Outside of ourselves, there is everything and nothing. Inside of ourselves, there is nothing and everything.
Please discuss. How does this play out in life?
I’ll start us out. We usually feel like one very small part of the world around us. While it is easy to get wrapped up in our own day-to-day concerns, we’re also aware that they are unimportant in the grand scheme of things. The vastness of the universe seems daunting and existence outside of ourselves overwhelming. It’s very size is incomprehensible, so it can feel easy and manageable to focus instead on what we have a chance of understanding, the world as we perceive it inside our head.
When we attend to our personal world, as experienced by our conscious mind, we lose the sense of how we relate to others and larger-scale issues. We become self-centered and lack empathy. To achieve a balanced perspective and understanding of ourselves and our place in creation, we need to go further inside, into depths that are usually hidden, at least from ourselves. An internal journey to the place where our awareness insects the quantum field give us this connection. A regular personal practice—prayer, meditation, path work, journaling, or other heart-centered activities—takes us to the convergence of us and everything else, to the state in which everything is perceived as one.
Today’s message reminds me to flex and pulse my awareness. If I attend only to my personal concerns, I sacrifice the significance and meaning of my life. If I get lost in divine interconnection I become ineffective in handling the details of my daily life. I need to have a balanced perception—a picture within a picture, so to speak—to honor myself and my place in creation. By going inside, I can find that sweet spot where I am nothing and everything.
How about you? How do you keep your perception of your place in the world balanced?