From time to time, my heart catches up with my head, so to speak.  In my personal experience, there are three kinds of knowing that all is One that simultaneously exist yet do not usually come forth at the same time. Yesterday, they did for a brief moment.

The first knowing is what I’ve read and have allowed my mind to be open to: that there is only One Being.  Many writers, from traditional and ancient to post-modern, have exclaimed in their ways that all is One Body, One Love, One Life.  It is surely one thing to know this on a mental level and another to experience it on the deeper levels.

The second kind of knowing is a deeper recognition that all is One.  It is less an affective response but a body-felt gnosis where I intuit that I am a cell of a larger being, and that being is a cell of a larger being, etc.  It’s more than a mental knowing because I start to become aware of an interrelatedness that can’t be seen with the material eyes but can be perceived with the inner eyes or intuition.  It’s hard for me to put into words but I think I’ve read others who do a better job with describing this gnosis.  Perhaps I can say that it is like being a part of a spider web where I begin to grasp on deep levels of my being that the whole web is also me; but not “me” in an egotistical way. Rather, it’s a “me” that is the I AM of all things.

The third kind of knowing is an emotive explosion.  All I can say about this flash is that it is pure Love of the Mystery of Unity and Union of All.  The flash opens the inner eyes with dazzling and piercing acuity that syncs the head with the heart so that the emotion of Love is unleashed for a moment.

This is what happened to illustrate my experience yesterday… at Target!  My wife, three young kids, and I went to Target to buy some things for our upcoming beach trip.  We were in the shoe department.  My wife and younger two kids were trying on shoes and I momentarily got lost in the moment when I was pushing the cart up to where they were.

I glanced to my left and saw a family from India walking. Up ahead of them was a Latina woman with her kids.  All of a sudden, the veil parted for a moment and I saw with my inner eyes that each person was pulsing golden energy; and, how shall I put this… was somehow God and held within God!  My heart was filled with a high level of joy where I wanted to exclaim outloud (which I didn’t!!), “Don’t you know Who You Are? Can’t You see We are here to experience Love in this way, this particular configuration of light that makes up the illusion of what we call the material world?”  The spirit of these questions was not of supercilious admonishment.  It was more of, “Oh my!  Look now… with new eyes… look and just behold the beauty of it all… the beauty of the Mystery of Unity!! You are THAT!!”

Well, the moment passed in its intensity, my middle son was complaining about his shoes not fitting, and I reentered behind the veil.  Yet, the ecstatic moment left its mark.  The third kind of knowing still burned but receded into the waters of my subconscious… to be covered over by the waves of the first two kinds of knowing of Oneness.

Yet, I feel filled with gratitude to the Infinite Creator, since God transcends me. That unveiled moment and indeed all moments are gifts of love, of Self.

• Oneness
• Uncategorized