Inner  Frontier
Fourth Way Spiritual Practice

 

Inner Work


For the week of May 22, 2017

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Levels of Oneness

Introduction

When we hear about Oneness, perhaps from teachings of the great spiritual masters, it comes across as a remarkable truth that we intuitively resonate with, yet it seems utterly remote from us, from our everyday experience, from our possibilities. It seems that we will never be able to meditate enough, pray enough, be pure enough, now enough, or lucky enough to merit the ultimate stroke of insight, the life-changing mode of perception that opens the door to the Sacred One.

Yet the great masters were and are people, too, with the same equipment as we have. What is possible for them, must also be possible for us, for you and for me. Coming into oneness is not a matter of acquiring some missing functionality of our body, mind, or soul. Rather, it is a lifting of the veils covering our perceptions. To the extent we believe it is not possible for us personally to experience or live in oneness, we close ourselves off from seeing the reality.

One way to counter that self-doubt with regard to oneness is to understand what oneness means, especially its various aspects or levels. That search for understanding shows us that experiencing oneness is not an all-or-nothing proposition. We can ease into it, prepare for it. In its fullness, it does come suddenly, unexpectedly, and entirely. But there is useful advance work to do, work that reveals and gives us confidence in our own growing possibilities, work that makes some of the veils covering our perceptions a little more transparent.

In particular, we can work to grow past our own fragmentation and inner contradictions toward personal unity. That process removes many of the roadblocks to entering true, universal oneness. None of our inner work goes to waste. Every drop enters our being and nudges our will toward purification and us toward transformation. Yes, in terms of energies, we certainly do slide backwards at times. Yet our will and our understanding do not slide. Once we have truly understood something by seeing it directly for ourselves, in ourselves, that understanding stays with us, becomes part of us. This means that when we do slide backwards in terms of energies, we know the way to move forward again, and we are able to recover more quickly.

In the coming weeks, we will explore the levels of Oneness, beginning with personal unity and moving on toward the all-encompassing unity. You might wonder whether there are levels of Oneness. After all, Oneness is one and indivisible. How can that have levels? True enough: Oneness has no levels. However, our experience of Oneness does have levels and that is what we will explore, as the veils lift and our view widens beyond our current limits.

For this week, please notice your attitude toward your own possibilities of entering the higher realms of the spirit. Is that possible for you?

Levels of Oneness Series

    1. Whole Body
    2. One Heart
    3. One Mind
    4. Individual Being
    5. I-Am Oneness
    6. The Timeless
    7. One Being


     

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