It feels like a ping-pong match. One player strikes the paddle, hitting the ball of love – love everyone; let love rule the day; wake up to what this really is. The other player lobs the ball back across the net – no, that’s not right; bypassing is harmful; this life, these bodies are real; the world is filled with villainous others and they must be held accountable.

Seemingly irreconcilable, don’t you think?   

One side of the table says, ‘There is no other, there is only This That Is, only one thing happening,’ while the objector at the other end of the table cries foul. Is it possible that neither is wrong?

Can we love everyone, despots included, and still hold them to account, still say no – stop, still stand for those who are being persecuted, those who are hiding in subway bomb shelters, those who are dying as I write this piece?

Does loving preclude caring, bar speaking out, inhibit taking action? Should the fact that there is no other, prevent us from holding the appearance of an other accountable for their actions, even actions they aren’t fully truly absolutely accountable for?

This is the problem with mixing, not metaphors, but levels of understanding, and we spiritual folk tend to do that a lot. We have difficulty holding two conflicting truths at the same timeless time. We tend to be an either/or sort of species, rather than both/and.

To be fully human and fully divine is our inheritance if we are willing to claim it. Most have been so hurt that being fully human isn’t on their list, let alone the top 10. Getting out of here, transcending the human and releasing the trauma and the pain, quite naturally takes precedence. It is totally understandable. That specific brand of freedom is the reason we start down the spiritual path, whether we know it or not.  I’ve been there myself. All I wanted was to get out of here, to annihilate my ego, my human, to escape this loathsome life.  

Once you recognize the bottom line truth that we are not two, we are not even one, heck … we are not, it is easy to get stuck there. It’s a pretty cool place to take up residence and a whole lot of folks seem to have relocated there lately. It’s a place of absolute freedom — total release from guilt and responsibility, a bliss filled energy bath that washes all your cares away.

Who wouldn’t want to live there? It’s so intoxicating that most drink deeply, not realizing there is so much more to experience.

After the ascension comes descension. We were never intended to ascend and remain in that blissful state. We are to bring heaven back to earth, to live here now, fully human, fully divine.

Taking the plunge, returning heart in hand, the ping pong game ends, and closes the table on concepts of other and no other. In their stead, we find love in action; love standing for love; love saying yes to loving actions; love saying a gentle but firm no to harm. Responses, once automatic and sharp-edged are now born of love rather than anger and retaliation. They come to life in the moment, just in time, take form spontaneously. There is no dogma in love’s world, no one right way to solve a problem, no textbook of answers. If possible, love loves the damaged mind back to its inherent wholeness, and in those cases where it is not, or where the residual resistance is too strong, with love for the whole, stops the damage from spreading further.    

We are not two. This is spontaneously combusting experiencing, a real-life world stage of astounding possibilities, and a true nightmare for some. We are not here to wake up for ourselves – there is no self. The whole is our sacred name. No part of us, this unity self, will be left behind, will be left out in the cold, will be denied, will be unredeemed. There is no end to the madness while one person suffers. Ending that suffering is not up to a higher power, a grand design. It is up to us.