www.patriciapearce.com/podcast
Often we can get caught in dualistic thinking around oneness and distinctness.
In this episode I share a couple of experiences that point to how the whole and the specific are in dynamic relationship, and it is through our uniqueness as the individuated self that the All becomes revealed.
Transcript
Hello, evolutionaries and welcome to this week’s podcast episode. I mentioned in an earlier episode a practice that I have begun doing over the past many, many months, I guess maybe it’s been over a year now, where, during my morning time when I journal and I meditate, I also open my mind and my awareness and I ask if there is anything that wants to be conveyed to me. And always some image comes to my mind. On rare occasions it’s not an image, it’s something else; more like a feeling or a state of mind. But usually it’s an image that reveals itself or presents itself in my mind, and then I listen in deeply to what the essence of that image is and what it is that’s being conveyed to me. And oftentimes these images have to do with things that I’ve been contemplating in my life or I’ve just been journaling about.
And recently, one of the images that was presented to me was that of a rainbow. And as I listened in to that image and really opened myself up to what was wanting to be conveyed to me, I recognized that it was about this interaction of the light, which we can think of as symbolic of the all or the universality, the unbrokeness, or the wholeness of existence. This light, which is a wave (also a photon, but is a wave), when it interacts with the specificity of the raindrop, of the droplet of water—that is when its nature is revealed, when the spectrum of its colors is revealed. So I understood that this image was offering me a teaching about the interrelatedness of the oneness with the specificity (or the discreteness or the individuality) of the droplet.
And we all are both of those things. We are individual depictions of something that is universal. And it is in our lives and in our uniqueness and the uniqueness of our gifts that aspects of that universality, or that whole, are revealed and made visible. And so I wanted to bring this image to you this week for you to ponder as well and to consider how there is this relatedness between your individuality and the wholeness, and the completeness and inter-beingness, of who you are. I think oftentimes we can get caught in this dualistic thinking: that it’s either all about the oneness, or it’s all about being a separate self. And, actually, this image was showing that it’s not one or the other, it’s both of these aspects that are in a dynamic relationship in which they each are partners in this revelation of what reality is all about.
I’d also like to share with you a little dream that I had a few years ago, because it relates to this. And in this dream I’m watching this procession of human beings, and it feels like the precession of all of humanity that I’m watching. And it’s a whole line of people, one after the next, sort of floating past my field of vision. And each of these people is wearing their own garments from their own culture, and they have their own attributes of their own ethnicity. And I’m seeing them all floating by through the field of my vision.
And I know that each of these individuals that are going past are completely equal one to another. They’re completely equal. And they are giving a completely unique expression of this oneness of reality. And in this dream I am filled with gratitude that I am among them, that I am part of this procession that has been going on for a very, very long time. And I understood myself to be a co-equal partner in this procession of humanity. And so this dream was filled with this sense of gladness and gratitude and also a sense of, I would say, awe or even reverence at the amazing diversity of the human family.
And so I wanted to offer both of these to you this week for you to contemplate and to consider the uniqueness of your individuality and how it is a revelation or a depiction of attributes of Reality (capital R!). That you are, in your unique gifts, in the individual life path that you are living, giving expression to something that is an attribute of the whole, that has never been expressed before and will never be expressed again. That you are on this planet as this unique individual that is in this dynamic relationship and partnership and expression of the Reality that is beyond all of us. So I offer that to you this week for your contemplation and hopefully for your celebration. That you honor and celebrate both the fact that you are one with the old and that you are here on this planet as a unique and distinct and individuated expression of that whole. And until next week, I bid you peace.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
image, procession, week, individuality, expression, oneness, conveyed, universality, reality, attributes, uniqueness, mind, podcast, wholeness, gratitude, revealed, individuated, dream, light, individual