An Article by Doug Esse
Late one Sunday night in April, 2013, I was writing up my counseling notes after a long day of seeing clients. All alone in the office, I usually cranked up some loud music to keep me awake and to let off some steam from hours of holding space for others. I heard/felt a voice that said, “Listen to a chant.” Surprised, I followed this nudge and typed, “Buddhist chant” in YouTube. I clicked on a chant that I had never heard before called, “Om Mani Padme Hum.”
As the sweet melody opened up, I became aware of a kind of golden warmth falling all around me like soft dew. My heart seemed to open up and a burst of joy welled inside of me. That was the opening wave of my awakening which soon led me within weeks to non-duality in my own faith tradition, the Law of One material, New Age ideas, and the mystical levels of other spiritual traditions that underscored the unity of all things.
After a long run under the hot Texas sun in July, 2013, I saw a vision that has never left me. Although my eyes were open and I could see the normal things around me, a kind of insertion or a screen-overlay fell in front of my vision. It was of a huge crystal that looked like an egg held in suspension in the blackness of a void. The emotion I got from the crystal egg is that it was vibrating, throbbing, with such joy and love and anticipation. Then it exploded!
Billions of shards, clear and golden in color, burst outwards in all directions. Every tiny shard was still one with the original crystal egg in spirit and was, in fact, a microcosm of the macrocosm. The paradox that I saw was that nothing was lost in the losing of the sphere-shape through exploding. Instead, there was this overwhelming joy and excitement at the potential for self-exploration! Moreover, and I felt this deeply within every fiber of my being, every shard was three things, simultaneously:
- The Infinite Creator, unbroken and total, held in union through Love.
- Completely unique, unlike any other shard.
- Forgetful that it was the Infinite Creator.
I began to weep at the beauty and simplicity of it all; that there was such complete unity whose mystery can be explored in infinite ways. Ten minutes later, still reeling from the vision which burned (and still burns) in my mind, my mom called me. I’m not prone to tears but I was choking up on the phone with her because I saw her, and received her, in a new way. She was the Infinite Creator and that we were one! I was talking to God through her, as her! I thought, “If only you knew how magnificent you truly are!!”
For that moment, the mundane moment of a phone call became an experience of the profoundly sacred. I realized, then, that all moments are just as sacred and what changes is our attention and intention to perceive it as a sacrament. The Law of One
material, and all spiritual traditions at their non-dual, mystical levels, give this same kind of message: 1) Look in the mirror, see the Creator; 2) Look at your other-self, see the Creator; 3) Love is all there is; and 4) the moment contains Love.
I later learned that the idea of the cosmic egg is archetypal and that people have been intuiting this throughout history. I know that my own vocation, awakened when the golden dew fell as the sweet melody of Om Mani Padme Hum arose like incense in the counseling room, is to invite others to clean the lenses of their vision in order to experience this unity with all things and all others. How this vocation plays out is unique to my talents and distortions (the latter of which I have many!) but it is not a special vocation to which I alone am invited. You, dear reader, have this vocation and so does everyone!
I close this sharing with a question to you that I ask myself every morning when I put a sacred necklace over my head. “How can I be more simple and loving today?” That open-ended question sinks deeply into the unconscious and there, is planted. The fruit of such desire and intent begins to grow in ways that are surprising and lead us down paths we would not have imagined. We may not physically go anywhere new, but through connecting with our one Source, and with the recognition and experience of union with all, our conscious awareness can become cosmic! May it be.
Building 4th Cosmic Christ 