Neither "Separate" nor "One" - Matt Licata

We are neither "separate" nor "one", but the erupting holding
field in which the energies of "separate" and "one" interpenetrate
and dance the relative into being.  Neither of these concepts
are majestic enough to contain the mystery of the soul.  While
we may have a preference over unity and oneness, over
multiplicity and differentiation, it would appear that Love
does not share this bias and is ready at all times to equally
employ either of its manifestations to be its envoy here.

Those visitors of raw, achy, lonely, broken openness are not
neuroses to be cured or mistakes to be remedied. The shaky
vulnerability is not pathology, it is path.  As our perception
is cleansed, we see that they are not obstacles, but passionate,
yearning requests, tending to the lost grief, joy, rage
and peace of the unlived life.

The freedom we long for will never be found in the eradication
of the unwanted, but only in deeper layers of attunement to the
love and information it carries.  At times the burning can seem
unbearable.  Such is the nature of the human heart.  We may
burn until we are translucent, but it is by way of this burning
that wholeness is revealed.

Matt Licata

Multiplicity and Oneness - Kripal and Licata

Each human being is two, that is, each person is simultaneously
a conscious constructed self or socialized ego and a much larger
complexly conscious field that normally manifests only in
non-ordinary states of consciousness and energy, which the
religious traditions have historically objectified, mythologized,
and projected outward into the sky as divine, as "God", or
introjected inward into the human being as nirvana, brahman, or
located in some sort of experienced paradoxical state that is
neither inside or outside, as in the Chinese Dao...

Jeffrey J. Kripal
Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought

via - Markings

~

We are neither "separate" nor "one", but the erupting holding
field in which the energies of "separate" and "one" interpenetrate
and dance the relative into being.  The allies of multiplicity are not
at war with oneness, but fellow travelers with them on a journey of
wholeness. While we may have a bias for oneness over multiplicity,
it would appear that Love does not share this bias and is ready at all
times to employ either equally as its envoy here.  The freedom we
 are longing for will never be found in the eradication of the
unwanted, but only in attunement to the Love
and the information it carries.

The goal is not to eliminate multiplicity and scramble to replace it
with oneness, but something a bit messier, more creative, more fertile,
more earthy.  A bit more risky, not as clean, white, solar, or safe.

When we become too literalized in our fantasies of unity and oneness
 - and also in those of multiplicity and separation - we lose touch with
the mystery that these concepts can only point to...

We can play in the mountain peaks of unity and oneness, and also
in the rich, lush generative meadows of separation and multiplicity,
without taking sides.  Willing to fully participate in each,
as equal expressions of the Beloved.

Matt Licata

~
photo - Face Reflection Mandala
2013