Being Undivided

What brings you peace?

Peace has become for me a sense of wholeness, completeness, and relationality. Rather than understanding peace as the absence of something- for instance, distraction or pain -I understand peace as the inclusion of these as part of my whole daily path.

One of my teachers taught that human beings tend to see everything from an early age through the lens of differentiation. I am me because I am not you; I am me because I am not this table. My definition of self is as separate from all others. We perceive through dividing what we see as not us and then as not something else. We attach labels.

Spending energy in this fashion is natural. Our whole beginning journey is learning to see ourselves as other than our caregiver. As we learn to walk we inherently learn we are other than the floor on which we are walking and that falling and landing on this hard other-than-me floor can be painful or funny or surprising. That understanding becomes the starting place for our growing up other than, always trying to find similar other-than-me beings with whom to share the journey. At that point, peace might be anything other than discomfort/pain/distraction.

I have come to see that learning I am other than was only the beginning of this path neither bad nor good. Now I am coming to see that I am part of a larger whole defined less by what differentiates than by connection. Now I am beginning to see I am not so other than you, that we are connected as part of this vast Universe. My meditation practice over these last 10 years has opened me to a sense of Oneness; the practice has seen the sense of separation slip away. I am other than AND I am not other than you/the world/the solar system/the Universe.

As I begin my day in meditation practice, even as I awaken in the morning, I begin to sense that connection and grounding and wholeness within and beyond. That for me is peace. And it is portable. It goes/comes with me wherever I am, no matter how fragmented the places I go may seem. That sense of “I am,” simply “I am,” rises and perhaps brings a greater sense of wholeness in this little corner of the Infinite Mystery where I find myself.

In the end, peace is a state of being and becoming more connected, related, more undivided, simply more. The pieces of the puzzle that seemed so separate come together to wholeness.