We usually associate atonement with pain. But true atonement is joyful. In fact, atonement is joy itself. To understand this, we need to be clear about the original sin which demands atonement, the two-ness that requires at-0ne-ment through Joy.
Our original sin is a violent act of division at the heart of creation. We commit this violence in our very conception of reality. We divide subject from object, making two out of one. The atonement for this sin is Joy. Only Joy can at-one.
The violence is in the division, not the appearance, of subject and object. The appearance of two in one is delightful. Appearance of two is the dance of one. Duality is lila, playfulness of God. In each moment, even as the dance of subject and object appears, the two collapse into each others arms and dissolve into bliss, ananda. This perpetual dissolving of appearance into the reality can recharge our consciousness in every perception, regardless of its relative beauty or ugliness. What generates bliss is not the metaphysical meaning that our mind super-imposes on the event, but the physics of perception itself. For subject and object are both permeated by one continuum, which is pure consciousness. To experience this continuum in the midst of the dance is bliss.
Sir Arthur Eddington, founder of quantum physics, wrote: All through the physical world runs that unknown content which must surely be the stuff of our own consciousness. To make this an actual experience, we must focus the blur of two into one, dissolving the duality of soul-body, spirit-matter, creator-creation. Less mind, more awareness. The problem is not the world, but the superimposition of our mind upon the world: our fears, beliefs and expectations. The art of perception lies in clearing the double-vision that separates the seer from the seen, so that we may experience the radiance of the ordinary. One needs no belief who sees God at the tip of a fern, incandescing the dewdrop.
An objection may occur: "Isn't it rather passive to dwell in pure perception without desiring change?" No, pure perception is a transformational sacrament, the sacrament of the commonplace. Nothing changes the world like seeing it as it is.
Sir Arthur Eddington, founder of quantum physics, wrote: All through the physical world runs that unknown content which must surely be the stuff of our own consciousness. To make this an actual experience, we must focus the blur of two into one, dissolving the duality of soul-body, spirit-matter, creator-creation. Less mind, more awareness. The problem is not the world, but the superimposition of our mind upon the world: our fears, beliefs and expectations. The art of perception lies in clearing the double-vision that separates the seer from the seen, so that we may experience the radiance of the ordinary. One needs no belief who sees God at the tip of a fern, incandescing the dewdrop.
An objection may occur: "Isn't it rather passive to dwell in pure perception without desiring change?" No, pure perception is a transformational sacrament, the sacrament of the commonplace. Nothing changes the world like seeing it as it is.
If two waves dance on the sea, we do not conclude that there are two oceans. Yet that is precisely how most of us interpret our perception of the world. We insist on a Self and a Not-Self. But our creator never intended the playful appearance of two to overshadow God's underlying unity. Failure to perceive the ocean beneath the waves is our fall into original sin, and the source of our sorrows. And our tenacious assumptions about this duality become the dogmas of our religion. True believers fight and kill to defend their double-vision. So the vertical double-vision of Self and Not-Self underlies all horizontal dualities that divide race, class, religion and nationality.
Once we insist that the division of subject and object is real, that primordial fault-line ripples through the mirror of our consciousness in an ever-widening fracture that blurs every relationship with division. The world's problems can never be solved by political action, but only by an act of consciousness. For the world's problems arise through a rupture in consciousness itself.
The eye is the light of the body. If your eye is single, your whole body will be filled with light. Thus Jesus confirmed that the solution to our world's suffering lies in restoring our vision. The healing of ruptured reality is Joy. Joy is the atonement for the sin of double-vision. Joy restores unity by collapsing subject and object, through every perception, into a moment of bliss.
Joy is the marriage of spirit and matter. Joy releases the tension in creation's heart, where world-conflict first begins. Joy is the reunion of the Seer and the Seen in that radiance where they both arise as waves of pure awareness.
The eye is the light of the body. If your eye is single, your whole body will be filled with light. Thus Jesus confirmed that the solution to our world's suffering lies in restoring our vision. The healing of ruptured reality is Joy. Joy is the atonement for the sin of double-vision. Joy restores unity by collapsing subject and object, through every perception, into a moment of bliss.
Joy is the marriage of spirit and matter. Joy releases the tension in creation's heart, where world-conflict first begins. Joy is the reunion of the Seer and the Seen in that radiance where they both arise as waves of pure awareness.
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