The Cosmos Within
Seldom do we realize this as we live our lives: we have the cosmos within us! We are limitless beings in rather limited bodies, but we contain all life, just as all life contains us. We are s-s-o-o-u-u-l-l, soul an intimate part of everything, connected on all levels to the essence of life.
We can shake the tree of knowledge, climb the tree of life, soar with the angels and dive deep into the seas, all within ourselves. Only in our limited minds are we finite, separate beings. We have a set of organs, parallel to our sense organs, that know beyond the world we see: a heart that embraces all mankind and all living things, an ear that hears the Word of God and the pulse of all life, an inner eye that sees through our limited separate bodies to our connection to all creation and a sense of touch that responds to subtle, powerful, unseen stimuli.
We house the great cathedral in our psyches, we know what the ancients knew, we are beyond possibilities and potentialities. There are oceans teeming with life. There is fertile earth to curl our toes around. There is spacious sky. There is sunrise and sunset. There are bottomless lakes, partially seen icebergs, grand canyons and high mountains. Anything you see in the world is within you, too.
This is where our souls reside—in a limitless, spacious world of great depth and breadth, with an infinite abundance available to all living beings and to the supposedly inanimate objects on earth and in the heavens. It’s a paradox, this awareness of our limitations and of our connection to infinity.
Like the atoms which make up the molecules and then the cells of our bodies, there is more space than mass in us. I laugh when I think we are 60-70% water in our bodies—all I feel is solid flesh and bone, yet I believe the scientists are right. Why is it so hard to believe that the cosmos resides in us and we in it? Creation is so seldom what it appears to be. Even the hardest rocks are made of atoms and all that space, just more compacted(and with less dynamic movement than animate life), I guess, than we are.
God, Creator and Deliverer, is also within us and without. That doesn’t mean that we are God, but that the Spirit of God resides in all life, even the inanimate parts. If we live in God and God lives in us, how we can live more consciously aware of God?
Silence is the one way to access the limitlessness of our nature. Sitting in silence, in meditation, or before the beauty of a sunset, expands our interior spaces, creates more room for us to maneuver in. If we spend daily time in silence, we are thereby turning down the volume, power and distraction of our own thoughts and developing the ability to entertain a much broader perspective on who we are and on the world we live in.
The benefit of this practice is an increased ability to tap into deep wells within—nurtured by the Spirit—of love, patience, support, connectivity and creativity. We live more deeply into our lives with less concern about what we don’t have and more satisfaction with what we do have. We are loved and we can feel it. We become more connected to our purpose and derive more meaning from what we do.
It is a heady experience to entertain the cosmos within us; luckily we do live in limitation, too, to keep us grounded on the earth. By keeping our minds focused on this paradox while living our everyday lives, we bring a broader, fresher perspective to our lives, a deeper sense of who we are and what we can accomplish. Thanks be to God.