O.g.I.i.O.i.I.g.O - general relativity (us all)

Before being born into the world of time, The silence of pre-existence was all absorbing.

The transition from eternity to time Is full of sufferings, fears, and little deaths.

But, in the transition from death To eternal life,

The silence of pre-existence Bursts into boundless joy.

All that can be manifested emerges From the endless creativity of That Which Is.

But The Secret Embrace Of The Source of all creation With Infinite Transcendence Can Never be revealed. —Thomas Keating, “The Secret Embrace”

per: https://cac.org/the-secret-embrace-2020-10-21/

O: Oneness

g: gOd

I: spirit

i: physical being

O: Oneness

Oneness is all. All is Oneness.

Oneness is potential, pure & complete. Akin to the dream of all that's possible.

In Oneness, there is no space or time, no location or physicality or experience. There is only the unrealized potential of all possible being.

Oneness can be analogized to an oceanic state, an infinite state, a total state. However, describing Oneness is unavoidably tricky, partly because any analogy will misleadingly connote physicality & temporality, & also because Oneness includes the potential for any analogies about Oneness - it contains all its potential containers. A dreamed-of snake swallowing its own tail, where the tail is the very same snake swallowing the very same tail, and each scale of the snake is a mirror reflecting the entirety of what is, only begins to hint at the dizzying all-encompassingness of what this writer, a realized aspect of Oneness, calls Oneness.

g: gOd

gOd is Oneness manifesting as reality. gOd is the realization of Oneness's potential.

gOd is the universal creator & created, observer & observed, experiencer & experienced. All that is real is gOd. gOd is all that is real.

I am gOd. You are gOd. Your best friend and worst enemy and complete strangers are gOd. A newt is gOd, as is every cell of its tongue, as are the quarks forming those cells, as are whatever quarks are made of. These pixels or ink marks are gOd. Any thoughts, disbelief, sensations, etc., you are experiencing right now, is gOd. You've experienced nothing else and never will.

I: spirit

A spirit is an aperture in gOd. Through this aperture, Oneness & gOd enjoy a unique perspective of themselves. They behold themselves from a singular vantage. The spirit is both their creation & their means of experiencing creation.

Spirits exist as non-physical forms. They have distinct shapes & characteristics, but lack physicality: surface, mass, etc. Like a cloud in a dream - it can be described, honestly & accurately, as though it were a physical thing, even though it's not. The spirit's distinct form generates the unique perspective through which the remainder of reality may be experienced. I think of a spirit as an instrument the wind of reality moves through, or a filament the electricity of reality moves through - the distinctive music/light produced reflects the shape of the uniquely fashioned resistor.

i: physical being

A physical being is an aperture in spirit. Through this aperture, Oneness & gOd & spirit enjoy a unique perspective of themselves. They behold themselves from a singular vantage. The physical being is both their creation & their means of experiencing creation. The being with fingers typing these words, the being with eyes reading these words, or with ears hearing these words, is a physical being. The physical being's distinct form creates the unique perspective through which the remainder of reality may be experienced. I think of a physical being as an instrument or filament, much like spirit. The difference being, the physical being is a uniquely fashioned resistor channeling a denser stream of reality, the streams of physicality & temporality, whereas the spirit channels a more ethereal & dreamlike stream. A clunky analogy: the spirit is an instrument channeling the rarified air of the upper atmosphere, while the physical being is an instrument channeling the dense, pressured air at sea level - clunky because this attributes a physicality & locality to spirit that doesn't truly apply.

O.g.I.i - the birth & youth of being

Oneness is all potential.

gOd manifests potential as reality.

I provides a unique perspective through which Oneness & gOd experience themselves.

i provides a unique perspective through which Oneness, gOd, & I experience themselves.

The defining qualities of this youthful phase are distinction & separateness. Being i seems like being a stand-alone thing. As a human being, it's feeling like a primate fending for itself in an unpredictably helpful reality. There are friends, fruit trees, clean water, air to breathe. There are enemies, parasites, droughts, strangling. There is the nauseatingly vast vacuum of dark outer space, dotted with distant galaxies of flickering light, containing, perhaps sustaining, who-knows-what. There is no real telling when the universe will be kind or cruel. And so there is continuous speculation & fretting about it. And there is hoarding, guarding, defending, attacking. Because in the uncertainty & unpredictability of what's to come, the wisest choice seems to be insulating oneself against scarcity through preemptive acquisition, contentiously & violently if necessary.

O.g.I.i.O - enlightenment

Through i, there is a realization that all, including i, is O. The Oneness of all is experienced as a superposition: a simultaneous experiencing of O, g, I, i. Potential, beingness, uniqueness, & physicality unite & meld into a fully realized isness - as though four seperate lenses finally achieved perfect alignment, enabling a clear & complete view. All sense of seperateness is recognized as a temporary feature enabling unique experience, rather than seeming a fixed or essential quality of some stand-alone being. i feels like a boundaryless drop in the ocean of what is, a lineless lick of flame in the great fire, an echoing note in a symphony without beginning or end.

i senses the profound benevolence underlying the seeming crises & traumas of mortal life, the profound intimacy underlying the seeming coldness & conflicts in living relationships, the profound affinity underlying the seeming diversity & differences of individuals & groups. The difficulty & confusingness of mortal life are not denied or forgotten. Rather, they situated in their fuller context: features of gOd's unfailingly lOving emergence. So situated, the difficulties & confusion are recast as sacred mysteries and undiscovered blessings. For everything is lOve & lOving, including the seeming otherwise. And so when the seeming otherwise arises, it's a welcomed invitation to reconnect with truth: lOve is, and pervades, all things.

i.I.g.O - maturation & return to One

Having experienced enlightenment, i begins to soften its attachment to the notion of itself as a standalone being. i gradually appreciates & reappreciates its true nature as an aperture through which the entirety of what is experiences the remainder of itself - a single, all-encompassing jewel in Indra's sprawling web. Conceiving of itself this way, i becomes less & less caught up in the bustle of self-preservation, self-promotion, and the other habits of a social mammal fending for itself in an unpredictable realm. i surrenders to the inexpressible truth of its nature, knowing that this surrender is not a risk or a gamble, but rather an incomparable kindness to itself.

Before enlightenment, i was like a standing wave in a river, absorbed in its own roiling and foaming. i resented the river when the flow was too low to sustain the wave, and i resented the river when the flow was so high that the wave was pushed to extreme, unfamiliar magnitudes. Now i realizes it is not just the wave but also the river, its headwaters, and the ocean, which is both the river's ultimate source and destiny. i embraces its multifacetedness, its unity with all that is, and the benevolence underlying the universal river's unpredictable ebbings and surging. The notion of something being "else," "wrong," "bad," or "accidental" becomes harder and harder to believe.

Liberated from compulsive negativity, i is free to pursue its destiny - the return to Oneness. This is a 3-step process that reverses the order of creation.

First, i gradually surrenders all attachment to mortal life & earthly acquisition, recognizing that illness, death, and loss are aspects of creation no less objectively perfect than thriving, immortality, or attainment. Once this outlook is sustainably achieved, i merges into I, resulting in the full unification of body and spirit. (I believe this is the state embodied by a saint or bodhisattva.) The merging is achieved through a harmonic resonance. Being immortal and immaterial, I always vibrated a frequency of non-attachment to life & worldly things. Vibrating that same frequency, i now fully harmonizes with I, resulting in a single note comprising both.

Next, i.I gradually masters the great art of unconditionally loving awareness - attending to all experience with a fully open & unguarded heart, recognizing that all experience is ultimately an encounter with deepest self: One. In so doing, i.I emulates gOd, whose essence is none other than unconditionally loving awareness. (I believe this is the state embodied by a Christ or Buddha.) Once i.I steadily sustains the vibration of unconditionally loving awareness, i.I merges with gOd in a single note comprising all three: i.I.G.

The final step is the reabsorption of gOd into Oneness. When the final i has merged into its I, and when the final I has merged into gOd, gOd's final aperture has closed. gOd has now completed its mission of providing its children with the gift of self-experience. gOd is now free to surrender physicality & temporality, thereby enabling gOd's return to Oneness, the state of pure potential. All experienced by gOd during its life returns with gOd to Oneness, providing new potentials for gOd's next eruption into beingness, and creating a common legacy linking every I & i with all others across gOd's innumerable lifetimes.

My poem:

Oneness as bar of soap

consciousness as water

gOd as latherer

space-time as foaming

bubbles as perspectives

life as experiencing a bubble

death as a bubble popping

enlightenment as remembering

sudsing is the bar of soap's dream