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LIGHTNESS OF BEING: Separation is the fall and Union is the restoration

Last updated: March 5th, 2019

We’re in the midst of a deep, inexorable tide of intensification—one that is leading to the healing and restoring of all the cells of the wider body of humankind, producing a new state of Oneness and connection. This tide has several dimensions. One is that there’s an increasing thinning of the veil, an increasing awareness of the magic and beauty of life. Another has to do with the surfacing of all that has kept human consciousness from being in connection with Life.

All of these factors come to focus in oneself as there’s no other place where the transformation of consciousness is occurring. My consciousness is the crucible for the shifts that are transpiring. As this intensifying tide moves, the contrast between what is real and what is unreal becomes more and more stark. We each have the opportunity to clarify more and more precisely just what we express and where we reside. This is the opportunity for what one could call holographic leadership—the stance of responsibility and clarity in me. The shining of the light brings awareness of the beauty of life.

Recently we have had the joy of acquiring a new puppy. She’s about ten weeks old and is a beautiful window into the magic of life. She leaps for joy at that sight of snow or when it’s time to eat! She crouches and then pounces on our long-suffering older Australian Shepherd who she seems to torment day and night. All of her moments carry the energy of love, and no one who sees her misses this. It’s interesting how everyone falls all over themselves to connect with her. There’s an innocence in her, a vibrancy that really is captured by the words the lightness of Being. This is a simple thing, a glimpse and reminder of the joy and beauty of Life. She has no trouble conveying that.

An old friend of ours once said, “Separation is the Fall.” The insistence on the illusion of separation locks us into a prison of limitation and difficulty. Human beings have long felt isolated, abandoned, alone in the world, and have sought to justify this state by inventing purposes for it. A lot of it, however, has amounted to crashing around in the dark, walking into the furniture, unable to see where one is going. This state of separation is what is passing away.

Recently a neuroscientist named Dr. Eben Alexander fell ill with bacterial meningitis. Apparently his entire neocortex (the part of the brain that supposedly accounts for all higher function and all consciousness according to the current best medical understanding) ceased to function. He was in a coma for seven days. He then awoke, miraculously unwounded, but transformed by his experience. He’s now seeking to articulate what happened. Different people seem to have different glimpses of the vastness of Being through NDEs. While he’s not alone in having such an experience, his journey carries a certain clarity. Here are some of his observations about the experience:

“Towards the beginning of my adventure, I was in a place of clouds. Big, puffy, pink-white ones that showed up sharply against the deep blue-black sky. Higher than the clouds—immeasurably higher—flocks of transparent, shimmering beings arced across the sky, leaving long, streamer-like lines behind them… A sound, huge and booming like a glorious chant, came down from above, and I wondered if the winged beings were producing it. Again, thinking about it later, it occurred to me that the joy of these creatures, as they soared along, was such that they had to make this noise—that if the joy didn’t come out of them this way then they would simply not otherwise be able to contain it. The sound was palpable and almost material, like a rain that you can feel on your skin but doesn’t get you wet.

“Seeing and hearing were not separate in this place where I now was. I could hear the visual beauty of the silvery bodies of those scintillating beings above, and I could see the surging, joyful perfection of what they sang. It seemed that you could not look at or listen to anything in this world without becoming a part of it—without joining with it in some mysterious way. Again, from my present perspective, I would suggest you couldn’t look at anything in that world at all, for the word “at” itself implies a separation that did not exist there. Everything was distinct, yet everything was also a part of everything else, like the rich intermingled designs on a Persian carpet…or a butterfly’s wing. A warm wind blew through, like the kind that springs up on the most perfect summer days, tossing the leaves of the trees and flowing past like heavenly water. A divine breeze. It changed everything, shifting the world around me into an even higher octave, a higher vibration.”

Human consciousness is meant to translate and convey the reality of Being into the outer world. The mystery of so-called heaven, the question as to whether such a place exists, is breaking through into consciousness not only as a few people touch extreme experiences, but as awakening moves through many, and through me. This man’s experience has given him a sense of responsibility, a sense that he has to somehow try to convey to people what he saw and to reconcile his experiences with his background in science. While conveying thoughts along these lines might be of assistance, we know, in fact, that what is required is something different—which is to say the embodiment of the reality of Being in the place beyond separation, here and now—to live that reality.

The world appeared not to have ended on December 21, 2012, but I wonder whether if in a way it is ending. The familiar human world is dissolving, maybe not in the fiery blaze of combustion that some fantasize about, but passing away nevertheless. This passing away isn’t evident merely in the dysfunctionality of external political dynamics or the degradation of the external physical environment. It also appears very close in. I’d suggest that if it doesn’t come close in, one is perhaps avoiding what there is to do. This has to do with the question of what really controls in consciousness. What is it that governs?

Long ago this question was spoken of in the Bible as the “temptations.” The temptations, so-called, that Jesus navigated have been variously interpreted as being distracted by a quest for fame or fortune, or by the distractions of sex. But I would suggest there’s a more subtle and deeper interpretation. The gist of this territory has to do with whether we accept the illusion of separation or not into our experience, and whether we choose to be tempted by the emotional pain that that state of separation induces. Human beings have a strange addiction to staying stuck on the negativity and destructiveness that comes from being disconnected from Life. At one point in the passage that refers to the temptations, the so-called tempter said to Jesus, “If thou be the son of God, command that these stones be made bread.” And Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” In other words, human beings need not live in a state of separation, a state of believing we can manipulate form; we can live through the expression of life itself, which is whole.

The temptations continue at increasingly higher levels of consciousness. The tempter—which is ultimately one’s own mind, disconnected from Life—takes Jesus into a place of so-called opportunity, and offers him the “kingdoms of this world,” (i.e. tempts him with an offer to let his mind’s wishes to control his world). This is the bait many have taken. Stories have been written along these lines—most notably that of Faust, finding Mephistopheles making him an offer he couldn’t refuse. We have each in different ways inherited an unconscious attraction to this deal, based on an addiction to our hereditary past, and to the illusion that we can control our experience in this way—an emotional conviction of separation. We are each required to relinquish the control of these oddly attractive forces if we are to truly live.

I suppose everyone has had, at one point or other in their lives, a so-called “dark night of the soul”—a moment where great difficulties have mounted. This is the other dimension of the passing away of separation. Moving into a new experience requires honesty and ultimately a deliberate choice to let go. Letting go can only come as one is, in fact, confident and present in the reality of oneself, aware of the beauty of Being even as intensity arises. Meeting these factors and actually letting them go is a deeply personal business in the end. We sound the Tone, and what comes up as a result is that which must be released for that Tone to be sounded yet more clearly. In this is the emergence of a focus of responsibility. This is something that Dr. Eben Alexander found in himself, a joyous sense of responsibility that was unwavering and committed, no matter what arose.

Such resoluteness is a function of new awareness, but it is also a part of our commission. I suspect that as things proceed it will become more and more important that there are those who are not only unwavering, but happily committed to including and letting be brought into the fire anything and everything that comes into consciousness. Somewhere there needs to be the space for the true healing to occur. This has always been the missing ingredient—a truly safe place on Earth for the factors of distortion to be allowed to pass away. I suppose this is the unadvertised part of the experience of touching the invisible and magnificent nature of heaven. Initially there’s joy and thrill, but as we know, what’s equally required is a fierceness of focus. In that is great creativity. The transformations can come quickly. This does not need to take long and does not require many hours of struggle and analysis. It does require, however, intensification in oneself.

President Harry Truman was famous for having a sign on his desk that said: “The Buck Stops Here.” The passing of the buck, the passing of responsibility, the indulgence in blame for the state that we have, must end in someone, somewhere. I’m sure we could all say, “The buck stops here.” We no longer tolerate the indulgence in holding circumstances, our heredity, indeed any outer factor responsible for our experience. We each get ample opportunity to continuously refine and prove this out and in this way the aperture through which the heaven can shine opens. The lightening of the human state, the passing away of the veil of illusion is taking place, and it is sure to bring change. Of this there can be no doubt. It happens quietly. And the associated intensity arises mostly in oneself.

If separation is the Fall, then Union is the restoration. Union can be known through the density of the human state as it now is. This is a great assurance and a call and cause for relaxation. It’s a great joy when those who are aware of this come together and simply abide in the heaven and the Earth and to know it as one place, not two worlds, not separate. The absoluteness of the radiance is having its way and in that is a great lightness of Being.

[su_panel background=”#f2f2f2″ color=”#000000″ border=”0px none #ffffff” shadow=”0px 0px 0px #ffffff”]William Isaacs is the founder and president of Dialogos, a consulting and leadership education firm based in Cambridge, MA, and Chairman of the Board of the Dialogos Institute. He is a leading authority on collective leadership, the design and development of organizational learning, and the practice and theory of dialogue. His 1999 book, Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together (Doubleday), has been translated into seven languages, including Swedish, Chinese, Hebrew and Farsi.  bill.isaacs@dialogos.com