The Only Thing That Matters (8 page)

What you are now being invited to do is delete much of your Old Story about Life and how it is, Death and what it is, and God and who it is to make room for a New Story.

Here is a parable to help in the conceiving of that New Story …

The Parable of the Snowflake

Once upon a time there was a snowflake. It's name was Sara. Sara the Snowflake had a brother named Sam. Sam the Snowflake.

Sara and Sam both lived a good life—but they feared for the day that they would die, melting away into the nothingness. Then one day the Snow Angel appeared to both of them. “A snowflake is eternal. Did you know that?” the Angel said, and then the Angel explained:

“The very first snowflakes in the history of the world are the snowflakes that are falling today. They fall from the sky as highly individualized physicalizations. There are no two snowflakes alike. There never have been, in all the history of snowflakes.

“The flakes are awesomely beautiful in their individual design. No one who watches them falling from the heavens can fail to see their exquisite splendor. People run outside when snowflakes fall, beholding their breathtaking magnificence.

“As they land, they merge with one another. People call a huge collection of them on the ground simply ‘snow.' They don't say, ‘Look at that big pile of snowflakes.' They say, ‘Look at that mountain of snow.' They see all the individual snowflakes as One. And indeed, the snowflakes
are
One with One Another.”

The Angel went on …

“Soon the sun comes out and the snow melts, each flake disappearing, one by one. They don't, of course, disappear at all. They simply change form. Now they are water, rippling together in a sparkling puddle or flowing together in a little stream.

“The sun continues to work its magic, and soon the water itself disappears. Or
seems
to. Actually, it, too, simply changes form. It evaporates, rising into the air as invisible vapors and gathering there in such concentration that they are visible again—as clouds.

“As more and more vapors gather, the clouds become heavy with their moisture. Soon, once again, the moisture falls, raining down upon the earth. And if the temperature is just right, the falling rain turns into snowflakes again—no two snowflakes alike. Ever. In the history of snowflakes.”

Sara and Sam were never so happy in their entire lives. Suddenly, everything was what you might call …
crystal clear
.

And so, in the snow we see the Cycle of Life and the Story of You.

There was never a time when You were not. There will never
be
a time when You will not Be. You appear from the heavens, physicalized as individual aspects of All That Is. While each physicalization is absolutely and gloriously non-identical, they are nevertheless All The Same Thing. And so they merge into a single essence, a particular life expression that you call “humans.”

Then, to the heavens each Essence returns, once more
invisible-ized
.

You are not “no longer here,” You are simply “no longer visible.” Yet You exist, fully self-conscious and fully self-aware, until You return again to total visibility through full physicalization.

And here is a great secret. You are never
not
“physical.” You are sometimes simply
less
physical. Even as a snowflake is never not physical. When it is snow, it is physical. When it is water, it is physical. When it is steam, it is physical. When it is vapor, it is physical. When it is moisture, it is physical. When it is unseen and utterly invisible, it is physical. When it falls from the clouds as rain, it is physical. And when it hits the freezing temperature beneath the sunlit clouds, it crystallizes, becoming a snowflake once again.

What a journey the snowflake has taken! Changing form, changing form, evermore changing form, finally returning as another snowflake, magnificently different from its earlier version, but still, in essence, the same.

And what a journey
you have taken.
It is a Sacred Journey, with a Divine Purpose.

The fact that the Body and the Mind remain with the Soul is evidenced in the testimony (and those testimonies now number in the thousands) of people who have had what are called NDE's, or Near Death Experiences.

These people often report that their Mind was fully aware of everything that was going on when they “crossed over” to the “other side.” In some cases they even tell of experiencing themselves in their own Body, in its highest state of good health. But the Body isn't “heavy,” as a snowflake falling to earth. It is light as vapor, as a snowflake not yet crystalized.

Many also report seeing and being greeted by loved ones who have “gone before”—and that these loved ones, too, appeared in
their
own bodies at the height of their health, each body as light as vapor.

What is being said here is that all expressions of physical life have the ability to transmogrify, and all life on earth
does so
.

Impossible!
you say … but is it?

“It's no use,” cried Alice, “one can't believe impossible things!”
“I dare say, you haven't had enough practice,” replied the White Queen.
“I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed
six impossible things before breakfast.”

Through the Looking-Glass
(
Chapter 5
)
Lewis Carroll

Still, it is hard to imagine that Life goes on forever. As in, forever and ever, and even forevermore. The Mind searches for ways to comprehend it, given that there are no examples around us. Or are there … ?

The Truth of Trees

If you could sit at your window for many, many years and just watch the tree outside your house, you would see that the tree never dies, but simply changes form.

You might say, “Yes, but it began somewhere. It began with a seed.” Yet where did the seed come from? “From another tree,” you might say. But what if the truth is,
it's the same tree?

Imagine a tree growing from a seed. The tree grows and grows and grows until one day, perhaps hundreds of years on, it stops growing and does the thing that you call “die.” Yet it has not died. It has simply undergone a
process
, which includes creating seeds, which in turn have sprouted new trees. But are these really
new
trees … or merely the
same old tree starting over?

When a tree reaches the grandest height that it is going to reach in its present form, it drops
itself
onto the ground. (That is, it ultimately falls over.) Yet the seed that it earlier dropped is not something else. It is
part of the tree
, just as a drop of ocean water is part of the ocean itself. We are simply giving
different names
to the
same thing in different forms
.

When the tree drops a seed, it is dropping
itself
onto the ground; it then plants itself
into
the ground, then experiences itself growing all over again, in what
appears to be another “body.”
Yet it is the
same
body, having gotten smaller, and then bigger; having transmogrified.

You can even cause a tree or a plant to do this in
mid-cycle
, by taking a mere
clipping
from the tree and putting it into water, where it will sprout new roots, allowing it to then be planted into the ground.

Now, is this
another tree?
Or, miracle of miracles, is it the
same
tree, a part of which has been snipped off and replanted?
Where does one tree end and the other tree begin?
Because they are physically separated, does that mean they are not the
exact same Essence?

In our limited human understanding, we have equated physical separation with essential differentiation. But what if there are no differences at the level of Essence?

There are not. And this is what is meant by Eternal Life.

It has been built into
every form of Life that exists.
From stars and planets to entire solar systems. Yea, to entire
universes.
From people and snowflakes and trees to entire ecosystems, and everything
in
them, each aspect of Life experiences the fact of its own eternal existence and its own Energy Essence in accordance with its own level of Consciousness.

What is this
Essence
that transfers from one snowflake to the next, from one tree to the next, from one solar system to the next, from one “physicalization” to the next, from one “lifetime” to the next?

It is The Only Thing There Is,
continually transmogrifying.
It is Divinity, indivisible but made individually visible, over and over again, through the expression that we call Life Itself.

It is the Single Soul,
reborn
. It is the One Thing,
multiplied.
It is God,
reshaped
.

It Was In The Beginning, Is Now, and Ever Shall Be, world without end.

It is You.

10
There's Even More to Remember

O
KAY, NOW IT'S FAIR
to say it: “That's all very poetic, and this
has
all been very informative, but what
does
it have to do with me, with my life and my miseries and my challenges and my difficulties and, for that matter, even my joys? Can this now be related to my life, please? Because if it can't, I'm through with this discussion. I want to find out what
life
is all about; I want to hear about The Only Thing That Matters. I didn't come here to learn the fine points of universal cosmology.”

Impatience at this point is fair. It would be very normal for you to react this way. The human Mind has been doing that—pulling people away from what they might most benefit from hearing—for a long time. We see, then, that what seems “fair” may not always be beneficial.

A case is being made here that your Soul and The Fundamental Essence of Life Itself are
the same thing, reshaped.
That is, you and all other things are One Thing, differing in form and composition, but identical at the level of Essence.

The information you have just received may not
seem
to have any practical application right now, but wait. The best part of this exploration has just begun.