The Youniverse

Everything that goes into the making of a being, is part of that being. It is that being in different forms. For example, a lizard cannot be a lizard without the insect it eats, the sun that heats it up, the water it drinks, the air it breathes, the planet it lives on and the universe it lives in. The concept of the lizard does not end at its body then, but rather includes everything that directly or indirectly goes into supporting it. In other words, everything that goes into the making of the lizard IS the lizard in different forms, because without those sources, the lizard would not be. In this way, the lizard is inseparable from its sources. 

The connections that go into the birth and growth of a cricket, the hunting and eating of the cricket, the breathing in of air, the drinking of water, the basking in the sun, is all ONE unbroken act of being a lizard. Each portion of the act is integral to the lizard’s existence; each portion IS the act of the lizard creating itself. In this way the lizard is not a fixed and limited item, but an actively living BEING with far reaching influence, which may not be readily apparent. It is living as and being a lizard. But since it is inseparable from its sources, the question arises: what is being the lizard? Since it isn’t separate from its sources, which includes the universe itself when you expand far enough, this means the universe itself or existence itself, is being the lizard. The lizard has all the sources within the universe at its disposal to be exactly what it desires to be, because it is all sources in the universe. 

Now, what goes into the making of the lizard is fairly simple, since the lizard itself is a fairly simple creature in its beingness. Its being has fewer aspects to it than other, more “intelligent” creatures, such as human beings for example. As human beings, we are similar to the lizard or any other physical creature on the level of physicality. Our sources for the upkeep of our physical bodies are very similar: sun, food, water, shelter, and so on. Where we differ is in our emotional and psychological aspects. We are blessed with an amazing depth to our psychological and emotional experiences, and these aspects open up whole new types of sources that go into the creation of them. For example, every day we are bombarded with information, from external sources in the form of our interactions with others and internal sources in the form of our imagination. This information completely escapes the lizards of the world. We sort out this information and choose what we wish to incorporate into our psychology and what we do not. This is the process of creating that aspect of ourselves. This aspect of creation is what makes the difference between each of us greater than the difference between two lizards. It’s the depth of our personalities and the depth of our perspectives. This information that we use is similar to food or water to the physical aspect in that without it we wouldn’t have the ability to create our psychological aspects. Holistically speaking then, this information is our psychological aspect in different forms. This includes ALL information, even the type of information that we choose to ignore, because what we choose to ignore highlights and clarifies the information that we choose to incorporate. In this way, each piece of information is critical and crucial in the creation of ourselves.

The coolest thing, in my opinion, that comes from the realization that there is no separation between the sources of your being and your being itself, is that it changes the process of self-creation. It makes it simple, and efficient by allowing you the freedom to simply choose the type of being you prefer to be and allowing the other portions of that being, the seemingly external sources, to flow into your experience. The hard way of creating your being, the way most of us do it now, is by trying to gather all the seemingly external sources first and then choosing the state of being we prefer after. This method usually creates a sense of separation between us and our reality, which leads to many of the issues we currently face in life. The idea is to think holistically and see that the reality we thought was external to us is actually us in various forms. That is how infinite we are. That is how multi-dimensional we are.

So when you choose to be a certain way, by incorporating certain aspects of your greater psychology into your current perspective, you will automatically gather the sources, in whatever form they need to appear, to uphold that new perspective. Now, I know some may think that not everyone seems to be supported in our experience. There seems to be much poverty, sickness, and violence. However, in these cases the same mechanism is at work. The sources are part of perspective, and when that perspective is segregational, which is what the experience of poverty, illness and violence implies, so are the nature of the sources. They will uphold the segregation you have chosen. You will believe as you have believed for a long time, that you live in an uncaring reality and not as the reality itself. 

It’s a simple understanding, yet is still tricky to get my head around. It makes sense to me that the reality must be the being in different forms. It cannot be otherwise. We cannot be separate. There can be no such thing as outside. What we tend to think of as separate or outside still goes into the making of ourselves just by our perception of it. So how can it be outside of us? It’s influence is very much alive in us.

The way I understand it now is that everything is one thing interacting with itself, creating different perspectives of itself, by relating to itself. Everything is us, we are everything. 

By the way, I used the example of the lizard only because I was feeding my own pet lizards some crickets when I came to the realization that the crickets are my lizards in another form, and that the crickets should be treated with love and respect just as I treat my lizards with love and respect, since they are one and the same.

Our experience of life, both individually and collectively, is leading us to an awareness of unity and oneness. The more we explore the nature of our existence by exploring the nature of our world, the nature of our society, and the nature of the universe, the more we realize that it is impossible for anything to exist as a truly separate entity. 

The fact that many of us don’t actually realize this fact of unity is astounding to me. All it takes is for a person to step out of their preconceived notions in their head and to truly observe what is around them. Maybe people’s ignorance is based on the fact that it may be too hard for them to actually observe what is around them when they are too busy in their daily grind. Sooner or later though, we all will have to come to the realization of unity. Our game of living under the illusion of separation will very soon get too painful and pain, almost everyone has learned, is one of the quickest ways to get someone’s attention. It is through pain that we learn fastest, and it is too apparent that not enough of us are feeling the pain of separation as yet, otherwise we would be making the changes necessary to alleviate the pain.

This is especially true in our cities, where we live in comfortable bubbles of ignorance, separated from the rest of our natural world. In cities people are blinded to many disturbing facts of the world. We don’t realize where our neatly packaged food, or bargain priced clothing, or fuel for our automobiles comes from. We simply buy more, use more and live on in ignorance. Sure, we see hints of the pain caused by our separation mentality when we turn on the nightly news, but hey, that’s in some other part of the world. It’s not happening in our backyard so who cares, right? That oil spill is horrible, but let’s point our fingers at the “others” who are responsible, rather than realizing that we buy the oil from the “others”. Sure, it’s horrible that kids are exploited into making our clothes, but at least it’s not my kid or your kid, so let’s just continue to ignore.

Even when something painful occurs within our own cities, we create even more separation so as to not look how we are connected to the pain. So we’ll hear about a shooting and point our fingers at those living in poor areas of our city, where most shootings tend to happen. We won’t take the steps to realize that we indirectly gave rise to the existence of a poor area in the first place and that we contributed to the mentality of separation that causes one person to shoot another. We do this kind of denial, separation and projection all the time. It’s always about “others” and never about “us” because it’s too painful to admit that it’s all of us who are responsible. 

So the mentality of separation continues, but it is based on illusion. Our experience will lead us to unity. Many of us know about unity, but not enough of us as yet. The people who realize unity simply look at the facts of our experience. There is no question remaining when we look at the facts. We know for a fact that we cannot exist without our natural world and everything it contains. We know that even the smallest and what we term to be “insignificant” parts of our natural world, such as the insects, are crucial to the smooth functioning of the whole system. We know that our natural world cannot exist without our Sun and we know that our society cannot thrive without each other. We know that for any of us to thrive, all of us must thrive. When I say “us”, I don’t mean just humans, even though it is true that for our society to thrive as a whole, all members of it must also thrive. I also mean the entire natural world and our universe must thrive for us to thrive. This is a fact. The fact leads us to the larger truth that we must change our mentality of separation into one of unity if we are to continue existing as human beings.

Unity means we stop looking to be better at the expense of others. Unity also means we stop looking to make others better at the expense of ourselves. Unity means we stop making our Earth “productive” by destroying larger and larger parts of it for the purpose of making humanity more “advanced”. Unity means we stop the mentality of competition because we realize that if anybody loses, we all eventually lose. Unity means an expanded sense of self so that it includes the whole universe, transforming the universe into the Youniverse. Unity does not mean sameness, however. It means cherishing each member of our society, and allowing all members to have an equal opportunity to develop into who they wish to be. Unity means cherishing each member of our natural world as well, and allowing all members to have an equal opportunity to be their own unique selves. Unity is balanced, joyful, loving, creative and expansive. It is freedom for all. It is the opposite of what many of us experience today. Unity is also natural, which means it requires no effort at all. It is simple, beautiful and without struggle. 

Now, we know the truth of unity, and we know there are many who are unaware. Many aware people would mis-understand this situation and start telling the unaware people of the truth. They may start proselytizing. However, their efforts will have gone to waste. You see, the way to bring unity is not through creating more separation, which is what would happen if aware people start telling unaware people of the truth. Instead, the way is through example. Unity will be brought by aware people expressing the truth through their lives. All their decision-making will be based on whatever expresses more unity. When making any decision in life, they will ask themselves, “What would love do now?”, because true love is unity expressed. By being loving examples, aware people will allow others to see how they can choose to exist as well. Through awareness of the truth and the love expressed by truthful people, our world will change dramatically and we will create what some have called “Heaven on Earth”.