Inner  Frontier
Fourth Way Spiritual Practice

 

Inner Work


For the weeks of June 4 & 11, 2018

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Living in Oneness

(Introduction)

We live among an endlessly dynamic and diverse array of forms: inanimate, animate, intelligent, natural, artificial, cultural, religious, political, and so on. Given this amazing profusion, it is surprising that we are at all able to navigate our way through life, that we can set and work toward goals, that we can manage our lives as well as we do. The major reason for this ability is, of course, the know-how and understanding embodied by our collective culture. Yet that is not enough to make sense of our own life, even just superficially.

Just as our culture seems to organize the multiplicity on a mass scale, we depend on inner factors to organize ourselves on the personal scale. The endlessly dynamic and diverse proliferation of thoughts, emotions, memories, daydreams, and impulses within our own psyche also presents the challenge of organization, first to manage our external life despite the somewhat chaotic inner stream pulling us here and there, and second to make something less chaotic and more organized of our inner life. Thus any improvements to our inner life also support our external life by removing and resolving conflicts, blockages, and diversions.

To transcend this roiling sea of all things, inner and outer, we seek oneness, in its many manifestations. We might deem it surprising that oneness can have different manifestations. After all, oneness means oneness and should always be the same. It does, however, appear differently on different levels of awareness and from different perspectives. Yet each manifestation of oneness shares that unmistakable unifying quality. We ask whether it is possible to live in oneness, in that unifying quality. And if so, how? What would it be like to live in oneness in any of its manifestations? Would it be brief or could it be permanent? And what do those time-bound terms even mean in the realm of the timeless?

This way of looking at oneness may sound confusing. Part of our challenge is to not take oneness as a concept to be analyzed and thought about, but rather as an experience to enter. Thinking about oneness will not help us find it. Indeed, thoughts themselves can distract us from the oneness beyond them.

As a starting exercise for this inner work series on Living in Oneness, please return to our old friend of sensing our body, in particular sensing our whole body. Wholeness is a manifestation of oneness. Whole body means one body. Be in the whole of your one body.

In that whole body, we have a whole heart, a warmhearted approach to living. Our heart is a core part of our wholeness. By relaxing softly, in the center of our chest, we allow our emotional heart, our spiritual heart, to clear and open. When we notice our heart hardening and turning those around us into objects, we relax and soften our stance, our heart. We let the emotional separateness dissolve.

In that whole body, we have a whole mind, the cognizant stillness beneath the myriad and endless thoughts. Our whole mind is a core part of our wholeness. We have one mind. Despite the nearly ceaseless stream of thoughts and images that seems to change our mind from one moment to the next, this all occurs against the unchanging background, quiet awareness of our one mind.

Be in your wholeness, in your whole body, your whole heart, and your whole mind. These are not three separate parts of us. These are not three separate actions. Rather, they come together as one action; they come together to make us whole. Be unified. Be the one person that you are, simply and directly.

Can we live that way, or at least practice doing so?

    1. No Boundaries
    2. No self
    3. Beyond Time
    4. The One Who Sees
    5. One Responsibility
    6. Living in Harmony
    7. The Sacred One
    8. All in One, One in All


     

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