Leo Tolstoy on God

LEO TOLSTOY ON GOD: "When you look inside yourself, you see what is called 'your own self' or your soul. You cannot touch it or see it or understand it, but you know it is there. And this part of yourself--that which you cannot understand--is what is called God. God is both around us and inside of us--in our souls.

The more you understand that you are at one with God, the more you will understand that you are at one with all His worldly manifestations."

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Connecting To Cosmic Consciousness: See the "ONE" in ALL!





Steve Jobs needed to stay alive, as he fought pancreatic cancer.

In order for him to do so, though, someone else first had to die!
No... as much as you may have read or heard about Steve Jobs... he was not an evil man. 

In early 2009, Steve was on the waiting list, running out of time, for a liver transplant. He was registered in both California and Tennessee to increase his chances. His doctors waited anxiously for a donor liver...so that they could rush Steve into surgery and preserve his life.

"Every day became more excruciating," writes Walter Isaacson in his recently released biography on Steve Jobs. "He moved up to the third on the list by mid-March, then second, and finally first. But then days went by."

Then, it happened.

"Indeed, on the weekend of March 21, 2009, a young man in his mid-twenties was killed in a car crash, and his organs were made available." Isaacson writes.

Jobs' life was saved because the unnamed young man had died, and Jobs was able to get his liver.

Jobs lived for more than two years after that liver was transplanted into him.  As perfectionist as Steve Jobs was in all things, I doubt that when the liver became available he cared about anything else but its ability to help him stay alive!

Oneness.

[Added on May 29, 2012, this piece has more information on donor transplants:Who Decides Whether This 26-year-old Woman Gets a Lung Transplant?]

Whether we obtain a vital organ from another or simply eat a meal of potatoes, steak or liver or only of vegetables, all that we do is a direct result of connectivity with other living things.

*There are more than seven billion people alive in the world today. In the United States, there are more than 313 million.

With this great a population, we could not rely on "hunting" for our food.  Large countries such as the United States would have had massive amounts of food shortages, were it not for the specific nurturing and, yes, killing of cows and other animals, for our "daily bread."

Before the development of electricity, man would have died from cold, were it not for the trees that were toppled over to create wood. Today, we still would go cold and without shelter, were it not for wood from trees and the other materials to make houses for our comfort.

*The average life expectancy in the United States is about 74 years old,  with women outliving men. Around the world, the average life expectancy is a decade lower.

Man survives and thrives, because through the generations we have used our intelligence to supply us with all the means necessary to live... and also to have an excess.

It is the "excess," that we have to watch with care.

The evolutionary process of man's development has kept us growing and creating more throughout the ages, as we experience life on Earth. Without a doubt, man will continue to survive.

When it gets to our "thriving," though, we must begin to ask ourselves how much is "enough."

Researchers say the calico could be a 1 in 30 million specimen. 
The social media recently were  buzzing with news of a calico lobster, known as Calvin, which had been living in obscurity off the coast of Maine until he was discovered.. Thanks to its rare coloring: a calico mix of orange and yellow spots, Calvin's life was spared. He eventually will take up residence at the Biomes Marine Biology Center in Rhode Island.

Calvin is one of the few lucky ones.  We all need to give more consideration to preserving the lives of all the creatures we find here on planet earth. By taking only what we need and leaving the rest to live in their peace, we ensure the survival of many species from age to age.
But this is where we, as humans, often fall short. The tendency is to respect those species less than ourselves, giving little thought to their preservation.

If  trees are a hindrance to our view of the perfect mountaintop experience,  we simply cut them down.

We tire of watching basketball, football, baseball and the myriad of other sports, so we turn to dog fighting and killing for our entertainment.

We carelessly dispose of our waste materials, polluting the waterways and killing fish and other marine mammals.



Indeed, we kill more than fish and marine animals. We kill ourselves with the careless disposal of waste materials. When the waterways become polluted, we eat of fish and other sea foods, thus absorbing the residue of pollutants we have carelessly discarded.

Scientists measure pollutants in terms of parts per million and parts per billion of pollution of certain waste materials in water and the air. Despite the sophisticated measurements, we still cannot tell with complete accuracy how much we truly are destroying our water and air by sloppy waste disposal practices.

So our excessive lifestyles, where we give little care to the environment, eventually comes back to destroy us. It is a cycle.

I'm heartened by the activities of environmentalists to preserve the lives of other species found on planet Earth. I'm a member of the Sierra Club,  yet I am not a purist on all things environmental. Having started out my career at a chemical company and also been involved in environmental communications for many years thereafter, I have a very practical position on environmental concerns.

I do believe that we must strike a solid balance between the risks vs. the benefits we receive from using  products. If we create them,  then we must find the most effective means of disposal. Where sustainable alternatives exist,  we should use those first vs. the ingredients found to be deleterious to our environment.

Getting that balance is where the trouble begins.

Most people are going about their daily lives focused on their singular concerns, not even aware that they need to look up and around to see how everything all fits together.

The main building blocks for life on earth: air, water, fire and the earth.

Destroy any one of those elements, and we destroy ourselves.

Even the things we think are "not living" are alive in the purpose they serve our lives.
Every object has energy. We are pure energy, covered by skin and bones and muscles.

All living things have one major cell at their center: protoplasm.  So in our essence, all living things already are ONE.

Beyond this one similarity, however, we need to think about what happens to our skin, bones and muscles, when we die, i.e. when the "ball of energy" that we are finally leaves our bodies.

Some of us will be cremated; others will be buried with their skin and bones intact. Whether the degradation is to that of ashes or a skeleton, eventually both substances go "somewhere."

"Dust Thou Art, and Unto Dust Shalt Thou Return." - Genesis 2:7

Many of us don't want to think about this, but we know that matter is never completely destroyed, just as energy becomes transformed: +We become "recycled" in some way.

At the beginning of this series on "Connecting To Cosmic Consciousness," I invited you to go outside and look around at the flowers...the trees...and listen to the birds and also see how they fly.

Many things seemingly were created for the sheer pleasure of "creation," or so it seems to me.

Think about: the purpose of birds in our lives, the joy they bring to us to see their freedom in flight. Think about: the purpose of flowers, other than for their beauty and for some who use them for therapeutic purposes, as flower essences.

Take another look around again.

+Do you see where we all may be inter and intra-connected? Do we see the LIFE (Energy) flowing through all things "great and small." 

Whether we sign up with a life registry to donate our organs or not, the essence of who we are and were while on Earth continues through the ages in one form or another.

Let this all sink in.

Once it does, then  maybe you'll get the full understanding of what it takes to connect to the universal (cosmic) consciousness that makes all things possible.

Man's development and current  "beingness" took centuries to unfold, complete with two arms and two legs, 10 fingers and toes.  This form is a result of the unrelenting process of life evolving and revolving through the planet and throughout the ages.



*More than 300,000 babies are born every day and about 150,000 people die every day around the world.

Nothing we can ever do will change that.

What we can change is to make each moment we're here count for something!

When Steve Jobs' Presence was here among us, he did make it count for something!
Those extra two years that Steve got meant the introduction of the iPhone and iPad, enabling us to communicate with more ease... one to another...throughout the world.

Obviously, we all were not put here to make a mark as big as Jobs',  referred to by Isaacson at the end of his book, as "genius."  But we can be sure we have a purpose and reason for being here...now.

As we seek the reasons for our existence here on earth, we are led through many pathways and  theories. Marianne Williamson in her book, "A Return to Love," suggests that behind all of the activities of this earthly existence is the need to "return to love."


Using this need as a premise for our existence, we can understand why we become separated from the source of our being. We cannot live with hatred, fear, envy, strife, hostility, anger and all those negative emotions and hope to stay connected to our Soul, much less to Cosmic Consciousness.

I have a strong feeling that in the grand scheme of  evolution, the experiment of putting humans here on earth was to see if, when we are placed in different forms, we can continue to recognize ourselves in each other.  Suppose this is the only purpose for us being here?


If so, we have failed and are failing miserably at this experiment!


Do we recognize the ONE within us all in the myriad of disguises he/she shows up? As we look around and see the various energy fields that manifest on earth as living creatures: can we find ourselves in each? Do we recognize the "ONE"?


Trees are living things. Dogs are living things. So are the many other creatures on earth: 
Do we recognize their essence, i.e. the energy fields they bring to the earth? Do we recognize that they are contributing to our well being here, just as much as our mother, father, brother or sister?


We need to begin to see the activity of God in all his worldly manifestations and in the activity of all things...good and bad.   
Whether we leave our imprint on one or many, the way we start is to become conscious: Recognize the One! Wake up to the Consciousness of the ONE PRESENCE!


"There is only One Presence and One Power in the Universe: God the Good, the Omnipotent."
--Unity, Lee's Summit, Missouri.
 Get into the flow of that consciousness! Begin to recognize and see "the ONE!"
"To direct the mind towards the basic unity of all things and to divert it from the seizing of differences---therein lies bliss."
--Tejo-Bindu Upanishad 

Namaste',
Che'
*Source: This information was culled from a variety of sources.
+ In "No Death, No Fear," Thich Nhat Hanh, a prominent Buddhist monk, suggests that there is no death as we are transformed into another state of being.  IF by that he means that our "consciousness" (Soul)  lives on in an inanimate form or in lower animals, I do not in any way subscribe to this thinking!

No comments:

Personal Authenticity: "To Thine Own Self Be True"...

"To Thine Own Self Be True and it must follow as the night, the day, Thou canst not then be false to ANY man."
William Shakespeare.