You Are This

You are not in the universe, you ARE the universe — an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately you are not a person but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself. What an amazing miracle. — Eckhard Tolle

“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love”

~ Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ (1880)

“This is the real secret of life…to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.” — Alan W. Watts

We live in the midst of an astonishing miracle, it is true. Evidently we can’t see it or care about it or we would not be so intent on destroying it. The shining world we can’t see is all around us, and miracle is the right word. We don’t have an adequate explanation of how we got here, or even of who we are in the larger picture. In our philosophical and religious systems we’re guessing what might be happening and what our role should be in this scenario. Some of us puzzle over this picture, most of us don’t.

Most people in our culture accept the idea that our fate is to push the same boulder up the hill over and over for a lifetime, knowing it will always roll back down. The idea that the problem could begin with our very own vision is shrugged off. The ability to notice the gathering…