Guiding Thought

To heal and be healed is to be aware, to understand, and to Know Wholeness.  Thus, we seek Wholeness, Unity, Oneness within our own minds and hearts, and in all our actions and affairs. We focus on uniting the fragments within ourselves, so that we see only Oneness, which is the Truth of our Self. As we Know ourselves as the Oneness we are, this Truth reflects in the world around us, confirming what we Know through our experience and life activity.

Reflection

What are different ways to “unite fragments”? Here are some thoughts:

1. Identify with the fragment (and change it in myself).

“Koham?” is Sanskrit for “Who am I?” The answer to this question is “Soham“. “I am That“. Most often the “That” means the Self of the self, the Universal Self, the Christ Self. I am the “That” which is everywhere, and belongs to everyone; the oneness of humanity, Love, the Oneness of All that Is.

But when we are talking about uniting fragments, I must also see myself as the “that” which I may find unpleasant or unsavory–the parts of myself that I am denying, excluding, shunning, or hiding.

I’ve long thought that whenever something “out there” disturbs me, it’s because I have not accepted or integrated that thing within myself; something “in here” is not At One with Itself.

When I feel bothered by something, I ask myself, “How do I do that”? “What behaviors or thoughts do I have that are the same as that”? This takes a lot of honesty, and willingness to see beyond the thing itself to the meaning or symbolic representation of it.

For example, if I feel bothered when I think someone is dishonest with me, I ask myself, “When am I dishonest with other people”? This does not just mean dishonest in the same way someone was dishonest to me, it means any dishonesty. Every. Tiny. Bit. Then I do everything I can to eliminate that behavior from myself. I’ve been doing this for years. This practice really eliminates “dishonesty” and attracts “truth and honesty”. Guess what kind of people I have in my life?

Another example is that recently, I have felt bothered because I have felt that someone is representing something of high integrity and value with very little responsibility. I feel bothered that this person is acting irresponsibly both to the information being presented and to the people it is being presented to (I am one of those people). To counter this, I am assessing how I present information, and working at doing it responsibly and with integrity–researching, getting different viewpoints, and offering ideas in a neutral way, not as absolute fact or rigid rules. I am also being aware of the impact that information has on people, and my responsibility to them. If I represent myself as a teacher, friend, mentor, or responsible adult, I have to take that seriously, and act in such a way to deserve to be a teacher, friend, mentor, or responsible adult.

No, this is not an exact science. It’s only about working on myself. This is also a valuable tool to remove blame. I can’t blame someone else for how they behave if I have the same behavior.

2. Aligning pieces. Most of the time when I think about Oneness and uniting fragments, my visual image is something like two soap bubbles meeting and being absorbed into each other to become one bigger bubble.

But recently “uniting” has more to do with “aligning”, and the visual image is more like hitching up a trailer to a ball mount. To do this, the hitch has to be the right height, the right distance, and the right angle (that is–no angle).

This image implies two things that the bubble image does not 1) a much more proactive approach to uniting fragments 2) a more linear process. In other words, with the trailer approach, I am the one who has to make sure things line up. If I say I want a glass of water, then never get up to get a glass and fill it, but still complain because I’m thirsty, it’s only because I haven’t taken the appropriate steps to be and do what I say I want. I’m both the cause and the solution to my thirstiness. If I say I want to learn to heal, but then never explore what that means, never do things that improve my quality of life/mind, then what I say and what I do are not in alignment.

This approach has a lot more trial and error. It also has greater and greater levels of refinement, as I continually figure out things that are out of alignment, then figure out how to get them into alignment. I think once things are aligned, a merging into oneness (like the soap bubbles) happens easily and naturally.

Since the Truth of my Self is Infinite, until I experience All as One, I am on a journey of alignment, actively creating the circumstances through which alignment naturally allows merging.