The ancient language of “the kingdom of heaven is within you and all around you” is what we now know today as Unity Consciousness. What is Unity Consciousness? It’s the realization that “God,” “Spirit,” “Source,” “Brahman,” “the Self,” “Christ,” “the Divine,” or whatever you wish to call it, is in everyone and everything, mystically holding all things together as one. It’s the recognition that separation is merely an illusion, and although it appears we are far apart, we are actually branches of the same tree that stem from the same source. As Ram Dass said, “There is only one of us. One consciousness manifesting into different forms.”
When Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” he didn’t say, “Love your neighbor in the way you love yourself.” He said, “As yourself.” Why? Because he was inviting us into the mystery of Unity Consciousness, the realization of our oneness. To “love your neighbor as yourself” is to recognize that your neighbor is yourself. The sacred presence of the divine within you is the same sacred presence of the divine within your neighbor. And this sacred presence of the divine is ultimately who we really are. And as it turns out, in the Vedanta tradition, this sacred presence of the divine within everyone is called “the Self.” How about that?
Now, most of the time, when you start talking like this, the religious egoic mind gets agitated and offended because the ego prides itself on being superior, separate, and special. To say that we are all one in God and that the sacred presence of the divine is within every person is mere blasphemy to the religious egoic mind. Why? Because if everyone is equally loved, accepted, and included simply by their being, the ego loses its superiority and exclusivity.
The ego desires to see in two (separation), and this is where we get di-vision from (two visions). But when the ego is transcended, and we awaken to Unity Consciousness, we start to see as one (union). Perhaps this is why Jesus said, “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light” (Matthew 6:22). At this plane of reality, divisions like sinner and saint believer and unbeliever, or insider and outsider dissolve, leaving only pure Light, pure Love. No one stands above, and no one stands below. No one is greater than, and no one is less than. We are harmoniously One, and the ego hates this.
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