What does it mean to be One with the Universal Mind? To be One-Minded?
I recently started reading the book A Course in Miracles and I have to say, no other book ever spoke to me the way this book does. It is written in such a gentle, caring, and loving way, that every word carries a sense of healing to it. The first part of the book embraces the meaning of the universal mind and explains what caused our separation from it.
It is a loving guide on how to clear our confusional and fearful thinking and how to reawaken our minds to the awareness of Love. Reading this book triggered many of my own thoughts and by sharing them, I hope some of it will be beneficial for you too.
The fall of human-kind
The concept of the fall of humanity is something we probably all came across in one way or another. This idea might be formulated slightly differently in various religious branches, but there is a key message that stays the same.
This core idea explains how humanity fell from a higher state of being to a lower one. In this previous “higher” state of being, we were directly connected to our source of creation or to God. It was through the process of separation, that we have lost this inherent connection.
Source connection brings a life full of health, happiness, peace, and oneness, wherever separation results in a state of disease, suffering, pain, and contradiction. A state that is unfortunately very familiar to most of us.
But how exactly does this separation look like? Do such scriptures speak of a physical form of separation? Or rather a separation in faith and belief? A separation in thought?
The separation in mind
Before the so-called fall, all of humankind was interconnected with each other and with everything in existence. There was no individual perception, no individual thinking. It was a mind that served everyone rather than only self and certain selected individuals.
It was after the fall that the universal mind split or fell into two separate parts: The inherent one-mind and the ego-personality. In order to be branched off the universal mind, we have to believe that we are a separate identity of our own.
Rather than a physical form of separation it really is a separation in mind, where we started to create our own personality. Often also referred to as the ego-personality.
What is the ego? The ego is an attempt to live life through an idea of how we wish to be, rather than as we truly are. The ego is rooted in fear because it feels separated from its source of origin. Just like a child would feel fearful if separated from their parents.
The creation of the ego-personality is based on wrong believing and wrong thinking because we view ourselves as separate, disconnected from others and from the source of creation itself. This is not a “real” separation but rather a strongly held belief from which we operate and live our lives.
We can never truly be separated but we can believe ourselves to be. A belief is not something that truly exists but something that was created by the believer. For the believer, this belief is very real while for others it might be complete nonsense. A belief is only a belief until it isn’t anymore and is, therefore, always subject to change and to time.
Anything that is related to change can never be absolutely true because what is truly true can never change, it simply always is. The state of separation is based on a belief and is, therefore, only a temporary state of existing. Once we see through the empty shell of our ego-selves, we naturally return to our inborn state of connection and oneness.
Our personalized lenses
We can look at our physical lives as an extension and projection of our own thinking and believing. Every single one of us goes through a very unique set of experiences and life episodes. These experiences create beliefs, opinions, judgment, trauma, and fears. Based on these experiences and beliefs we create a very unique lens through which we look at life.
We all have our own lenses and therefore look at life in a slightly different way. My way of looking at life might be completely different from yours and yet, we all live and share the same reality. This personal lens is how we acknowledge and respond to life on a daily basis. But did you ever wonder if this point of view is accurate? Or is it simply the result of what we have experienced so far?
The book mentioned earlier tries to make us understand that even though we all perceive differently, there is ONE way of looking at life. There is a universal truth that is true for each and every single one of us. A truth that lays underneath all the different personalized perceptions. This truth is the holding stage on which all the different sketches can be played out.
Learning to unlearn
Rather than convincing us of a specific idea, the book encourages us to question our own beliefs. It is a personal journey to understand what our judgments and views are built on. Once we understand that our own lenses are built on something that is untrue and purely subjective, we can choose to adjust and correct them.
The journey of self is, therefore, a way of releasing and correcting all the blocks and fears that cause individual perceptions. Such mis-thinking doesn’t just cause misperception but it is also the driving force to keep it alive.
Since “the fall” or the state of separation operates on the mental plane, it is the mind that needs guidance. The rest will automatically fall into its right place. Through unlearning what we think and belief can we then start to see reality as it truly is, rather than to filter it.
In Buddhism, this is called: Learning how to unlearn and embodies the same idea. Only by unlearning what we learned can we return to the one, universal, and single-minded perception. The one truth. Truth is always given, wherever perception is always learned.
Perceptions based on fear
While the root cause for ego perception lays in the separation itself, there are many misbeliefs that keep this cycle alive and going. One of our fundamental misbeliefs is that we are not complete, that we are not whole, that we are lacking something.
We are, based on this sense of lack, desperately trying to reach fulfillment. Most of us grow up in a world where fulfillment is misinterpreted in external accomplishments, in success, and in material possessions. We wander through life, desperately trying to accomplish the great task that has been laid on us.
We are searching in all the possible corners to feel complete and to feel satisfied. But every single need for external accomplishment is in their core based on fear: Fear of not being enough, fear of not being recognized, fear of dying, fear of not being taken care of, fear of …
“Nothing you do or think or wish or make is necessary to establish your worth. You are always complete, you are always whole.”
- A Course in Miracles: Page 55
Whenever we are afraid, we interpret life wrongly and can, therefore, not serve the one-mindedness. Since fear is a belief created by a single believer, it does not belong to the universal mind. Whenever we act from a state of individual believer who creates a belief, oneness is lost because we split ourselves off.
I used to be convinced that ego-less or ego-death involves some sort of sacrifice. As if we would have to give something up. When really it is simply an understanding that it is based on nothing. All the wishes, desires, and needs that come from our ego-personality are rooted in fear. Once we understand that fear is something we create ourselves and there is really nothing to be afraid of, wishing and desiring naturally fall off.
The mind is the source of all creation
The mind is the source of all creation and does create all the time. We often like to think that we create “things” with our bodies, when in fact, the body is only the device through which the mind can bring its creations into physical form. Everything, absolutely everything, has its origin in the mind and the mind is, therefore, all there is.
If we want to quench our thirst for fulfillment, happiness, and peace, we have to address and teach our minds first. We have to find the quell that gives rise to all the pain, confusion, and worries we experience in our daily lives.
Maybe it is part of human nature, that we always try to look for external solutions first. Somehow it feels more natural or “easier” to fix our lives and ourselves through outer means. But like we all find out sooner or later, outer means are only temporary, impermanent, and always subject to change.
And this change is not ours to control, even though we like to think so. Change is an essential part of life itself. Life is change and change is life. Everything moves in cycles, it comes and goes, arises and passes again. Life is fluid and not ours to control.
Trying to control something that will eventually change, might feel temporarily safe and protected, but does not satisfy us with a lasting sense of peace, stability, and belonging.
Returning to the universal mind
It might seem frightening to give up our own personality because if we don’t control our lives, who then is gonna take care of us? How are we gonna survive? How will our needs ever be met?
It is this fearful thinking that keeps the separation alive and it does not matter whether the separation is “real” or “not real”. As long as we believe in our fear and as long as we believe that we need something, whatever that might be, we are unable to experience oneness.
Since the mind creates all the time, our thinking based on fear does create too. We start to miscreate because our mind is not in its original state and we have to go through our daily created nightmares. We are captured in the endless cycle of mis-thinking, mis-creating, and mis-perceiving.
There is one episode in the book that really spoke to me:
“The children of God are entitled to the perfect comfort that comes from perfect trust. Until they achieve this they waste themselves and their true creative powers on useless attempts to make themselves more comfortable by inappropriate means. But the real means are already provided and do not involve any effort at all on their part.”
The kingdom of oneness takes care of every single one of us. Its wings of protection provide unconditional love, acceptance, care, and free will for every single child. That is why it leaves us the free choice to go our own way, to create our own lives.
We are always entitled to create our own world and to believe in our separate existence, but we cannot serve two kings at the same time. To serve the Ego means to live a life rooted in fear, separation, confusion, and uncertainty. It means to try to change reality to our own likings and needs.
To serve the universal mind or Spirit, on the other hand, means to experience oneness, peace, happiness, and true understanding. It means to always accept reality as it is without the need to change anything.
