ADVANCED POSE IX: ONENESS
“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be...This is the inter-related structure of reality. ”
This advanced pose is an extension of the practice of honoring Integrity we’ve covered earlier on this path. And for the purposes of further mastery of manifestation it is important to understand the thought technology of oneness and how it impacts the way you experience the world around you. Oneness is a perception and acknowledgment of your factual integration within the entirety of the universe and the factual integration of the entirety of the universe within you.
First lets look at the etymology of the word Oneness, and have a look at the story, meaning, and significance of the number 1 in story of mankind.
one·ness/ˈwən(n)əs/noun
-the fact or state of being unified or whole, though comprised of two or more parts."the oneness of man and nature"
a : SINGLENESS
b : INTEGRITY, WHOLENESS
c : HARMONY
d : SAMENESS, IDENTITY
e : UNITY
Oneness is perfection, wholeness, integrity. It is essential to the experience of congruency in all parts of your life. Consider all of the times you’ve witness someone demonstrate mastery of a thing. There is this sense of “otherness” as if they are possessed by something greater than themselves. Artists, poets, storytellers, scientific geniuses, inventors, extreme sports athletes, tightrope walkers... you’ve seen this quality in all of these kinds of people. This sense of transcending humanity, seemingly to channel God, performing seemingly superhuman feats, transcending limitations and boundaries... all takes place in a state of oneness with the thing that is happening.
The genius musician experiences the instrument as an extension of their body. The surfer experiences the wave as an extension of their board, and the board an extension of their body. The charismatic public speaker becomes one with the pulse and vibration of their audience. The miraculous healer becomes one with the patient and his or her tools of healing. The teacher becomes one with the minds and hearts of their students. The masterful sculptor doesn’t attempt to turn the stone into something else, but rather attempts to reveal what is already in the stone. The creator becomes one with the vision/dream/imagination in their mind in order to manifest its expression in the physical realm. And this simply spiritual/mathematical concept is demonstrated in all of creation.
All of my achievements, from the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of training and education that I’ve acquired despite physical realm obstacles, to the music I create, to the way that I write, from the way I have sex, to the way that I interact and form my relationships... all of this is done in some variant state of flow. I get out of my head, and I just let myself dance with what is. This is true intuitive work, in a state of complete surrender. I don’t fight or struggle much and when I do, I am clear that it’s because I’m out of integrity in some way. I don’t resist things. I don’t avoid things. I don’t turn down invitations to much of anything. I get my instructions from all over the place, from a conversation with a child, from a teacher, from a friend, from a billboard, from a tv show. Divine semantics are everywhere to be found when you are in flow state. And because this is a part of my practice I am not bound by the fear of stepping through a portal into an endeavor without knowing what’s gonna happen or how I’m going to accomplish something. I know that if I don’t have the answers to my own questions, it’s because I’ve got some work to do, some veil or other hinderance to clear. I accept and embrace paradox and I don’t attach to absolutes (such as only, never, always, etc...) And I simply set about the business of clearing whatever thoughts or perceptions are getting in the way, so that I may surrender completely into the space of expanded listening to what the Universe has already provided for me.
And you can contemplate this idea in every level of your existence from the microcosm to the macrocosm of life. In fact, the idea that you are one with the universe is a very powerful tool in manifestation of desires. You must be able to imagine that it is possible to have what you want, and in order to support that imagination, you must imagine that you have access to everything that you want. And to have access to everything you must be one with everything. We’ll be discussing this idea of having everything you want in a separate Advanced Pose essay. But for now, keep this in mind. If you adopt the idea that you are one with the universe, then you must align your perception, thoughts, and actions with this idea of oneness. You must BE that oneness. This is the ultimate form of surrender. You may think of surrender as a contraction of sorts. It is not. Surrender is an expansion beyond the limitations of your personal perspective, perceptions, ideas, thoughts, limitations, preferences, aversions, fears, opinions, and other forms of attachment to habituation of thought or action.
“You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.”
If you are one with the All, one with God, one with the Universe, and one with your life’s path, meaning you are integrated... in integrity... with all of the above, then everything and everyone that crosses your path, you have called into being or co-created, and it shows up in alignment in some way with your commitment to oneness with your path. This includes all invitations to play, all challenges, all circumstances, all arrivals, all departures, all conflicts, all obstacles are showing up in your life in favor of, in alignment with, in integrity with the fulfillment of your life’s purpose. This is why integrity and honesty and self awareness are so very important. The world around you becomes divine semantics. There becomes little need for resistance, dishonesty, denial, defiance anymore in this place. You don’t have to do things like avoid “bad” energy. You don’t have to try to defend what is invincible. You don’t have to attach yourself to attempts to remain comfortable or even “happy” and in the place of these impulses, comes this richness of abundance and fulfillment that surpasses all conventional superficial compensatory understanding.
Your perception of compartmentalizing parts of your life as “real” and other parts as “escape” or “departure” begins to blur and the lines of distinction begin to disappear. Your WHOLE entire life becomes about the fulfillment of purpose. And all of your needs for pleasure, enjoyment, joy, and expansion get met within that fulfillment in a way that compensatory pursuits of happiness cannot fulfill. You don’t have to seek out, exploit, or manipulate potential relationships, alliances, and collaborations, because when you’re one with purpose, all that you need is available to you. Your seeking just creates a focal distraction. This is true even in romance. Most people think that they can create a list of criteria and then start actively searching for a person who meets that criteria. The universe doesn’t work like that. To be one with your desire for penultimate romance, you must BE the person who has the capacity to participate in that kind of relationship. That’s it. Just become one with the purpose or intention that you’re setting, and BE who you imagine the person who has that intention is.
There is no more sustainable, penultimate experience of peace, love, pleasure, and all the rest of the desires of the higher self, than the experience of becoming one with your life’s purpose. The catch is, you have a sovereign choice to make around this. You can choose to be open and expanded to all possible avenues and sources of wisdom and abundance that come your way. Or you can choose to be contracted and resistant to them. The caveat is knowing that should you choose openness, sometimes the lessons you will learn will come packaged in ways that are not comfortable, and may require a stretch of your imagination or perception of your capacity, capability, and mental/emotional bandwidth. This is why it is so easy to condition aversion to a oneness mindset into the masses. It’s outside of the comfort zone. It’s surrender to not being in cerebral control through logic and reason and orchestration. It’s the highest form of connective, collective intuition. It’s BEING one with the Universe.
“All things are immersed in the shoreless ocean of Unity. The quality of oneness permeates everything, and while there is nothing without it, there is also no thing within it, as even a communication or idea requires parts in relationship. Like light from the Sun or gentle rain, the One is traditionally perceived as unconditional in its love, yet its majesty and mystery remain veiled, and beyond apprehension, for the One can only be understood by itself. AS such, One is always alone, all one, and no thing can exist to describe it. ”
Choosing oneness is voluntary evolution. And we know what involuntary evolution looks like...struggle, resistance, war, chaos, climate change, societal dysfunction... are all symptoms of habituated individuated thinking and lack of practiced oneness. This is not to be confused with group think. The foot and the hand are a part of the same organism, even though they serve different purposes on the microcosmic level of your anatomy, they are also elements that are one with a macrocosmic body. And here we find ourselves in the beginning of the age of Aquarius, a time in our evolution in which it has been said by many spiritual leaders that the next “savior” or “Christ” or “Buddha” will not be a singular individual, but rather a Sangha, or an enlightened society, a community built on collective mindfulness...a community of oneness. And this is challenging. The one biggest challenge that keeps us from building this is separatism, fear, and fixations on individuated and binary ideas about right and wrong. Oneness cannot be experienced in this way. And oneness is our future.
Oneness might be the single most elusive element of mastery that vexes the masses. Without it you cannot master anything. Mastery is a path of knowledge of something. And to truly know something you must become it. This is not about thinking mechanically about something. Oneness is more akin to how you use your feet. You don't have to think about how to walk. You just do it. And you do it well because you’ve done it enough times to become one with the action in a way that allows you to do it without investing much of your brain in doing so. Instead, your brain is surrendered to the oneness of your being, mind, body, and soul, with the physics and metaphysics of an action.
There’s an entire study on the practice of oneness as it relates to mastery and performance in the world around you. It’s called Flow State. The study of flow state was founded by a scientist and philosopher by the name of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (yes, it is a very difficult name to say lol), who I have had the honor of studying under for 6 months a few years back. He is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University...one of the most respected universities in the U.S. for science and technology. Watch this video to learn more.
I’ve also had the honor to have met best selling author Steven Kotler, who wrote the books Abundance, and The Rise of Superman. He and his partner Jamie Wheal founded the Flow Genome Project to study and teach the concept of flow consciousness. Watch this video to learn more.