Oneness and Life: TALK with Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

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Duration: 45 minutes and 19 seconds

Country: United States

Language: English

License: CC - Attribution Non-commercial

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Producer: Seana Quinn

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Posted by: oneness on Jun 11, 2009

This event is part of a series of events which were open to all with a sincere interest in the emerging consciousness of oneness. www.workingwithoneness.org

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So and again to remind you, this is not like a talk it is really a way of being together in the Sufi tradition.
And exploring together what it means to work with this energy of oneness.
With this dynamic spiritual life force really. Because oneness is a life force.
It is not some kind of static energy. It is not an idea. It is not a concept. It is a living dynamic force.
It is in a way part of the energy that holds life together. Life is oneness.
Life is an expression of oneness.
And if that primal energy of oneness were not present within life, life would fall apart.
Life would become even more scattered than we experience it ourselves.
So it is important to recognize from the very beginning that oneness is a life energy.
It is part of life. It is not some abstract spiritual or mystical idea.
It is intrinsic to life. It is what binds the atoms together, what helps them to move, what creates all the multiplicity of life.
In fact, one of the strange mystical realizations is that all the variety of life, all the individuality,
whether all of the individuality of you sitting here or outside with the trees and the flowers and the grasses and the cars
is actually a direct expression of oneness. It is like the other side of the coin of oneness.
Multiplicity is an expression of oneness. So diversity, individuality, uniqueness. All this extraordinary way life manifests itself.
Life creates itself. Is oneness.
It is just oneness seen or experienced from the opposite side of the spectrum.
In the same ways that all the colors of the rainbow are that one pure white light.
It just depends where you look at it from.
So everything you do. Everything you express. Everything that you are part of is oneness.
It is this life force manifesting, enjoying itself, experiencing itself and realizing itself.
Every little, unique expression of life is the oneness coming to know itself in a slightly different way.
That's why the Sufi said "I was a hidden treasure and I longed to be known so I created the world."
But if you can realize that you are an experience of oneness, you are a unique expression of the Divine oneness.
Of this primal life force that is dancing itself through you. In your breath. In your awareness.
In what it means to be you. You don't have to realize anything. You are oneness realizing itself.
And the moment you step into that spectrum of oneness, then something opens up.
It is like realizing where you belong.
For some reason in our culture we have to spend a lot of effort trying to find our place, trying to discover who we are.
And we're probably unique as a culture in that sense. I don't think in other cultures they've had this pressure to discover who you are.
Or to discover your life's purpose, your life's journey. It was kind of understood.
You were an integral part of the culture, the society in which you were.
But this need also to discover who you are is a need of oneness to realize itself.
To realize its unique nature. To realize how it is part of something.
So if at the beginning of this afternoon if you can be present in your own oneness. Which is you.
It is not anything else. That's the beauty of oneness.
You don't have to strive to be anything else. There is no better or worse in oneness.
Nobody is better at oneness than somebody else. It is oneness.
Even every mistake. Even what the Sufis would call the forgetfulness is also part of oneness.
And there is no avoidance in oneness. Because what you might think of as avoidance is also oneness.
So just be with this oneness. Be with who you are, where you are in this unique moment in time.
And then if you can let go of it, then you will see you are part of something much bigger than even your unique experience of
this moment of yourself.
You are part of this in breathing and out breathing of life.
Personally I think it's an enormous effort to uphold this sense of one's individual self all the time.
I think it is really, really exhausting. Yes, you have to do it from you know time to time. You have to do it.
To say "this is me, this is my individual nature." But it is such a relief to be able to let go of that.
To kind of drown back into the sea of life. Into this realization we are just a little part of an extraordinary expression.
That we call the cosmos. That we call life. And then you can like relax.
You don't have to force yourself to be something all the time which is very demanding.
And I don't think really completely necessary.
Yes, it is helpful from time to time to look at your own uniqueness. I guess that happens every morning in the mirror when you brush your teeth.
But as with every breath, there is an in breathing and an out breathing.
Just as you realize your uniqueness, then you can forget it. Then you can realize you are just part of something.
And you're not even a very important part. So you don't have to make a great effort or a great song and dance about it.
You can just kind of relax into the oneness of which you are a part.
And then the beautiful thing happens because the oneness is life, you will find this oneness supports you.
You will find this oneness takes away a lot of what you thought were worries or anxieties because it is life.
It is the creating, supporting, interdependent reality, being if you'd like.
Whether you think of it as the great mother or creation. It's just life.
It's just hanging in there. It doesn't matter.
And then you can say just relax into it. And then you will find you are part of something much, much greater than your own individual self.
Your own individual self doesn't get lost.
Just like a flower doesn't get lost because there are other flowers.
It is still there. It is still an expression of oneness that it is part of something much bigger.
And what is interesting is that as human beings we have the capacity both to be this individual person
and also to embrace what is much bigger.
To just step outside of our individual self into if you like our cosmic self, what they call the Atma.
The individual self is the universal self. And again this universal self is not an abstract idea.
It is a living, breathing, organic creation.
When you work in your garden you are working with the universal self.
Even when you go to Safeway to buy groceries, you are participating in the universal self.
The universal self is life.
And you are part of it. And it is here, yes you are here to experience part of life. And life is here to reflect certain things to you.
But somewhere it doesn't matter because it's like every wave is unique but the wave doesn't have to be exploring itself the whole time.
It can just be a wave.
It can just be.
And if you allow yourself to be present in that place within yourself then something in you opens.
This bigger dimension of yourself opens.
And in that opening, in that stepping into that bigger dimension of yourself, something in you becomes alive.
Something in you that has a direct connection to life and to the Divine becomes alive.
And this is very, very important.
Because until you step into that place within yourself where you are just part of this whole cosmic experience.
Until you step into that place, something in you is not fully alive.
It is veiled from you.
It is hidden from you. And it is not breathing. It is not activated.
One of the extraordinary things about being a human being is that one can be awake or activated on many different levels.
And just as for example in adolescence you awake to discover your individual self hopefully. Along with your sexuality and all of that.
So later you can, very simply, awake to discover your universal self.
Now the beauty of this at this present moment is that this universal self, this cosmic experience, this Divine oneness
used to be only accessible to people who had done a lot of spiritual practice.
You had to go through a certain spiritual training. A certain initiation to wake up to that dimension within yourself.
Everybody else had to stay asleep.
And they happily farmed the land and made the clothes and baked the bread in the state of being asleep.
But they did not have direct access to this universal self.
Unless they went through this very rigorous spiritual training.
But life is never static. Life changes. The spiritual nature just as the organic nature of life is continually changing.
They actually mirror each other in ways we don't yet understand.
The spiritual nature of life and the organic nature of life are not something separate.
They are kind of an in breathing and out breathing of the same sacred substance.
But it does change. The spiritual and organic nature of life changes.
It goes through its own evolution. And part of this evolution is that doorways that were closed become open.
And the doorway that is being opened at the present time is the direct access of anybody, very democratic in a way, to this oneness.
This Divine presence. This awakening to realizing you are one.
You are not part of this oneness because you are not part of oneness. You are the oneness.
You are this primal energy of life that is one with everything.
That is one with everything.
And you can have direct experience of it wherever you are, whenever you like.
It is just a simple state of awareness. It is not complicated. It is just a simple realization.
A simple awakening.
It is not hidden anymore. It used to be veiled. It used to be hidden.
Life has opened it up, just like a flower is in a bud for a very long time and then it opens.
And then suddenly you can have direct experience of the flower in a way you couldn't before.
Life is the same. Life is going through at the moment this experience of opening.
It's not the same life as it was 100 years ago.
We can see this if you like ecologically in the disastrous mess. We can see life is not the same as it was 100 or 200 years ago.
We are less aware of if you like the positive aspect of this change. We only are aware of what is dying.
We are not so aware of what is being born.
And part of the work of these gatherings is to turn our attention to what is being born so we can participate in what is being born.
And what is coming into flower. We can be there when it happens. We can be the happening as it happens.
Because it is us. We are what is awakening. We are what is changing.
We are what is being completely radically transformed.
And we can either be present and awake as this is happening. Or we can put the snooze alarm on and wake up later.
And I think it's much more exciting to be present as it happens, to be part of what is happening.
And it's not complicated. It's not sophisticated. It just happens to be alive.
And that for most people is much, much too radical.
Most people like a structure they can hold on to, they can work with rather than having the shock of being alive, of being awake.
Which is quite, quite different. So this is, this is really a work for people who want to be alive, who want to be awake.
Who want to be there with the dawn as it comes. Who want to be the dawn as it comes.
Who want to be life awakening to itself in a new way.
And this is not something abstract.
People often say when I talk or write it appears very abstract. And that's just because of the place I see it from.
Which isn't a particularly human place. It is a place of a certain clarity.
But what I'm talking about now is you. Every one of us. Every breath.
What is most precious inside of you. What really matters to you.
Where you can take that step into yourself.
And if you take that step into yourself where you really are. Not where you think you are, but where you really are.
You will find something is happening.
And the first step is to recognize that. To recognize, there is if you like a different heartbeat.
There is a different pulse. There is a different rhythm of life.
And it isn't a rhythm about you and me. It's a rhythm of wholeness.
It sings a slightly different song.
I always think of the number eight, this thimble of infinity, of the energy just flowing continually, in and out, from one world to the other.
And that is us, that is the breath. We are this energy flowing from the inner to the outer.
Continually. Without stopping for a moment.
And we can be aware of it. And we can be a part of it. And then there is this contribution we can each make.
Which is to do with welcoming this energy in to the world.
And here we have it, if you like, a slight dichotomy because we have the world we think we live in
and the world that is actually waking up.
And at the moment, they are quite, quite different.
The world we think we live in is full of the problems we read about in the newspapers or from our friends.
And the struggles and the difficulties that we surround ourselves with.
And from time to time we obsess over.
Or try to escape from or engage in all the various games that we play.
And that is the world we think we live in.
And then there is this other world that is wanting to wake up.
That is needing us to help it wake up. That is asking us to be present within it.
And my sense is that traditionally there are two ways that a transition happens.
One is that the old dream has to be completely destroyed for the new to come into being.
There has to be a certain violence of destruction.
And it is often followed by kind of dark ages.
Life is a bit bleak.
Or there is a way to bring the energy of the new to transform the dream of the present.
To transform this world you think you are living in. If you like, to open the curtains of the room in which you live.
And that to me is much more amenable. And a gathering like this is really discovering how to do that.
How to welcome in this energy of the new into the world in which we live.
So you don't have to renounce the world. It doesn't have to be destroyed. We don't have to leave it behind.
You can just discover there is something else present in it.
Something else very, very beautiful. Very old and very new.
And it just needs a certain energy to help this transition take place.
So there doesn't have to be a breakdown.
A certain transformative energy to shift this what I call this dream that is dying into what life is struggling to bring into being.
Which is a very different experience of life. An experience of life based upon oneness rather than separation.
It's as simple as that. And I don't know if you are aware of how much of your interaction with life, your experience of life
is based upon the idea of separation. That you are separate from somebody else. That they are separate from you.
We live in a country that is separate from another country.
And all of the dramas that go around separation and all the feelings of loneliness and isolation.
All of the anxieties of having to do things of our own, of having nobody to look after us.
All of those fears that seem to be very prevalent in this culture, that are quite antithetical to life.
It is interesting if you actually look at life as an organism because nobody is alone.
How can one life cell be lonely? You know? I mean does your finger get lonely?
Does your toe get lonely? It's part of something. It is a completely mental fabrication, a psychological fabrication.
This idea of loneliness. We are part of, we are an expression of life.
And actually as human beings, we even have the ability to realize we are an expression of the Divine.
Which gives us access to a whole other dimension in which loneliness and isolation can not even exist
Once you realize your Divine nature, yes one can be alone. It is the journey of the alone to the alone.
But lonely no. Because you are part of something. Or you are something.
So there is this concept of separation which has become so ingrained we don't even realize it's just a concept.
And then there is this energy of oneness which is full of all sorts of wonderful and weird interconnections.
Oneness works in extraordinary ways. To me I think the, if you like, the science of the future will be discovering how oneness works.
If you look at the science of the past it is working out how separation works. How things work in isolation from each other.
How things interact in isolation from each other.
You can't really say interact and in isolation from each other. But how things are separate.
And oneness works completely differently. Because oneness is this direct expression of life as a whole.
And life as a whole remember is a self-supporting system.
That is why for example why when you step into oneness you find synchronicities start to take place much more.
When you really open to oneness you will find life responds.
In a way that it didn't respond before.
This is not extraordinary. This is because synchronicity is about the oneness of life interacting.
It's actually the oneness not just on the physical plane but the oneness in the inner worlds as well.
And the magical worlds. How they all come together in this state of oneness.
And they happen because the connections are present and you are open to the connections being present.
And to me then life gets much more interesting and much more exciting and you don't know what's going to happen.
And you don't know how you are going to be used or played with. It is a a very, very different experience of life.
And that is just one little illustration of oneness, of how it works quite differently. It also brings things together.
One of the things of separation is we realize our uniqueness, how we are separate and different from other people.
In our culture we are kind of pushed to pretend to be different from each other.
So we have kind of different hairstyles or whatever it is. But oneness works through bringing things together.
Bringing things together in unexpected ways. And that's one of the reasons I love the internet.
Because the internet brings things together in ways you wouldn't even have believed possible.
Like all the lovers of a particular breed of dog you know meet on the internet, from all over the world.
Or people who like a particular sort of kayaking. They get together there. Suddenly they're present and they're part of a chatroom.
Or they email each other or they post photos to each other of when they were kayaking or their dog.
Or whatever it is. It brings things together. To me the internet is a direct manifestation of oneness.
It brings things together in ways you know 20 years ago you would not have believed possible.
Yes, it can be used for commerce, it brings together the buyer and the seller. And that's what people want to use it a lot for.
But it has a much deeper underlying energy of bringing together all sorts of different people from all sorts of places in the world.
Apparently there's a young lady in Baghdad who has a website about cats. I don't know if you knew this.
She has pictures of cats and people post on her website pictures of cats. So she is in the cat world quite well known.
She's a teenager in Baghdad. And she has this website for these cats. All these pictures of cats.
And in the most unexpected ways this oneness expresses itself. People come together. People are attracted.
If you like the organism of humanity begins to respond in different ways.
And in this coming together there is a life energy.
And that is what is so important. It isn't necessarily the coming together, it's the life energy and it's pulling people together.
And to be present with that and to watch it happen. Just to experience it. Just to see how it works.
And then you can realize you are part of this organism of life coming together in different ways just like this gathering we have today.
Which people are coming together for the sake of oneness. We're actually conscious. We're not just cat lovers.
We're actually oneness lovers so we're actually conscious of the bigger picture.
We're not just part of this organism of life. We're actually life being conscious of what it is doing which is quite remarkable.
And that's what so excites me is to be like kind of at the vanguard of the experience, to actually be the consciousness of the experience.
So that you can really be awake to what is happening.
And then of course another whole dimension opens up to you because once you are awake to something you can participate in it.
The people who are just going to the website looking for cat pictures, they are being unconsciously drawn by a certain energy of oneness together.
It's quite beautiful to see. But if one can be awake to the real meaning of what is happening, then one can participate in it.
Then one can directly engage in this awakening. And that to me is when it gets really exciting.
Because that means you can actually change something.
What most people don't realize is that at a moment like this the book has not yet been written.
Most things are kind of prescribed. There's a broad outline of what is going to happen.
But at a moment like this in cosmic time, it hasn't actually been fully written yet.
It is not yet decided how the future will unfold.
We don't know. And that is both very disturbing cause you have no idea what the world is going to be like in ten years time.
It always amuses me to see these people who kind of make these kind of 10 year plans.
But it means that you individually, can actually participate in what is going to happen, if you are awake. And that is the big difference.
If you are awake to what is actually going on, then you can participate and help something to change.
If you are asleep, you will be drawn in to it. It will happen and you will be part of it.
The world is awakening to a different stage is being set for humanity whether it likes it or not.
Global oneness is present.
What amazes me is everybody talks about global oneness without any real understanding of what is actually taking place.
That something is waking up. And a new way of being is emerging in life.
And so if people just try to use this global oneness as a way to try to get more money in this old image of what I need,
then they won't really be able to participate in it. They'll be kind of imposing an old dream on to what is happening.
But there is a way to be present and to be awake and to participate. What actually happens is very beautiful to see,
is that when you are really present in that moment, a spark goes from your consciousness into the consciousness of the world.
Of course it's really one consciousness. That's the experience.
A spark from your awakened consciousness goes into the consciousness of the world. And you actually start interacting with life as it really is.
And please remember most people have very little experience of life as it really is.
What is it T. S. Elliott said, "humankind can not bear very much reality."
They have a lot of interaction with their dream of life. Or even with a collective dream of life.
Which is in the shopping malls and the TV stations of our world.
That project a dream of life. Life as it really is is something quite different.
I always remember myself. I go back to my first experience of that when I was 16 and I was woken up.
And life was completely different but it was the same. I went back to the same boarding school and it was completely different.
There was a light that was present that hadn't been present before. There was unbelievable joy that was there that hadn't been there before.
Everything was dancing and sparkling and in a way that it hadn't before.
For the first two weeks in my life I was actually present in life as it really is.
It was amazing. And it's I think what the Zen call Satori in a way. This moment of awakening. Suddenly you are just in life.
And life is incredibly beautiful because it is an expression of the Divine.
Unbelievably beautiful. Unbelievably full of light and laughter and joy and promise.
And if you can now be in that, even for a moment, then you can interact with life.
And life is not something static. It is not something predefined. It is much, much more fluid than most of us dare to think.
We actually impose a static image in our consciousness onto life because we're terrified of its real chaotic, orgasmic nature.
So we kind of, we impose a reasonably safe, we can't control it completely. But we impose an image on to life to try to make life behave.
So it isn't too frightening and it isn't too alive.
But if we can leave that behind and we can step into that place where we are truly present in life, in this oneness,
then we can interact with life. Because human beings at this moment in time have been given the opportunity to decide the future.
Now you can see that for example in very basic things like in the ecological situation or in the atomic situation
Or what have you, we can blow up the planet. So it's not revolutionary to say human can beings decide the future of the world.
But in that kind of big picture we actually have created a very small picture.
Which are there these organizations or governments or whatever it is that can decide the world.
Or these corporations. And the world is not governed by corporations. It is not governed by governments.
It isn't. It's an organic expression of the Divine with a direct relationship with every individual.
It is moving much, much too quickly to be conditioned by governments.
It is much too alive. And it is changing at this very moment. It is going through this metamorphosis.
How this metamorphosis will play out I don't know. I've seen possible scenarios. Because I'm an optimist they are very, very, very beautiful.
I guess if you're a pessimist you can see other scenarios that are less appealing.
But the world as a living orgasmic, organic expression of the Divine is at the present moment metamorphosizing.
It is changing in ways we don't have the images to understand.
But anybody who has been through their own individual metamorphosis through spiritual life or any other
knows how revolutionary that can be. How fundamental that can be.
How one's whole experience can completely change. Now what is really exciting is as it is going through this metamorphosis
there are places where one can work with this energy of creation that were not accessible before.
And part of this work is that anybody can do it.
Now that might sound, how can anybody work with changing the world. We get like 3 billion different worlds.
But there is an old secret that if you want to hide something you put it out in plain view.
Now anybody can work with this energy of creation because it's about oneness.
But they have to be present. And sadly being present eliminates 90% of people.
Who are far too terrified of what it might actually mean to be present.
And you have to be accessible to the energy, to the real awakened energy of life.
And that kind of eliminates another percentage of people.
At any time there are only a few people who are actually prepared to be really awake and really alive and really prepared to participate.
And it's just a strange aspect of what it means to be a human being.
Most human beings are profoundly asleep. Snoring quietly or in some cases not so quietly.
But in the midst of this whole sleeping culture there are people who are prepared to be awake.
And normally they just suffer their awakenings. They're not allowed to do very much about it except to be awake.
The difference is in this moment, one can actually in the state of being awake, interact with life.
Interact with life as it is waking up. How waking up and life's waking up are part of the same.
And life is drawing to it individuals who are prepared to participate.
Because remember you are part of life. And your consciousness is the consciousness of life.
And the spark in you that is awake is the spark in life that is awake.
And so there is this dialogue beginning to happen. It's very, very beautiful.
Between the awakened spark in the human being and the awakening spark in life.
I call this a dialogue of light. Because it is the light within you that is being awakened and related to by the light within life.
And it's one-to-one. And it's much more powerful and it has a much greater transformative potential than most people have any idea of.
If you know a little bit about alchemy it is this catalyst. It is this process of being a catalyst that speeds up change immeasurably.
And in this dialogue there is, like any dialogue, well the Sufis would call it really a love affair because for us creation is a love affair.
But it is a direct participation with life, helping life, guiding life, speaking to life, engaged in life that is very powerful.
And has in my understanding the potential to change, to shape the future of humanity.
It is your light in dialogue with the light of the world. Which really is the most ordinary, simple thing there is.
Your light. What is more basic to you than your light.
It's with every breath. Every moment in which you remember the Divine, that is your light.
Every moment in which you love, that is your light.
Your light also speaks to you when you hope for something, like a really positive hope, that is also your light.
Your light comes in your dreams or it guides you through life. It is your light. It is not something revolutionary.
It is not something particularly esoteric. It is really the life inside of you. The real essential life inside of you.
And then there is the light in life. And I think we each have to discover the light in life in our own ways.
How it is for us. It is incredibly beautiful. If you knew what a beautiful being this world is.
Both old and new. Billions of years old and yet each moment, each moment it is new, each moment there is something different, something special.
It is alive. It's strange how we forget that. That life is alive.
So what I want to do now is we have half an hour of meditation just to go within yourself, into your own light.
However you find it inside yourself and be with this light. Be with this light within you.
One way to access it is through the breath. Just to breathe. If you breathe consciously it is, there is your light present.
And then in the midst of your light, you will find another light which is the light of the world.
Through this meeting. Through being here for the last 45 minutes, those two lights have been put together.
They've been kind of brought into the circle of oneness.
Your light and the light of the world. And feel this relationship. Feel this way your light is with the light of the world. And just be with it.
And just be present in it. Each in our own way.
So we do that. We go within ourselves in silence to be with our own light and to be with the light of the world.
And if you are moved, you can also say a prayer over the light of the world. If you have a special prayer that you use.
You can also say a prayer. You can bless the light of the world. Just like you can bless your own light.
But most important, just to be with it.
So we go within ourselves, into our own hearts, into our own souls where this light is. And rest in this light.

Oneness and Life: TALK with Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

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