Oneness is Like a Gem

The spiritual student had struggled. He had been studying with the Master many years, and still he could not grasp the meaning of Oneness.

The Master had tried many approaches with the student, to no avail. For reasons that were simply unclear, no intellectual explanation could penetrate sufficiently to allow for understanding. Even the practice of meditation, while fruitful in many ways, could not ease the student to a deeper perspective.

Eventually, the Master and the student both agreed it was time to seek another way. Since neither knew where it might be possible for the student to finally see through new eyes, it seemed a sojourn was in order.

While it was a difficult parting, days filled with walking were beneficial for the student. So too were the chance encounters and conversations that arose during his journeys. And whenever funds were needed, the student would stop for a few days and practice his craft with jewelry. Because of the generosity of many along the way it was often possible to continue for many days without depending on his craft.

With time the ache of his frustrations with understanding Oneness began to wane. However, it might also be said that his satisfaction with his pilgrimage had grown though he knew not where he was bound. It was as if the urge to understand had propelled his first step, and the path had drawn from him each following step. Somehow his wanderings simply continued.

One weekend he found himself in a city. And as fate would have it, he had to set up shop in a street market to make jewelry in order to earn some money. One of his first customers was a woman who obviously had some means. She told him she wanted a bracelet and even provided a few keepsake beads she wanted incorporated into the design. Then she left to return in a few hours.

When the woman returned and before she even saw the bracelet, she enthusiastically handed him an entrance ticket to the local art museum. “I know in my heart you must see it!” Fortunately she was likewise quite pleased with his craftwork and paid him generously enough that he could close up and see the art.

Even as his thoughts urged him to be responsible, the calling of the offer was unmistakable.

After purchasing a bit of lunch from a food seller, he entered the museum. In order to enter, he was required to leave his rucksack in a locker. So he proceeded with nothing but the inner call and the woman’s enthusiasm.

There were many lovely and intricate pieces of art. Yet nothing spoke to him until he entered the abstract gallery. As he turned a corner, a beam of light stopped him in his tracks, almost blinding him.

After opening and closing his eyes several times to overcome the imprinted image of the flash, he was finally able to see. And what he saw made him breathless, then caused him to fall to his knees.

Hanging from the ceiling and rotating ever so slowly was a giant glass gem with what must have been thousands of facets. Across the room was a laser type light that oscillated as it went slowly from on to off. Each time the focused beam pierced the crystal, it mirrored like the light of a star and burst through in every direction. And with each flash came a deepening awareness of the answer he had long sought and almost forgotten.

Oneness is like the gem he realized. All the qualities of the whole are in each and every facet. They cannot be separated from the whole. And the light that emanated was not captured by any one facet, but beamed through the entirety of the crystal, emerging through all facets though slightly different in each.

So it is with the Creation. There cannot be any separation, there can only be One.

For many days the student returned to the museum and the glass gem. He wanted the understanding to be held deeply within his being. And so he watched until the day came that he resumed his sojourn, no longer looking, yet finally able to see.

Seeing True™

Mystics of all religions and across the ages tell us there is only One, and that we make two mistakes. The first is in seeing a facet as separate and apart from the Whole. The second is in attributing the Light to a facet rather than understanding it only passes through it.

Seeing True™ in Action

If it is true there is only One, what do we see as separate and apart from the Whole? And what qualities of the Whole do we misattribute?