Entirety

 “There is no other.” These words kept on whispering. Tumbling into her awareness.

Aria was lying on the dry leaves beneath a gigantic pecan nut tree that grew on the piece of land she called home. The delicate leaves of the branches that created a woven staircase up into the sky, were lightly stroked by an almost imperceptible breeze and Aria was gently lulled into a deeper state of consciousness where she suddenly found herself at the very beginning of her relationship with Earth.

Still an ethereal being, an Angel whose reality was only eternity, She (we will use She as we could use He) felt an excitement, a huge desire to experience something completely new. A world where She herself could become only a part, many parts in fact, parts that did not remember they were just One, and go out and explore the far edges of possibility. Playing with energy in ways never imagined. Reversing consciousness into all sorts of opposite reflexions. Experience for the sake of expansion. Experience for the sake of experience.

At first it had been enchanting, not completely fixed in form, never too far from remembering the One that She was… Until She fell. Aria felt herself falling from this Grace of innocent experimentation into real oblivion and then it became hard. She felt confined. Restricted. Stifled. She tried to reach out to something She knew she was but could no longer define, but nothing came to her assistance. Nothing took Aria out of this heaviness. It was like a spell had been cast upon her and she was no longer capable of flying in and out, of floating in joy and bathing in amazement. 

The body became like a punishment. Others could no longer see her as sweetly innocent, all loving and kind. Just as she could no longer see herself.

The victim was born from her sense of having been abandoned by someone she could not identify but that she perceived to be almighty and eventually capable of saving her and so she had to create the abuser as well. The one that seemed stronger so as not to feel the pain of the victim. Maybe in seeing this Small Human Self being abused, the Saviour would come. And so she started playing out the Saviour role too, just to know of its possibility until it actually came to her rescue. She wished.

Everything kept on falling into place to serve her reality of separation, so that she could see it everywhere and believe this to be the only truth of her existence.

Anger became a good friend and then guilt, shame and blame came to join it. Despair, helplessness, hopelessness, frustration, anguish and in due course rage, hatred and vengefulness, all sprung up from the ground of abandonment and there seemed to be no end to suffering as a natural way of life.

Aria had found many avenues to escape the awareness of her body in order to numb the pain down, keeping her cells in a near death stew of survival but not coming too close into them so as not to remember… Not yet. It had become extremely seductive to be the victim.

This went on and on for many many lifetimes, though at some crucial points Aria had touched her whole Self and been drawn to reassemble what had become dispersed. These moments had, however, been fleeting and imprecise, quickly getting submerged into the quicksand of separation for an undetermined number of experiences in lack.

Sometimes, Aria had spent most of a lifetime in the bliss of God, mostly perceived as an external force, rarely acknowledged as a part of herself. These expressions of being blessed had filled her with a longing. And this longing had become a search. And this search had become a quagmire of pitfalls and dead ends. And she had developed a fear of failure. A kind of sense that she must be doing something wrong because otherwise she would have already found that which she was seeking and relaxed into it.

Aria was not aware that it was impossible to fail. How does one fail to be what one already is?

The elusive mirrors of what she was not, kept Aria entertained in the belief that she could feign being something other than herself forever. And yet she did not want this at all.

Now Aria was at a point where all she wanted was to rest. Not just for a while. She wanted something that would stay with her. A peace that was unending and an experience that could evolve from it. Which in other words meant that all she wanted was reunion. 

The One that had been forgotten was looking at her, the separate perception of her, welcoming, smiling lovingly, fully aware of the pain she had been through, honouring it completely and inviting her to walk into the One without leaving anything behind. All of that which Aria had been afraid to admit, reveal, forgive… All of it was invited in and received with gratitude. 

Aria now saw herself crystallised in-between this compassionate Oneness that was whole and the multitudes of suffering small figures of her, some wretched, some scowling, some so numb with pain they could not even move or speak… And she realised it was all her but none was fully accepted. She was the separation. She was the smoke screen between her and herself. 

How could she bring her entire Self back together again then?

How could this “I” that had been denying part of darkness and part of light, stop denying?

How could it be done, once and for all?

And it became clear that no matter how much she understood, there came a point where no understanding could breach the gap.

Acceptance. 

It was all her. There were no parts. There were no sides. There was nothing else. And she could not go wrong simply because there was nothing to fail! 

Acceptance.

The radiance glowing over to one side was the very essence of the darkness screaming to the other side and she was all of it.

It had not been decided that this Earth experience would be had despite her, without her consent, in her absence. Absolutely not. The One that She was had chosen and Aria was intrinsic to that One.

There was no one to blame. No one to ask for justification. No one to judge. No one outside of herself had created all of her experiences. She was responsible for having allowed it all, having dived into it all, having seemed to get lost in it all. 

Acceptance. 

She was responsible for expanding the Universe of possibilities beyond itself and enhancing her magnificence to proportions she now found hard to acknowledge. 

Of course! She had not known herself to be this. Even back then, when she was an Angel getting ready to excitedly discover life in physical form! The One that she was now stepping back into had evolved into a new One as a consequence of all of the experiences lived on the other side of the smoke screen. 

She could not go back to being the One she had been before existing on Earth and she could not know who she had become without stepping into the One all over again and discovering it - Herself.

Nothing had gone wrong!

Acceptance.

“There is no other”. Yes.

Aria now realised. 

In a bout of complete surrender, the Aria of now let go of pushing the sides away whilst also holding onto the past of herself… She let go of everything and just imploded. Nothing. No one. All.

Complete acceptance.

The soft moist ground, the tree, the sky above it and herself. There was no difference. And yet it was all different.

There is no other.

Dissolving was not that hard after all. And it was not only painless but absolutely liberating. Which seemed pretty obvious in this moment… How could she have made herself believe she would lose something when all there was to be found lay exactly where the letting go was allowed? 

She felt laughter bubbling up from her belly as she accepted that it didn’t matter! It didn’t matter at all! Her laughter grew and burst out into tears as her heart grew into infinity and her Mind went blank. Silent. 

The Silence became so strong, it simultaneously paused and transmuted whatever Aria had known herself to be and even her laughter could dwell in it.

Now, all there was, was her entirety.