the circle

I had a mild revelation last night, just before falling asleep, and it was about the circle analogy that I made in my first blog. I would quote it here but it was a bit scattered and so I’ll just leave it up to you, the reader, to do that research. To summarize, though, I had made the point that the dualistic nature of all existence, the yin and the yang, were an illusion and that both sides of a dualistic relationship are actually two sides of the same circle. I also said that the image of a circle was slightly misleading because the space within the circle would imply that there were two things; the circle and the space. This would imply duality, which does not really exist. That’s why I said the circle would be more accurately depicted as a dot, although this would still be an incomplete illustration of reality because even the dot has an edge, implying that there would still be two things; the dot and the space that borders the dot.

It’s strange how we can think of something in a certain way for a very long time, and that way of thinking about it can make perfect sense until suddenly, out of nowhere, we can have a simple thought that changes everything. We must be open to these experiences for this is the way we can remain open to what is true. If we hold on too tightly to ideas then we can find ourselves lost again before we know it.

I had always answered this question of the illusion of duality by filling in the circle to create a dot. What I had always failed to realize is that it’s the circle itself that is an illusion and it’s the space within that is what we really are. If the circle represents what we see and what we think is real, then the space inside the circle represents God and what we truly are behind the illusion. If we take away the circle but leave the space, you have an image of what is true. We are only that space and that space is the collective.

If all of time has already occurred, and if all of time has occurred in one single fleeting moment, then all that we are, we are all at once. Every life we have ever lived we have lived at once and, because we are one, we have all lived every life that has ever been lived and, further, we have lived them all at once.

If time is ever going to end it has already done so. Right now we are only reviewing what is already occurred. We are like the Earth turning which creates the illusion of night and day. The sun is always shining but we are not always looking into it. We are reading a book that has already been written.

This is why the arcs that come together to create the circle are an illusion. There is not really birth or death just as there is not really dark and light. All that we think we see and feel are nothing more than the reactions of our nervous system inside of our brains. If this body is not real then none of what we see or feel is real. This shell is not real.

Some believe the truth is out there but there is nothing out there because out there does not exist. The truth is somewhere else entirely but it is a direction that is beyond our comprehension.

What we seek is to dissolve the circle, our illusion of self and of body. This will reveal to us the incomprehensible direction of what is real; the direction of the collective. In the collective we will find one another and we find that we are truly one in a way that we could never have imagined with the flesh or the shell that we have come to believe is really who we are.

Imagine you are looking into a building through one of many windows and you have been looking through this window for so long that you have come to believe you are the window and that what you see inside of this building is what is real. You have lost touch with the world that is behind you and that is real. What you see and what you believe to be real is all manmade and you know nothing else. Imagine somehow that you have been moving from one window to the next and looking into the building but you have no memory of this. Each time you look into a window you forget about the others and you believe you are the window you gaze through at this moment. The truth is that you have been all of these windows if you have been any of them. Beyond that, though, the truth is that you have been none of them.

Looking inside of the building you can see the other windows and, because time is not real, you can still see yourself looking through each of them. Now you mistakenly believe that every other window is someone else.

The truth is that you are God looking through that window and that every other person you see is also God; each of them is you.

This is a lengthy analogy but it does the trick, I think.

What we think of as love is an illusion because we believe that love is ours to give and to take. Love exists throughout all of reality, though, because reality is love. It is the love of God, which is God. Any love we believe we have ever felt pales in comparison to the love that is real and that saturates all of existence. We love one another as separate beings but this is not real love because we are not separate. Love is not something we must attempt to give or attempt to feel for it is all that we truly are. It is unimaginable in every way.

What is done is done and we believe it still occurs. To forgive is to accept that it is done and that it never really occurred to begin with. While we are here in this illusion, we must learn to step aside and allow one another to be the love that is all of us. We must come to see our brothers and our sisters as simply another window through which we look upon this manmade illusion. What is real is beyond what we think we see. What is real is within and what we believe to be without is actually in our own minds. Our minds are the illusion of separate self.

Look at the image below and you can get an idea of what I mean. The space inside of the larger circle is the collective mind that we all share. The smaller circles represent each of us as individuals. The part of the smaller circles that is outside of the larger one is the illusive self while the part that is inside the circle represents the illusive subconscious. What is beyond the illusive boundaries of each circle is real. Each one of us thinks we are separate but in truth we are one with all space and time. We are one with each other because we are only the same. Nothing more or less.

What we have come to believe is outside of the circle, or the reality that we see, is like the inside of the building that we have come to believe is reality, though it is not. What is real can only be reached by looking within and past the ego and then the mind. If we keep going we will eventually disolve that illusive barrier and we can find one another and be whole. We can find all of what is real and we can be one with God outside of space and time.

 Note: The final, and most interesting, conclusion to my ranting here is that, if we want a more accurate understanding of this situation, we would need to turn this entire scenereo around again. We must come to realize that we are facing the wrong way. Each of the circles in the image is actually looking inward and the subconscious is the part of the smaller circle that is on the outside. What we have done is to capture a tiny illusion within the confines of this larger circle and we have neglected to see all that is behind us. What we actually share; what is actually the collective; is the vast, unending "space" that is "outside" the circle. What we have come to mistakenly view as "out" there is actually "in" there and it's really just an illusion anyway.