Excerpt from You Are Infinite, You Are Eternal, You Are God: And more importantly, You Are Me
All is One. Love is all there is...
Throughout this book I have used a lot of different terms to describe Oneness: Cosmos, One Mind, Consciousness, The Whole, All That Is, Ultimate Reality, The Big Me, and God. This has been a deliberate attempt to diffuse the monstrous inadequacy it is to describe this reality with any one word or combination of words. But to conclude I want to offer a final word that I believe comes closest to describing the One All That Is. The word is Love. Like the others, this word cannot come even close to describing its intended meaning. But if you can imagine the deepest, most beautiful meaning you can possibly give to the word, I believe the interwoven matrix of uniform strings of energy from which everything in the physical world is built, is pure Love; the field of formless consciousness upon which the world of form is made manifest, is pure Love; and the inner or outer realms of heaven, other dimensions, celestial planes, or whatever may exist in the vastness of an infinite and eternal Cosmos, is pure Love – unabashed, unbridled, ‘pressed down, shaken together and running over’ Love, Love, Love, Love, Love, Love!
Without this realisation, a surface belief (or even scientific proof) that all is One – that You Are Infinite, Eternal, God, and Me – while pretty amazing, may still prove to be sterile. Without this realisation, we may still choose to see the unified All That Is as an ultimately lifeless abyss. But founding the idea You Are Infinite, Eternal, God, and Me upon the realisation that all there is is Love, is truly transformative, and provides the central pathway to actually experiencing this reality.
In the previous chapter, we looked at a number of different ingredients that might help us to discover our own oneness with All That Is. But while these practices may all be a little hit and miss, and while no one recipe can ever be formulated, there is a key ingredient essential to each. This ingredient is love. Among all God moments, thin places, aha moments, or grace attacks, all flashes of enlightenment, all glimpses of Oneness, all are either elicited through, or characterised by, the profound experience of an overwhelming sense of love.
In reality, these experiences are not just elicited or characterised by love, they are love – they are a direct experience of the One All That Is that is Love. When we truly connect with another human being, when we experience selfless service of others, when we are truly immersed in the present moment, the coin-sized group of cells in the left hemisphere of the brain goes quiet, the conditioned subconscious of the human ego subsides, and what shines through is the most incredible sense of peace, of compassion, of bliss, of overwhelming love – for self, for others, for the universe, and for life itself.
This experience is common to philosophers, mystics, scientists, and those who have experienced spontaneous awakenings alike. According to Neal Grossman “every near-death experiencer is convinced that the purpose of life is to grow in our ability to give and receive love.” In describing her “stroke of insight” and experience of Nirvana, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor “pictured a world filled with beautiful, peaceful, compassionate, loving people who knew that they could come to this space at any time.” And meditation expert Ram Dass tells us that through true mental stillness we become aware of a love that is “like sunshine, a natural force, a completion of what is, a bliss that permeates every particle of existence.”
Mystics throughout the ages have described their unfolding realisation of love in all that is, and instructed us that to experience ‘nirvana,’ ‘enlightenment,’ ‘heaven,’ or ‘the fullness of life’ we must simply allow ourselves to love and to be loved. St Paul’s beautiful description of love read at countless weddings around the world tells us that everything passes away, except love. The Sufi poet Rumi says that “Love is the Water of Life. Drink it down with heart and soul!” The Buddha tells us to “radiate boundless love towards the entire world — above, below, and across — unhindered, without ill will, without enmity.” The Prophet Mohammad says “You will never enter paradise until you have faith and you will not complete your faith until you love one another.” Lao Tsu tells us to “Love others as much as you love yourself. Then you can be entrusted with all things under heaven,” and Jesus summarises his entire life and teaching in just three words: “love one another.”
But the overwhelming and unconditional Love (capital L) these masters describe means so much more than the lowercase ‘l’ meaning we usually give it. Individualistic love of things that make us feel good for a while is as limited in meaning as is the concept of God being a man in the clouds. The infinite Love the mystics describe however is the reality of a Love that is All That Is, and is as difficult to fathom as is the concept of eternity.
Love is Oneness. Eckhart Tolle says that “to love is to recognize yourself in another.” Charles Eisenstein says “Love violates the story of separation. Love is the expansion of self to include another, whose well-being becomes part of one’s own.” Larry Dossey says that “love is a gateway to the One Mind because love tempers the forces of isolation, separateness, and individuality,” and physicist Fred Alan Wolf says that “the universe is constructed from love,” and "learning to see love and to express that love is the purpose of living this life."
So a question: What do dark, cold, and fear all have in common?
The answer: They don’t exist!
Basic high school science teaches that darkness is not a physical thing – you can’t add ‘dark’ to something, it is physically impossible. Physics tells us all there is is light, and so all you can do is to add light energy, or take light energy away. So darkness can be defined simply as ‘the absence of light.’ In the same way, there is no such thing as cold - you can’t add ‘cold’ to something. All there is is heat energy, and so all you can do is to add or remove heat. So cold can be defined simply as ‘the absence of heat.’ In other words, darkness and coldness don’t exist! All that exists is the raw energy photons which are simultaneously light and heat.
In the same way then, we can say that fear does not exist. Psychologists tell us that all human emotions are derived from just two: love, and the opposite of love – fear. All of our ‘positive’ emotions – joy, peace, happiness etc. – are an expression of love, whereas all of our ‘negative,’ or ‘difficult’ emotions – anger, sadness, envy etc. – are an expression of fear. And the kicker – in the same way that dark is simply the absence of light, and cold is simply the absence of heat, so too is fear simply the absence of love! In other words fear, and everything associated with it – hate, evil etc. – does not exist as a physical thing. All that exists in the physical universe is energy. You can call this unified field of energy heat, you can call it light, or you can call it Love. I call It Love.
The great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr famously said that “darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that...hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” I don’t know how much science Dr. King knew, but he was speaking scientific fact. Like cold and dark, fear and hate, are not real. They are the illusion that love is missing. They are the illusion of separation. Love is All There Is. When you recognise your true identity as Oneness, and Oneness as love, you realise the truth that you are never absent of love, because love is your true nature, and it can be no other way.
I said at the start of this book that I am not an expert in any of the fields described in it. I certainly don’t claim to be an expert in love – I am far from it – but what I do believe, is that love is the one field in which at any given moment anyone can be an expert. Just as enlightenment is a momentary experience, so too is the experience of infinite, eternal, unconditional love. This is because enlightenment is love, and genuine love – experiencing yourself in another – is enlightenment.
The more I see my Oneness with others, the more I fall in love with all others, and the more amazing my life becomes. For me, the God moments in my life have come when I have experienced a profound love for others and for the universe around me – times when I have had the honour of hearing friends and students sharing heartbreaking stories of personal suffering, times when I have seen service, peace, love, and joy flow out of others, moments of awe sitting under the stars, in the surf, in the desert, or within a rainforest, those extraordinary experiences of holding a newborn baby for the first time.
Last night I spent 20 minutes lying in bed with my two-year-old son, and marvelling at how unbelievably sacred is this brief window of time I have to be able to hold another human being – to wrap my arms around him, to rub my nose on his nose, my cheek on his cheek, to play with his fingers, to stare into his eyes from only an inch away, to kiss his lips. It is only my wife, and three other children who I may ever have this experience with during the rest of my life. It is in times such as these I have realised how tragically rare is this opportunity. How seldom do we give and receive the physical and emotional intimacy we are each longing for at the core of our being. This is our One Soul calling us to rediscover our unity with All That Is. I am convinced that our modern culture has constructed far too many barriers between people – physically, socially, mentally, and emotionally. It is our most important challenge to break down these barriers, and to make the shared experience of love more and more a part of our everyday lives.
Love is the prayer
So how do we do it? How do we experience the Oneness that is love? Simply, it is the goal of every spiritual practice to feel love. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Gregg Braden, author of The Divine Matrix, has visited many of the most secretive religious and spiritual communities around the world. And in describing their many different prayer practices, what Braden says is common to each can be summarised with the statement “the feeling is the prayer.” Braden tells us that true and effective prayer is not about the words or actions taken – it is about the feeling they create.
Words, actions, and rituals are intended to bring about a particular feeling inside. It is this feeling that is the intended outcome of the prayer, and what ‘makes prayer work’ (numerous studies show that prayer actually does work). And to make a prayer work most effectively, the intended feeling is one of gratitude (feeling as though you already have what it is you desire), and a feeling of profound love.
The primary instruction in each of the world’s three monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is taken from the first commandment of the Hebrew scripture, that you shall love God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength. Our confusing theologies over the centuries – particularly the idea that God demands praise and worship for God’s sake – have made this teaching a difficult one for many people, including myself. But with the new understanding that God is literally All There Is, that All There Is is Love, and that the ultimate aim of spiritual practice is to experience this Love, this commandment is one that takes on an incredibly powerful new meaning.
Rather than worshipping a man in the sky, a box in a church, a stone in the ground, or a wall on a hill, to truly love God is to love all of creation. This is why Jesus tells us that the second commandment to love your neighbour as yourself is just as important. Because in loving your neighbour, in looking at all of the world around you with the upmost adoration, gratitude, and devotion, you are quite literally loving God, and loving Yourself.
Growing up, I would pray every morning and every night to the man in the sky – thanking him for as many blessings, and asking him to bless as many people as I could think of. And I now realise this daily practice left me each day feeling loving and loved. I would go to mass each Sunday morning, be bored out of my brains but then walk out every time feeling even more loving and loved – more connected and compassionate towards all of the world around me. Today I begin each morning with a combination of the various practices described in the previous chapter. I don’t always get it right, but when I do I live each day feeling more and more connected, more loving, more accepting, I realise there are no problems – that the world is beautiful, and life is perfect.
And this is the key – the secret ingredient that unlocks each of the gateways to Oneness – because without it they are all only half-baked. Any practice, or any gateway will do, as long as it is done with and for love. The most important practice you can allow yourself to take part in then to realise the truth of Who You Are, to discover the peace, belonging and purpose that is your true nature, is to do whatever you can to open the tap and let abundant, divine love flow through you – be it worshiping a rock, a wall, or a box, praying to an external being, lighting a candle, singing a song, spinning a wheel, facing the west, reciting a hymn, reading a book, burning incense, chanting, dancing, fasting, giving, gazing, or whatever other practice human beings have been taking part in for tens of thousands of years. Many have come to see these practices as being a deluded waste of time, meant to ask favours of a separate entity who doesn’t exist. In reality, they are simply a means to experience the truth of the only entity – the entity that is You – an experience of love that words will never be able to describe.
You Are
This book has attempted to confirm our common divinity and immortality through the lens of logic, reason, and modern science. But at the end of the day, communion with the divine has always been about faith. Our attempts to grow closer towards an experience of Ultimate Reality has always relied on a belief and hope in that which can never be defined, discovered, or proven. As my faith has evolved over my short life time, it is for me no longer about blind assent to creedal dogma or clinging onto the hope of there being a man in the clouds or a set of pearly gates I will walk through when I die. Instead, my faith today consists of attesting to the unprovable fact that the interconnected One field of pure energy that is creation – the ‘sea of formless consciousness’ – the very fabric of the cosmos itself – is pure love, that can never die; that the One Life, the One Consciousness, the One Body, the One True God, the One Ultimate Reality that is You and is Me is ultimately one of infinite, eternal and abounding adoration, affection, peace, joy and compassion.
In beginning the journey of writing this book I wanted everyone to hear and believe this message, and for it to change everybody’s life. I have come to realise fairly quickly though, that this message is not, and never will be, true for everyone. It is true for me, and if you have read to this point I reckon it is most likely true for you too. And if it is true for you, then that is good enough for me. In effect this book is saying that everything is true – that you literally create your own reality – that the world literally becomes what you want it to be. And so the most important question becomes, what do you want it to be?
This is what I choose the world to be: from time immemorial the I Am has proclaimed that you are loved. And so now the I Am that You Are affirms that You Are Love! You are loved beyond measure. You Are the most beloved being in all of creation. You are absolutely beautiful, You Are absolutely sacred, You Are absolutely perfect. May you always know this to be true, and may the unfathomable majesty that is the Oneness of All That Is always cradle you in the palm of Your hand!
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