The diagram to the right is an abstract illustration of Reality. That horizontal line of different-colored spheres at the center represents the plane of individual existence. Each sphere is a distinct being.
Pick a color: that’s a rock being. Across the way is a tree being. Next to them are a dog being, a bird being, a cloud being, a star being.
Get the idea?
Obviously, this is an extremely simplified and abstract depiction of Reality. Its usefulness is not about realism or descriptive accuracy, but only in the way it sets the stage for a deeper contemplation of Existence, particularly of your existence as a human being.
We’ll get there shortly.
Keep in mind that every individual being is represented on the horizontal line or plane at the center. We can also regard it as a threshold and take a step upward, lifting our attention to that arching dome above the line. From our original plane of orientation, this move takes us outward from the individual being and into a realm of connectedness, relationship, and participation.
Each being is connected, directly or indirectly, to all other beings in Existence.
Our common word for this universal Web of connectedness is Universe, referring literally to the “single turning” (uni-verse) totality of Existence. Outward and all around each individual being, the Universe isn’t something else or something other than the participative unity of all beings.
Now let’s drop below the threshold plane of rock beings, dog beings, star beings and the rest, where we can see more lines descending vertically from each individual being. This move takes us inward to the essential Ground of each being, to the power of be-ing, the power-to-be that generates and supports it from within.
If we’re not careful, lazy distinctions among the words we are using can lead to confusion, which has produced profound fallacies in many traditions of spirituality. What we are naming the essential Ground is not something else, just as the Universe is not something outside or other than the participative unity of all beings.
In this case, though, we are not moving outward across the Web of connectedness and relationship, but rather inward to the grounding mystery and power of be-ing, which manifests here as a rock or there as a dog. Ground is the within-ness or essence of each existing being, not another being separate from it and from the plane of existing beings.
You won’t find a being’s Ground by going outside to the external reality underneath it, like the physical ground beneath your feet. That’s the Universe again. The essential Ground is always and only within.
With that general picture in place, let’s sharpen our focus on your unique nature as a “human” being.
You also, of course, have the same dual orientation as all other beings – out-and-around to the universal Web of connectedness with all things, down-and-within to the essential Ground of being itself.
For this next stage in our contemplation of Existence, we have zoomed in on you as one being on the plane of existing beings. In your case, however, that horizontal threshold between what’s around you and what’s within you has been split lengthwise and wedged apart by the insertion of a larger sphere centered on the smaller one of your basic nature as a human being.
Altogether, the whole ensemble has the appearance of an eye, with the pupil of your ego (your “I”) looking directly back at us.
You have been endowed by Nature with the neuroanatomical equipment and corresponding capacity for self-conscious awareness. This means that not only are you conscious of your sentient experience, of what’s coming through your senses, but you are also aware of yourself as the subject having this experience.
From this new center of orientation, you piece together and project around yourself a mental map of Reality as it concerns you. Known as your worldview or simply your “world,” its outer boundary is what interfaces with but also squeezes to the margin that universal Web of connectedness, or Universe – which is quite factually all around you and includes you.
And yet, if something in the Universe isn’t mentally tagged as relevant to your concerns, it can be screened out of your awareness altogether.
So let’s make a few more fine distinctions. While the Universe is external to your consciousness (i.e., outside your mind), your world is a mental object of your consciousness (i.e., inside your mind). The character of your objective world is drawn from your personal experiences, from what you were taught growing up, from today’s news, from the creative power of your imagination, as well as from your anxieties, hopes, and expectations.
Your anxieties, particularly, are the product and symptom of an existential insecurity associated with standing on your own separate center of personal identity, inside a world that closes you off from what’s really real (i.e., from Reality).
All of that business of creating a world in your mind, projecting it around yourself as a theater of meaning, constructing an identity to inhabit your world, and striving to become somebody special – that is the Great Delusion.
It might be easy to confuse or equate your subjective self with the essential Ground of your being, or your objective world with the universal Web of Reality, but such equations only conspire to trap you inside the Great Delusion.
Personal identity is centered in your subjective self, which must be surrendered and released for a descent into the deeper oneness of your essential Ground. This is a breakthrough to inner peace and the Power within.
Correspondingly, personal meaning is bounded by your objective world and must be surpassed, pulled aside like a veil and transcended on your way to reunion with the universal Web and its higher wholeness. This is a breakthrough to communal joy and the Truth beyond.
Now, if you are ready for the most wonderful paradox in this entire meditation, here it is:
These breakthroughs in consciousness are predicated on your prior captivity to the Great Delusion.
Without a centered self, there is nothing to drop away from and go within. Without a bounded world, there is nothing to break past and get beyond. You have to become somebody before you can get over yourself.
The liberated life is on the other side of what defines and confines you.
Tracts of Revolution 