Separation is Everything
When you are separate from everything, you are able to have everything. It’s strange to say, but when you are separate, you aren’t separate. Jesus opens the door for this with his words about “being in the world, but not of the world.” Real beauty, real joy, indeed, a real life, can actually begin when you walk through this door.
When I can stay myself around my family, I am able to enjoy them. I experience love for them. I can see the positive aspects of them. If I don’t stand up for what I want now, or fall into an old family role, my enjoyment vanishes. I become resentful. I begin to see mostly the negative aspects of my family members. I have lost my separation.
When those in intimate relationships lose their separation, the spark goes away. Like spark plugs in a car, if there’s no gap, the engine doesn’t fire. It requires separation for the spark to fire and the vapors to ignite. As soon as I become you, or you become me, the battery goes dead. The polarity goes away. The potential is gone. I stop being able to see you. I begin to see you through a concept. I begin to act out a predetermined role. Expectation fills in where surprise used to be. You may say that it’s normal to fall out of love at some point. Maybe, though, our desires for stability and control put out the flames of love.
Spiritual people know that not giving in to your worldly pleasures opens you up to experience true pleasures, treasures greater than you’ve ever imagined. This is true because you begin to put your energy, your faith, in the right place. When the pleasures of the world become too great, when all that glitters becomes gold, you put outer things before inner things. You put temporary things before eternal things. Your relationship with the temporal becomes stronger than your relationship with your Source. The farther a seeker moves into the outer world, the farther away the flame in their heart appears to be. The less fulfilled the seeker feels on the inside, the more they grasp for the outside. Outer pleasures become a vicious cycle. Indeed, you can’t ever be satisfied by things that aren’t truly satisfying.
When you know that there is nothing greater than your Source, when you know that your Source is everything that you’ll ever need, you become completely full and filled. Everything, and everyone, in the world then becomes beautiful. You don’t need anything, or anyone, in the world to determine your state of being, so you become free to be able to enjoy anything, or anyone, in the world. Your separation gives you an appreciation and a gratitude for everything that exists. Certain Buddhist monks practice predominantly the art of seeing beauty in everything. When you put your Source first, this is a natural outcome.
I’m still blown away by the miraculousness of this. Why isn’t somebody skywriting this in the sky every day over our cities and towns? You gain everything simply by putting first things first. I knew but I didn’t know.
Like most things in the realm of powerful truth, it’s a slippery paradox. “Subtle is the Lord”, said Einstein. God doesn’t sell God. It’s a shame, for those of us not always sure what to do with our attention, or those of us who haven’t yet committed fully to relinquishing control of our lives to a greater power, the only power that really matters, our true self, the Source of life.