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It is always a blessing to be in one of the wild places on a clear night, away from artificial light. This is when we come as close as we humans can to catching a glimpse of infinity’s unmatchable grin.
The light from countless stars travels immeasurable spans of time and space, riding along the powerful currents of an expanding universe, just to make an appearance. Their twinkly songs sing of the boundless energy that gave them birth. That same energy gives us birth as well. As the late, great Dr. Carl Sagan so eloquently reminded us: We are made of star stuff.
As beings of star stuff, we are beings of infinity, just like those flickering points of brilliance in the night sky. We are that magnificent light beyond measure. And we can discover this magnificence by skillfully looking within, below all the usual rantings from that little voice in our head.
We can infuse any and all parts of our lives with that expansive light. Though it does take some effort to understand this. This effort is the nature of spiritual practice and development. And it’s more about unlearning rather than learning something new.
Unlearning involves letting go of our perceived limitations, the old belief systems, worldviews, and the need to be right while judging others wrong about things. In the light of infinity, we can’t begin to understand the true depth of life.
The invitation of a meditative life is to become a full-on, living expression of that boundless light that is our Source. That creative and all-powerful life force of light energetically flows through us like the blood through our veins. It is the essence of our mindful breath and vital principle of our existence. We are ever-expanding consciousness. We are unbridled light! But we forget this within the internal shouting of our clownish, little ego and all its many limited views.
All too often, that calling song from our Source remains obscured by our need to define it in worldly terms. We want to understand and contain infinity within the finite hallways of the ego-mind. We want to own it. And this is where we lose the thread of infinity, shrinking it down to a finite “thing”, a limited story about life and its creation.
We are always seeking to make our unfathomable Source into our own image, relatable to the little self so that we can pretend at understanding. This is insanity and is actually the cause of much needless suffering. There is none more dangerous than a man who believes himself to be armed with the truth and with the weaponry that empowers him to force that truth onto others.
This faux understanding of a creator made in man’s image filters out the awesome, alchemical storm of creation and destruction that is the authentic nature of reality. This wondrous, infinite pandemonium is what we are born from.
The history of our world is filled with countless stories of tragic suffering at the hands of men armed with a “truth” and using it to manipulate, control, and finally, as a justification to kill. We must first unlearn our “truths” if we are to open up to our indescribable vastness.
The end game of claiming knowledge of the absolute is always the same. We become imprisoned by our stories of unconditional certainty. They perpetuate the “we’re right vs. you’re wrong” duality, which is the greatest folly of humanity. When we believe ourselves right and others wrong, thinking we actually have a clue about things, we have no room for any deep and meaningful self-knowledge.
The glory of life is coming naked to the river of expanded consciousness, free from our stories, opening our heart and, together, diving in.
Our Source is not a thing at all. It is like the Tao of Taoism—it cannot be named, classified or known as an object is known. It is not a point on a map or a philosophy of understanding. It’s like the ephemeral, spidery dust particles that float across our vision or the instantly disappearing electric afterglow of a lightning strike. Infinity will not fit under the lens of a microscope, be captured in a zoologist’s net or deconstructed by a philosopher.
The strands of infinity can only be directly experienced below the little ego’s thoughts, opinions, and beliefs. It’s within that relationship with the infinite that we find the deepest connection with all the living systems of our planetary home and all the beings we share it with.
The First People who lived in North America, before the Europeans arrived, understood this deep connection and lived by a simple, natural law: Everything is sacred and we are all related. This seems as close to understanding infinity and our shared magnificence as we humans can get. And what would life become if more of us chose to live in this way?
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