(originally posted 2/3/2015)
Snow, Snow and MORE Snow….
My dog Comet loves the snow and loves to play fetch. Chasing snowballs is one of his most favorite activities. If we throw a snowball, he will try to catch it – and if he can’t catch it, he will dig for it in the snow. Yesterday, while shoveling our driveway, my son made a fascinating comment about this: “Comet is so silly! He just doesn’t understand that when a snowball lands in a pile of snow, it merges into the pile and is no longer a snowball.”
That brought me up short! As I reflected on this, I thought that it is kind of like how our minds work when we think about Consciousness. One of the basic tenets of Yoga is that we are each individualized forms of Consciousness, which has contracted to become us. While we all have the capacity to be aware of Consciousness, we often can’t see it because our minds get in the way. We are too busy preserving our own individuality – digging for it in the snow, so to speak.
We are all unique, yet we can merge into the larger Self through Meditation. When we do this, we remain our own individualized snowflake, yet at the same time we have a keen awareness of being a part of the greater field of snow. Not just a part of it, but we ARE it. It is us. In a field of snow, there is no difference between one snowflake and another. Just as in the ocean, there is no difference between the individual drops of water. And perhaps, with greater awareness, we humans will learn that there is no difference between us, either.
Meditation is a time-tested way of getting past the mind and realizing the Self. Come to one of our Satsangs and see for yourself what happens when you merge into the greater field of Consciousness!
