Once you look Oneness in the eye, you can never ever again be the same person you thought you were before!
Recently I encountered a tiny new-hatched green anole lizard. It perched on the lower edge of the kitchen window frame: baby on the outside in its native heat and me on the inside in my blessedly cool air-conditioning. We saw each other, eye-to-eye…
This exquisite lizard—commonly called a chameleon by many for its color-changing talent—was no longer than my little pinkie, including the tail. Probably 2/3rds was tail, so scope out how incredibly itsy bitsy this creature was. At present he was green because he climbed up from the green nandinas that grow below the window.
As new-hatched baby and I examined one another, I sought not to intimidate with my size; I moved slow and did not loom too close. The miniscule head turned, and a microcosmic gem of an eye swiveled in its socket, wary and yet evidently not afraid.
The baby ambled along, to show off perfect tiny feet.
Our encounter provided me with a glimpse of that indescribable Oneness lately quite trendy in “ahead-of-the-cutting-edge” spiritual circles. Only it’s nothing new, this “non-duality” the Hindus have called Advaita for millennia. It’s something like what physics now calls “entanglement.”
Only Oneness isn’t so easy to “get” because it cannot be gotten. It’s unavoidable. It’s the fact that nothing is actually separate from anything else. Separation causes suffering, only separation isn’t real. So get over it!
I’ve noticed a curious thing—the major Oneness “teachers” don’t offer any spiritual practice. They say you don’t need it. Other excellent teachers provide a practice to point you towards Oneness.
What does Oneness really mean? It is not something you can understand, describe, achieve, enter or leave—it’s simply what IS.
Who knows? It’s a great mystery. Only I also noticed something else about the tiny lizard… it offered no practice. It doesn’t need a practice!
It simply IS.
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