We’re under a spell: an illusion, that we are somehow separate from creation, somehow distinct. We view ourselves as something disparate, something separate. We see ourselves as sculptures, hewn from the bedrock of the earth, carved and sculpted intelligently. We see ourselves as something fixed, something determined, a solid identity: a name, a role, a body with a mind controlling it.

These ideas are fundamentally flawed. Everything in life is in perpetual flux, in constant change. Change is the only constancy in existence. The rivers flow, the fires dance, the light streams as an endless array of photons, cascading and washing over everything to illuminate the orchestrated beauty all around us. Why do we view ourselves as snapshots of movement, when the world is nothing but pure movement?

The Ocean in a Drop

The waves of the ocean are not distinct from the ocean, but one part of the whole fluid, in motion. We are no different: a flicker from the fountain of fire that breathes spirit into creation; a tendril of fluid motion that is itself as much as it is part of the whole of life. We are not distinct souls watching life from a distance, but life itself participating in its wholeness.

There is nothing incomplete about us. This thought, that you must change, that you must grow, that you must strive towards some projection invented by your mind of who you ought to be, some projection advised by the imagined externalities of society and others: nothing could be farther from the truth. You are who you need to be, and will become exactly who you are needed to be. It is only in the confines of control that we feel resistance; it is only in the arrogance of ego believing we need to control, that we feel fear, pain, sorrow.

And so, when you begin to let go, you see that there is no ultimate version of you to become, no better or worse version of you; there is only you. A river does not worry about reaching the sea, it only flows with the faith that the sea will meet it in time. For how could it do anything but that? How can something so unified and whole as creation ever form a piece separate and at odds with it? How could the perfection of existence ever form something broken and incomplete, something “wrong?”

When you let go of needing to be someone or something, when you loosen this notion of distinctness from existence, you soften into the harmony of being, and flow more freely with the motion of life.

Life is Motion

The moment you embrace that you are a process in perpetual motion, like fire in a mesmerizing dance of heated passion, you realize that there is no becoming, there is only the living of life. You stop seeking affirmation for who you are, you stop fearing failure, for you see past the illusion of failure and success altogether. For how could you fail? You are not something separate coming into life, but a fruit, coming out of life.

As you begin to relax, as the need to define yourself fades, you stop with these games of comparison and judgement between yourself and others. Their journey is their process, as your life is your own. There is no need to seek approval for who you are, no need to prove yourself: you need only live in the truth of your impermanence, in the freedom of your being, with the faith that you are and eternally will be, precisely what you need to be; and that others too, will always be, exactly what they need to be; and that all of us, together, are interwoven in the tapestry of unity, to be exactly and precisely what we need to be: in constant flux, in shimmering wholeness; as dimpled and fiery and filled with coronas and waves as the sun and the oceans; as varied in texture and elevation and vegetation as the lush landscapes of the earth; as multifaceted and beautiful as all the living, moving, breathing creatures that inhabit this universe.

We are both the painter and the painting, the actor and the play, the music and the instrument, the creator and the creation.

You are not you, aware of life. You are life, aware of itself. You do not have to earn your place here. You are where you belong. You are not an intruder, not an accident, not a temporary guest; you are the very spirit of source that molds the cosmos: the spiraling galaxies and cyclonic solar systems in their gravitational and electromagnetic dances; the very essence of self-perpetuating harmonic light, both wave and matter, that bathes the universe in warmth.

Perfection in Impermanence

Wherever you stand, the universe stands with you; wherever you breathe, the universe is breathing with you.

People expend so much energy and thought, judging themselves, trying to be “better” or even just “good enough.” We lament our “failures,” labeling some behaviors “good” and others “bad,” caught in this perpetual see-saw of value-judgements, teeter-tottering between made-up extremes… when we are all of those things, when none of those things need any names or distinctions. We simply are, and when we are not, we still are.

We are part of something ancient and ever-moving. We are not the watchers of the play, but the play itself, playing itself within itself. We are not here to win or lose, we are here to witness, to experience the wonder of the universe expressing itself, as us.

When you embrace the truth of oneness, the dichotomy of separation melts away. All religions are simply tongues of the same truth; all beliefs are simply different words for the same underlying beauty; all living creatures are simply the same truth from a different angle in the same unifying light. There is no separation, there is no struggle, there is no individuality, no restriction: there is only freedom, there is only being, there is only now, and now is forever.

There is Only Now

By simply allowing yourself to be, you become naturally aligned with the flow of life. This insight into the non-separation of self and reality instantly breaks down the illusory barriers that once seemed so important. The sense of isolation, of loneliness, fades, replaced only with the sense of endless interconnectedness where the boundaries between you and the world dissolve into a rich and vibrant interconnectedness: a universal sea of quantum entanglement, where even the most distant vibration from the farthest galaxy, billions of years back in time, causes ripples in the fabric of the atoms that comprise you today.

The quaver of your breath upon a frosty morning will shape and mold a billion years of untold futures.