
SILVER RIVER STATE PARK, OUTSIDE OCALA, FL–Before I woke up, one of the things that I thought I understood was the sense of Oneness. To the mind, when you drop all boundaries, you become one with everything. The logic goes something like this:
- Boundaries only exist in the mind.
- Thus all boundaries are artificial.
- Without boundaries, everything is one.
- Thus you are one with everything.
- Thus you are everything.
To the students of non-dualism (buddhism, taoism, zen, yoga, et all), this makes perfect sense. There really is no table–the mind just categorizes some “awareness stuff” as “table” and some other awareness stuff as “not table.”
Oneness therefore makes perfect sense to the student and the thought of separation is considered as just an illusion.
This is all fine and dandy until the student puts his non-existent coffee cup too close to the non-existent table edge and the non-existent scalding coffee burns his non-existent groin off. And of course the searing pain he feels as he jumps up and down is all just non-existent pain too.
Once I woke up though, I started to feel what is meant by Oneness, and the feel is nothing like what they babble on and on about in the non-dual schools and forums.
After waking up, boundaries still exist–objects still have boundaries–but oddly, I seem to have lost all my boundaries. For instance, when I look at my hands, they seem to exist inside of me.
From the level of the Enlightenment of Oneness, your body seems to exist inside of you. In fact, everything feels like it exists inside you. Everything feels like it is you. And, because everything feels like it is you, it’s almost as if you don’t exist at all.
So forget thinking about what Oneness is–here’s how Oneness feels…
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