فصل 3

CHAPTER 3

THE WORLD IS WITHIN US

We are not in the world, the world is within us.” The first time I heard this, I was puzzled. How can the world be within me? How could it be possible that you, another human being, could live inside me? It took a long time to understand that what is actually inside me are the thousands of qualities and traits that make up every human being and that beneath the surface of every human is this blueprint of all mankind. The holographic model of the universe teaches us that each of us is a microcosm of the macrocosm. Each of us contains all the knowledge of the entire universe. If you cut the hologram on your credit card or driver’s license into tiny pieces and shine a laser beam on one of them, you will see the entire picture. In the same way, if you examine one human being you will find a hologram of the universe. This universal blueprint resides in our DNA.

Dr. David Simon, medical director of the Chopra Center for Well Being and author of The Wisdom of Healing, explains it this way: “A hologram is a three-dimensional image derived from two-dimensional film. The unique feature of the hologram is that the entire three-dimensional picture can be created out of any piece of the film. The whole is contained in every bit; that is why it is called a hologram. In a similar way, every aspect of the universe is contained within each of us. The forces that comprise matter throughout the cosmos are found in each atom of the body. Every strand of my DNA carries the entire evolutionary history of life. My mind contains the potential of every thought that ever was or will be expressed. Understanding this reality is the key to the door of life—the entrance way to unbounded freedom. Experiencing this reality is the basis of real wisdom.” When you understand that you contain everything you see in others, your entire world will alter. Our goal in this book is to find and embrace everything that we love and everything that we hate in other people. When we reclaim these disowned aspects of ourselves, we open the door to the universe within. When we make peace with ourselves we spontaneously make peace with the world.

Once we accept the fact that each of us embodies all the traits in the universe, we can stop pretending that we are not everything. Most of us were taught that we are different from other people. Some of us consider ourselves better than others, and many of us believe that we are inadequate. Our lives are molded by these judgments. It is these judgments that lead us to say, “I am not like you.” If you grow up white you might believe you are different from African Americans. If you grow up African-American you might believe you are different from Asians or Hispanics. Jews believe they are different from Catholics, while right-wing conservatives believe they are different from left-wing liberals. Each of our cultures has taught us to believe that we are fundamentally different from the rest. We also adopt prejudices from our families and friends. “You’re different because you are fat and I am skinny I am smart and you are stupid. I am timid and you are brave. I am passive and you are aggressive. I am loud and you are soft spoken.” These beliefs maintain the illusion that we are separate. They create internal as well as external barriers that keep us from embracing the totality of our being. They keep us pointing our fingers at others.

The key is to understand that there is nothing we can see or perceive that we are not. If we did not possess a certain quality we could not recognize it in another. If you are inspired by someone’s courage, it is a reflection of the courage within you. If you think someone’s selfish, you can be sure that you’re capable of demonstrating the same amount of selfishness. Although these qualities will not be expressed all the time, we each have the ability to act out any quality we see. Being part of the holographic world we are all that we see, all that we judge, all that we admire. Regardless of skin color, weight, or religious preference we share the same universal qualities. All humans are the same in this essential way.

Renowned Ayurvedic doctor Vasant Lad says, “Within every drop is the ocean and within every cell is the intelligence of the whole body.” When we grasp the enormity of this we can start to see the vastness of who we are. Men and women are created equal in that they share the same full range of human qualities. We all have power, strength, creativity, and compassion. We all have greed, lust, anger, and weakness. There is no trait, quality, or aspect that we don’t possess. We are filled with divine light, love, and brilliance, and equally filled with selfishness, secrecy, and hostility. We are meant to hold the entire world within us; part of the task of being fully human is to find love and compassion for every aspect of ourselves. As is the human mind, so is the cosmic mind. Most of us are living with a narrow vision of what it is to be human. When we allow our humanity to embrace our universality, we can easily become whatever it is we desire.

In Love and Awakening, John Welwood uses the analogy of a castle to illustrate the world within us. Imagine being a magnificent castle with long hallways and thousands of rooms. Every room in the castle is perfect and possesses a special gift. Each room represents a different aspect of yourself and is an integral part of the entire perfect castle. As a child, you explored every inch of your castle without shame or judgment. Fearlessly you searched every room for its jewels and its mystery. Lovingly you embraced every room whether it was a closet, a bedroom, bathroom, or a cellar. Each and every room was unique. Your castle was full of light, love, and wonder. Then one day, someone came to your castle and told you that one of your rooms was imperfect, that surely it didn’t belong in your castle. They suggested that if you wanted to have a perfect castle you should close and lock the door to this room. Since you wanted love and acceptance, you quickly closed off that room. As time went by, more and more people came to your castle. They all gave you their opinions of the rooms, which ones they liked and which ones they didn’t. And slowly you shut one door after another. Your marvelous rooms were being closed off, taken out of the light, and put into the dark. A cycle had begun.

From that time on, you closed more and more doors for all kinds of reasons. You closed doors because you were afraid, or you thought the rooms were too bold. You closed doors to rooms that were too conservative. You closed doors because other castles you saw did not have a room like yours. You closed doors because your religious leaders told you to stay away from certain rooms. You closed any door that did not fit into society’s standards or your own ideal.

The days were gone when your castle seemed endless and your future seemed exciting and bright. You no longer cared for every room with the same love and admiration. Rooms you were once proud of, you now willed to disappear. You tried to figure out ways to get rid of these rooms, but they were part of the structure of your castle. Now that you had shut the door to whatever room you didn’t like, time went by until one day you just forgot that room altogether. At first, you didn’t realize what you were doing. It just became a habit. With everyone giving you different messages about what a magnificent castle should look like, it became much easier to listen to them than to trust your inner voice: the one that loved your entire castle. Shutting off those rooms actually started to make you feel safe. Soon you found yourself living in just a few small rooms. You had learned how to shut off life and became comfortable doing it. Many of us also locked away so many rooms that we forgot we were ever a castle. We began to believe we were just a small, two-bedroom house in need of repairs.

Now, imagine your castle as the place where you house all of who you are, the good and bad, and that every aspect that exists on the planet exists within you. One of your rooms is love, one is courage, one is elegance, and another is grace. There are endless numbers of rooms. Creativity, femininity, honesty, integrity, health, assertiveness, sexiness, power, timidity, hatred, greed, frigidity, laziness, arrogance, sickness, and evil are rooms in your castle. Each room is an essential part of the structure and each room has an opposite somewhere in your castle. Fortunately, we are never satisfied being less than what we are capable of being. Our discontent with ourselves motivates us in our search for all the lost rooms of our castle. We can only find the key to our uniqueness by opening all the rooms in our castle.

The castle is a metaphor to help you grasp the enormity of who you are. We each possess this sacred place inside ourselves. It is easily accessed if we are ready and willing to see the totality of who we are. Most of us are scared of what we will find behind the doors to these rooms. So instead of setting out on an adventure to find our hidden selves, full of excitement and wonder, we keep pretending the rooms don’t exist. The cycle continues. But if you truly desire to change the direction of your life you must go into your castle and slowly open each and every door. You must explore your internal universe and take back all that you’ve disowned. Only in the presence of your entire self can you appreciate your magnificence and enjoy the totality and uniqueness of your life.

When I began my search for the world within me I thought it was an impossible task. I thought the world was a mess but that I was not. I thought, I am not a murderer. I am not a homeless person. I didn’t really want to find out that I possessed all the qualities of the world. As far as I could see I was nothing like the people I judged or made wrong. My goal became that of seeing how the world could exist within me. Every time I saw something or someone I didn’t like, I started saying to myself, “I am like that, they are within me.” For the first month I was disappointed because I truly couldn’t find any of the “bad” things in myself.

Then one day while I was riding on the train everything changed. A woman in my car was yelling at her child. I was busy telling myself I would never treat my child that way and how awful this woman was for scolding her child in public. When a little voice in my head said, “If your child had just spilled chocolate milk all over your white silk suit you would throw a flying fit.” Suddenly the pieces of the puzzle fell together. Of course I had the ability to get angry at a child. I didn’t want to admit that to myself, so when I saw someone else fly into a rage, I was judgmental instead of empathetic. This took the focus off me. I realized that it was the quality demonstrated by each person that was within me, not the person herself. I am not the angry woman on the train, but I do possess the impatience and intolerance that she revealed at that moment.

What I discovered was my potential to act like the people I had been most harshly judging. It became clear that I had to be on the lookout for the traits that most bothered me in others. I began to recognize them as rooms I’d closed off. I had to acknowledge that I, too, could yell at my child if I had a bad day. Then I looked at a homeless person and asked myself, “If I had no family or no education and I lost my job, would it be possible for me to be homeless?” The answer was yes. If I changed the circumstances of my life, it was easy to see I could do and be almost anything different.

I tried being every kind of person: happy, sad, angry, greedy, and jealous. Fat people had been a special target of mine. My father had always been heavy, and he was included in my prejudice. Suddenly he looked different to me. I was born with thin bones and a fast metabolism. I realized that if my metabolism changed and I continued to eat the junk I ate, I would be fat too. But there were still a few areas where I was having difficulty. I could never imagine myself being a murderer or a rapist. How could I kill someone in cold blood? It was easy to imagine killing someone if he tried to hurt me or my family but how about those brutal, senseless crimes? I realized I had no desire to kill now, but if I had been locked in a closet for fourteen years and beaten every day would I be able to kill in cold blood? The answer was yes. This did not make killing acceptable, but it allowed me to see that I could truly embrace the possibility of being everyone.

When I had trouble being anything from that day on I would break it down. For instance, I still could not see how I could ever be a pedophile, so I asked myself what kind of person would have sex with a child? A degenerate, fearful, perverted person, I thought. Then I asked myself, “Could I be a degenerate? Could I be fearful? Could I be perverted?” I tried to imagine the worst circumstances that could have happened to me as a child and I realized that if I was abused and violated as a child and had lived without love I would have grown up differently. Under those circumstances there was no way I could predict what I would and would not be capable of doing. Don’t judge a man until you have walked in his shoes. Even though some of these characteristics were hard for me to own, I had to face the possibility that a demon lived inside me. Sometimes the question is not whether you have a specific trait at the moment but whether you could display that trait under different circumstances.

I tried on every kind of person that disgusted or repulsed me. Some were harder to accept than others, some took more time, but eventually there was little I could not own within myself. Over time my inner voice that went through life judging everything and everyone had quieted. Silence of the mind is something I had dreamed about my whole life and now I was seeing the possibility emerge. I realized that I only judged people when they displayed a quality I could not accept in myself. If someone was a show-off, I no longer judged them because I knew that I, too, was a show-off. Only when I had completely convinced myself that I was not capable of a certain behavior would I get upset and point my finger at the other person. Hold your hand straight out in front of you and point at someone. Notice that you have one finger pointing at them and three fingers pointing back at yourself. This can serve as a reminder that when we are blaming others we are only denying an aspect of ourselves.

The process of hiding and denying parts of myself began to seem almost comical once I realized all the energy I was using in order to not be a certain kind of person. If you don’t see yourself as a microcosm of the entire universe you’ll continue to live your life as a separate individual. You’ll look outward instead of inward for answers and direction, and make judgments about what is good and what is bad. You’ll maintain the illusion that you and I are not really connected. You’ll stay behind your mask in order to feel safe and secure. But if you embrace the totality of the universe within yourself, you embrace the totality of the human race.

Recently, I went to Colorado to lead a seminar for a couple, Mike and Marilyn, and their marketing company. When I arrived at their house, we went out for a quick lunch with their children to discuss emotional-release work. At lunch we had a wonderful discussion about living in a world where we all recognize that each of us has an imprint of the entire universe within. Mike and Marilyn were already familiar with the holographic theory and were enthusiastic. But when we got into the car after lunch, Mike turned around and said to me, “But there are a few things I know I’m not.” I wasn’t surprised; this often happens after someone agrees that they are everything. It had happened to me after all. So I asked Mike, “What aren’t you?” Mike replied, “I’m not an idiot.” I looked into the rearview mirror where Mike was looking straight at me and said, “If you’re everything, then you’re also an idiot.” There was dead silence in the car. Mike’s wife and children were all looking at me in disbelief. I had told Mike he was an idiot. Then Mike started to tell me about all the idiots he knew and how he wasn’t like any of them. He was so emotional about the people he was describing that I knew this was a very charged issue for him.

We continued driving while Mike exhausted his repertoire of idiot stories. Finally I asked him, “Have you ever done anything that an idiot might do?” He thought about my question and quickly said yes, but again he went on to tell me how I couldn’t compare what he’d done with what the idiots he knew had done. These other people were really big idiots. I told him that the psyche couldn’t distinguish between a small idiot and a big idiot—an idiot is an idiot. Because the word “idiot” was so charged for him, I asked Mike if he thought that this might be a signal telling him something. Needless to say, it was a very long ride.

I asked Mike at least to consider my point that idiocy was an aspect of him that he had rejected at some point, and now had an opportunity to reclaim. How could he be everything but an idiot? And what was wrong with being an idiot, anyway, I asked his wife and children if any of them cared if I called them an idiot. No one else had any charge on the word. I asked if any one of them were having bad experiences with idiots. No one was.

When we arrived at their house we bundled up to get out of the car. It was eighteen below zero outside. I had never been in weather this cold, so I stood there stunned, shivering, waiting for the front door to open. A few minutes went by while Mike fumbled around in his pockets and then groped in the car. Finally, Mike looked at us and said, “I think I locked the keys inside the house.” After a moment’s silence, I asked, “What kind of person would lock himself out of his house in eighteen-degree-below-zero weather?” We all simultaneously screamed, “An idiot!” Mike laughed, and Marilyn eventually found her key and got us into the house. Once again, the universe assisted me in my work.

After we warmed up, I sat down with Mike to see if he could identify when he had made the decision not to be an idiot. He remembered doing something stupid as a child and being laughed at. At that time he vowed to himself never again. He shut down a room in his castle because he thought it was bad. As Gunther Bernard so aptly said, “We choose to forget who we are and then forget we’ve forgotten.” Aspects that are hidden from ourselves, like idiocy from Mike, have a particularly powerful influence on our present reality. They have a life of their own and are always trying to get our attention in order to be accepted and integrated into our whole self. Mike kept unconsciously attracting idiots into his life so that he could experience this disowned aspect of himself. Mike could not find compassion for his own mistakes, so he saw people who made mistakes as idiots. Hating this aspect of himself, he hated anyone else with the same flaw. This influenced how he managed people at work. His employees perceived him as difficult and sometimes irrational.

I suggested to Mike that this disowned aspect of himself that he called “idiot” came bearing gifts. I had him close his eyes and tell me the first word that came to mind when I asked, what is the gift of being an idiot? He replied, determination. Because Mike didn’t want to be considered an idiot, he had worked very hard at school and became a great student. He went to college and then on to get his master’s degree, and became an accountant. He worked hard to be at the top of his field and kept up on local and world news events as an educated person would. Mike was a little shocked by what he was saying. I asked him if “idiot” had given him all of his determination to get where he had gotten in life, would he be willing to forgive and embrace this aspect of himself? With some hesitation he said he would, although he’d need some time to digest our conversation.

The next day Mike seemed younger and more vibrant. He still wasn’t sure that owning and loving this aspect that he called idiot was the right thing to do since he had spent nearly forty years denying it to himself. But after another long conversation he could see that because he didn’t own this aspect of himself he attracted many people into his life who did act like idiots. I explained that this is a spiritual law—that the universe always guides us back to embracing the totality of ourselves. We attract whomever and whatever we need to mirror back the aspects of ourselves that we’ve forgotten.

Each aspect within us needs understanding and compassion. If we are unwilling to give it to ourselves how can we expect the world to give it to us? As we are, so is the universe. Self-love must sink in and nourish each level of our being. There are those who love their inner selves but are unable to look into a mirror for more than a minute at their outer appearance. Other people spend all their time and money on their outer selves and end up hating what’s inside. The time has come to bring the whole of yourself into the light so that you can choose to consciously shift every area of your life, internal and external. Now is the time to be the idol of yourself. Every part of you has something to give you. By loving and embracing all of yourself, you will truly be able to love and embrace all of us.

EXERCISES

Start by clearing away anything that might distract you. You’ll need your journal, crayons, and a pen. You might want to put on some soft music to help you relax. Now close your eyes and take a slow, deep breath. Use your breath to quiet your mind and surrender to the process. Take five more slow, deep breaths.

Imagine again an elevator within you. Step into the elevator and go down seven floors. When you step out of your elevator you will see your beautiful garden. Walk through your garden and notice the flowers and trees surrounding you. Look at the lush green leaves and savor the rich smells of the flowers. It is a beautiful day and the birds are singing. Notice the color of the sky. Remember how comfortable and safe you feel in your garden. Take a moment and take another deep breath, inhaling the beauty of your sacred garden. Find a quiet place to sit and create a comfortable meditation seat. A place where you feel your best. Make sure you put on clothes that caress your body and make you feel desirable and magnificent. Then sit down and close your eyes. In a moment, an aspect of yourself will come into your consciousness. This aspect will be you at your best. It will be the totality of who you are, filled with love and compassion and with power and strength. This aspect of you is your sacred self. Invite this magnificent being to fully enter into your awareness. Visualize yourself manifesting your highest potential, feeling peaceful and silent, centered and fulfilled.

Now ask your sacred self to sit down next to you. Take this aspect by the hand and look it in the eye. Ask it if it will be there for you to guide you and protect you this week. Then ask it what you need to do to open your heart and let go of any old emotional toxicity you have been carrying around. Now embrace this sacred aspect of yourself and thank him or her for coming to see you, and vow to revisit him or her and your garden often.

Now open your eyes and write about your experience in your journal. What you saw, what your garden looked like, how you looked and felt. What did your sacred self look like? What did he or she have to say? Take your time. The longer you write, the more wisdom will be expressed through you. Then take out a piece of paper and some crayons and draw a picture of your sacred self. Don’t worry about what your picture looks like; this is not a coloring contest. Just give yourself permission for at least five minutes to draw.

Meeting Your Shadow

Close your eyes and take five very slow, deep breaths. Inhale to the count of five, retaining your breath for as long as you comfortably can and then exhale as slowly as possible. Use your breath to quiet your mind and go deep within your consciousness. Imagine yourself going into an elevator and down seven floors. When you open the door to the elevator you see a very dark and dingy place. Imagine the worst possible circumstances. Notice the smells, the filth, the garbage everywhere. You might be in a cave filled with rats, snakes, cockroaches, or spiders. Call forth a place that you wish never to go to. When you’ve created this place, continue to take slow, deep breaths and then look down into a corner and see the lowest form of yourself imaginable. Allow an image of you at your worst to appear in your mind. Try to sense and see everything about you: how you look, how you smell, how you feel. Now allow a word that describes the person you are seeing to come into your mind. After you have visited with this person long enough to get a sense of him or her, open your eyes. Write down the word you received and everything you experienced in your visualization. Write for at least ten minutes. Allow your consciousness to express whatever thoughts or feelings it has about your experience.

Sacred Self Embracing Shadow Self

Close your eyes and return to your sacred garden. Create a safe, sacred environment to do your exercises in. Again, use your breath to quiet your mind and to bring you deeper into your consciousness. Now take your internal elevator down seven floors and go into your garden. Walk through and admire its beauty. When you feel the soothing presence of your surroundings, find your meditation seat. When you are comfortable and feel safe, bring forth the image of your sacred self. Imagine basking in all of his or her light. When that image is established, go in and call forth the dark, shadowy aspect of yourself. Ask your sacred self to come and embrace your shadow self. Allow this all-loving, beautiful part of you to hold this scary, dark, unloved part in his or her arms. Imagine sending love, kindness, and forgiveness to your dark side. Tell this dark aspect of yourself that it is safe and that you are going to spend time understanding and learning to love it. Spend as much time as you need and don’t be upset if your shadow self does not allow itself to be embraced. Go in and try daily until it does. Often our resistance will show up in visualization, so after ten minutes or so, say good-bye to both of these aspects and come back into your room.

Take out a piece of paper and some crayons and draw a picture of your experience. You should spend about five minutes on it. When you’ve finished, take out your journal and write about your meditation and your drawing experience for at least ten minutes.