy, and love.”
Last Sunday I watched the first episode of the “New Earth” life-class that Super Soul Sunday is broadcasting, its the conversations between Eckert Tolle and Oprah on Eckert’s book.  They spoke on Oneness with Eckert saying it is the space to go to where “you and God merge”.  He said this space is where true strength lies, where you feel authentic.”
Eckert speaks like he always lives in the place of Oneness.  Oprah told the story of what she felt was her most significant experience of Oneness.  She said she went out into her garden one day intentionally keeping her mind blank and clear of any thoughts of the trees and plants.  She wasn’t going to name them or compare them but just be with them.  She said that with this intension she was able to experience nature as Oneness, she was aware of the life energy of God in everything.
Sunday night I had a dream about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden.  This story had been in the back of my mind for a couple of weeks as it had come up in conversation one Sunday lunch.  In my mind I had made less of the story as I, like so many, see it as a metaphor for a stage of human development.  But, I have read so many different interpretations of the metaphor that none of them see to hold importance for me anymore.  In my dream I observed Adam and Eve living in Oneness with everything in the Garden.  When Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge it gave them the intellect to classify and compare the things of the earth.  The “ten thousand things” as the Tao calls it, became separate from us by our now being able to name it.
When I woke and thought about this dream it strangely reminded me of Doctor Who.  Doctor Who is a single highly intelligent alien who defeats vast armies of bad aliens who are always trying to take over the Earth – in modern times and during other periods of our past and future history.  One thing that has always intrigued me about the program is that the Doctor will stand before these great armies looking totally defeated, he will pause to think about who they are, searching his memory of all he knows of alien cultures.  He will suddenly remember who they are and boldly name them.  Once he has done that you, as the viewer, know he has already defeated them.
These thoughts of mine say to me that when we name and classify other things we are putting our power over them.  A whale doesn’t know it is a whale, we humans name it and learn about it so we can defeat it.  We do that with everything on the planet including each other.  When we classify other cultures, “those Japs”, “Naxi’s”, and many other terms we create, we differentiate and classify others as separate from us so we feel our power over them.
So is Oneness found in just being and letting “the ten thousand things” just be?  Do we step back from intellect?
Monday morning my daily practice brought to me two more thoughts on this lesson.
In his writing on the 47 verse of the Tao Te Ching, Wayne Dyer wrote about our modern Information Age confirming my thoughts on intellect.  He wrote:

“When you stay ‘in-form’ (in your body and the material world), you’re rewarded with information.  But move beyond form (transform to spirit) and you’ll receive inspiration.  Thus, information is not always knowledge, and knowledge is not alway wisdom.   Wisdom connects you to your heart in your waking moments; it is the Tao at work.  Lao-tzu is asking you to recognize the difference between striving for more facts and being in the world that is complete as it is.  As you live from this perspective of wisdom or connection to the Tao, the world looks so very different.”

My “Bowl of Saki” email brought me the following wisdom from Hazrat Khan:

“A soul shows the proof of its evolution in the degree of the tolerance it shows. The life in the lower creation shows the lack of tolerance. The tendency of fighting with one another, which one sees among beasts and birds, shows the reason at the back of it, that intolerance is born in their nature. … But when a soul has evolved still more, tolerance becomes the natural thing for him. Because the highly evolved soul then begins to realize ‘Another person is not separate from me, but the other person is myself. The separation is on the surface of life, but in the depth of life I and the other person are one.’ Therefore tolerance is not learned fully by trying to follow it as a good principle. It is learned by having the love of God, by attaining the knowledge of self, and by understanding the truth of life.” ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

This is saying to me that we do not return to the Oneness by regressing backward, giving up our intellect but by moving forward. Intellect and ego are tools we have been given, when we recognize that we can use them as they were meant.  I think that the last sentence of the above quote is the instructional manual: answering the call to return to God, the journey of self discovery, and then understanding the truth of life.
I easily recognize these first two steps from my own journey but how to know that you know ‘the truth of life’ when everyday brings a new awareness?
I think yesterday I was given some guidance in understanding this higer awareness.  I listened to an on-line seminar by Craig Hamilton called “the key to Evolving Beyond the Ego.”  I have a new interest in evolving consciousness that I learned of from Neale Donald Walsch and Barbara Marx Hubbard so ‘low and behold’ this seminar comes into my inbox.  Craig spent 13 years in a modern monastery/laboratory that was studying the process of enlightenment.  He said what they found was that in addition to the ego self and the higher (nirvana) self there was a third active self.  Craig is calling this the evolutionary self.  This is the self that wants change and challenges in life,  Its the self that feels Universal support and recognizes a purpose to life.
Craig said that when you get rooted in your evolutionary self (that I have heard Oprah and others call going with the flow) three things happen: you notice and can distinguish events that are guiding you; your values change where you live in your truth and stay authentic; lastly, you get to know your ego self very well.
I realized that this is where I have been trying to reside for the last year since becoming aware of my authentic self when working on my archetypes with Caroling Myss last spring (blog of 4-14-13 Sabotage).
So I haven’t had the experience of Oneness yet but great information is coming in and I know I am in the flow of learning.  I am asking today for this lesson to continue so I should have more to add about this in an upcoming Sunday.
Namaste’  (The spirit in me recognizes the spirit in you.  More Oneness)

“I could light the night up with my soul on fire

I could make the sun shine from pure desire

Let me feel that love come over me

Let me feel how strong it could be” ~ Steve Winwood