James Colbert – USA
Finding Unity is The Most Difficult of All.
For most of us the path of unity is the most difficult. At one moment we may be content with separateness. We may feel safe and without threat. To join with another or others can have the effect that we might lose something of ourselves.
The path of unity is the most difficult
Yet, at another moment, unity is compelling. Brotherhood, Sisterhood, Compassion, Sympathy, Support for others and Unity resonates somewhere within us. There is an almost unconscious nodding of our heads as we let the flavor of the words circulate. The heart has taken the lead and found its rightful place. We sense this is somehow who and what we are.
But somehow we start to feel like “they” do things differently, not the right way, and “that is really not me.” Traditions that are treasured so dearly we feel will be lost. Our inclination turns towards separateness. You go your way and I will go mine. Soon we find fault in how they do it. We sometimes feel so much better in not “giving in” to the way they do it. We feel justified and temporarily safe.
As long as we are not involved with “them” we can do fairly well. However, something may bring us in contact as the world is now growing smaller. We start to become aware “they” are really not that much different from ourselves. And, we recognize that if we were together so much more could be accomplished. We start to gravitate towards “them.” We start to get along. We may even laugh and enjoy the sometimes comradeship. We may even become exposed and reveal our thoughts and feelings more openly. Then, something may happen and we may find what we said or did was not well received. We may again hunger for separateness. The cycle of going forward and drawing back begins to repeat.
How to get past this cycle? Theosophy does give us the tools. It is suggested that unity is at a higher level of our being. Separateness is at a much lower level. Unity is at the Buddhi -Manas level of consciousness. We are capable of finding this level within ourselves and going there. Somehow we need to bring this to our awareness.
Ianthe H. Hoskins
In the extraordinary little booklet put together by the well-known English author and lecturer and member the Adyar Society, Ianthe H. Hoskins, Foundations of Esoteric Philosophy, she writes that Commander Robert Bowen recorded from H. P. B., that the first principle to keep in mind when studying Theosophy is the FUNDAMENTAL UNITY OF ALL EXISTENCE. Ianthe elaborated that existence is ONE THING.
Unity, we might say, is the bedrock of the Theosophical philosophy – even though it can hurt. Holding to this thought is the most difficult of all – yet so important.