One Power

One Power

We are all familiar with the story of the blind men who encounter an elephant. Each of them has their own experience with the elephant. The conclusion being each blind man feels only a small part of the elephant, but makes huge assumptions about the whole elephant, missing what the elephant really is in its entirety.  People do that with God all the time. They have their own personal experience with God and then want to say that is all God is.  

With that in mind,  I am left wondering if there was still yet another blind man who never even got close to the elephant, but perhaps got lost looking for the elephant and wandered around and came across a large boulder instead, and mistook that for the elephant; then told everyone he could all about elephants and how hard and cold they are. And maybe another got caught up asking someone else to tell them all about elephants or yet another got stuck thinking the zookeeper was the elephant. 

Two great sayings are:

“The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.”   

and

"The map is not the territory." 

We all think of God within our own individual experience, but let’s zoom out. Before we start breaking God down into the boxes we have created, what we are all talking about whether we call it God, Spirit, Lord or we don't call it anything maybe, because we feel all names are inadequate, but whatever name we call it, it is that one power.  You know, that power... energy... force... that animates everything.  We can see it.  We can feel it.  But it goes beyond our senses.  Even inanimate things are made of energy. We know that now. So, they are alive as well, are they not? Molecules moving... energy... creating mass at a certain level and with it the world we live in.  So, we are talking about the physical and the non-physical... basically everything. 

If we zoom out and continue zooming out until everything is contained in the picture (not sure if that’s possible, but you get my point right?)  If we zoom out far enough, everything is encompassed. And if everything came from what was before there was anything, then it’s ALL that... God.  Or whatever that is... that energy we have named God or Spirit or whatever we have chosen to call it. It’s all one power. One energetic force. We have just experienced it on different levels in different ways and have decided to call it by different names.  But that doesn't change what it is.

It is not wrong to have those different experiences. We all come from different cultures, it makes sense that God would be revealed to us in different ways, does it not? What seems very wrong to me is not allowing someone else to have a belief other than yours or to see the difference of experience as reason enough to hate someone or a group of people.  However, most religious dogma will tell you that only certain people are favored by God and God can only be what this religion has determined God to be, and they are SO sure of this fact that they will damn others who do not believe what they do.  

It seems to so obviously disturbing when we see that behavior in a radical religious group, but how about in our own lives? How much assuming do we make about God based on our own experience? And how do we judge others who have experiences different than our own? 

When we have zoomed out far enough and see our tiny, blue marble floating through space to judge just doesn’t even make sense anymore.  With our widened perspective one can not fathom such smallness any longer.  We see the myopic view we once had and how much more we all share and have in common.

What if the people of Earth decided to see our Oneness and not our differences? What if mutual respect and common ground was found in that oneness. Understanding flourished in the open air.

What might happen if instead of zooming out, you decide to go the other way and zoom WAY in?  You kept going past the persons clothes, skin, organs, all the way to the molecular level and beyond.  

Again all the differences dissolve and the sameness is evident as we are all made from the same basic elements and are animated with the same energy. 

In the end it is all there was and everything there is came from it.  So, zoom in or zoom out.  From the micro to the macro, it’s all one. One Power.  Whatever name you call it. It is what it is. 

I ask you to consider this as you listen to Daniel Nahmod sing as he puts it so beautifully in his song One Power. Shared with permission.

Much Love.