The Whole Wide World

Once in a while it’s nice to feel like this. Where some inhale and exhale to calm the mind, I inhale and exhale to activate the mind. There is a negative narrative about altering the state, but it changes perspective, allows me to see my world from a different angle. As I focused my gaze on my hands it reminded me I am in this world. I am here.

Warning: Be careful that you don’t forget that.

This, your practice is not about disconnecting, not engaging or paying attention to the external, its about seeing and approaching it differently, from a place of lightness and love. If you want to retreat, you are wasting your time here. You’ve lived a life alone, perhaps many, but now you’re here, in this body, in this world, this place called earth.

How many other places could you have chosen to be in this moment? Infinity. You chose here.

If her download was correct, you’ve already lived this type of life, this introspective monastic life, but now you’re here. Maybe you will return in this lifetime, to that peaceful state of being, but you’re here and too young to move into the past. It's too soon.

You are only beginning and it’s far too early to renounce earthly pleasures, the human experience.

I need to know what being in the world means for me.

You are of the world, not in the world.

This would be opposite of the quote from the Architecture of Peace documentary. A teacher said:

"You are in the world, not of the world.”

Both are difficult for me to digest.

Then I thinned and shifted it out a little more.

Of the world vs In the world

I keep repeating this to myself, understanding what this means to me and I arrived here:.

I am in the world and I am of the world.
I am in the world and I am of the world.
I am in the world and I am of the world.

That is the duality. To embrace duality is to become one with Self. Embracing duality brings the worlds together. Rejecting duality sends them further apart, splitting the Self into two. To become more aware of duality, of the opposites that lays within, increases the tension within.

Moving from the struggle of separation and accepting all of you, all of me and all of this world. To embrace duality, is to embrace the Whole Self.

To become one with all.