When I speak of this communion we are, persons may see this as a thing and we are things making up this thing called communion. I do not mean this. You cannot find communion anywhere, for it is nowhere. You may experience it somewhere, yes at many places or with many persons, but communion is not there. Communion is alive, moving, through, but free of, space and time. So, you cannot rightly say, "We are a communion," but you can say, "Feel free to enjoy communion with us." So, maybe it is a good pointer to say, "Communion is working," for communion is invitational, invites. How communion is and is inviting us, we do not know. Yet, we can feel this, if we allow ourselves to be sensitive enough, for communion does not shout, communion is subtle, like a whispering. And part of our growing in union with this communion is becoming less reliant on certain feelings associated with communion. We can be without any sensation of communion, yet recognize communion is present. In this quiet recognition, communion is more able to manifest as particular sensations, as though through the veil separating time and space from the eternal timeless. We are the servant, then, of communion, and communion manifests in ways we learn not to try to determine. Communion is and we relax, inviting communion to appear as communion will appear.

* * *

From a psychological perspective, most of us have been trained to see the individual self as who we are, when the individual self is only an expression of the self-in-communion, which is better expressed by we than I. Yet, also, we at the psychological level of being, is merely a collection of individuals thinking as a collective individual, which is not the we that is sacred communion. In communion the individual is taken into the we by the we, and the individual sense of self is in a posture of service, which is giving and receiving love, with the whole. In this, personal agenda loses power to assert itself. If personally felt-need is fulfilled, the fulfillment comes from the communion, not the assertion of a self onto the communion to get the fulfillment. The realization arises there is nothing to assert, and fulfillment is the communion itself, not anything separate from the communion. One discovers, in this calm abiding among others, an amazing love, and he or she finds how the aggression to find fulfillment wherein others are used as instruments to meet the felt-need of the individual actually hindered the arising of love, so the blessing of fulfillment.

* * *

If I exclude from embrace any expression of Grace, I have excluded part of who we are, so in some way, I am less of who I am, regardless of my reasons for the exclusion. By including one expression of the diversity of Grace, I have become more of who I am. I am, in some sense, more Love and we are more Love. Otherness is no longer a threat, only another way my deepest beingness is living in this world.

And embrace, or inclusion, does not mean having to reveal all I think or do. Inclusion is not pushing inclusion on others. In inclusion we can discern how to withhold, so to help maintain a space together wherein we value the togetherness more than what we reveal or not.

So, this contrasts with the mentality that one must express himself or herself as a self, and he or she has a right to that. Contemplative spirituality, or oneness, sensitizes us to a new landscape of spirit, not the personality, so all the 'rules' change. The priority is the communion with others, not the expression of the individual sense of self. We, then, find our true self as the self with others, and with the Spirit in whom communion finds its source and expression.

* * *

I lived near my office, in a room I rented monthly. The area was lovely, set amid fields of varied crops and lovely woods, with meandering dark-water creeks. But living like this, and at a place where the owners were wonderful persons and conservative religiously, I kept my beautiful, hand-carved Buddha from Indonesia at my birth home. There I covered it, out of respect for my conservative Baptist birth family. Thankfully, this was temporary, and I came to live where I could unhide the Buddha.

* * *

But does hiding an image of Buddha really, finally, matter? Some would see this as disrespectful - I do not. I see it in the spirit of Buddha to hide an image of Buddha out of respect for those who are simply not prepared to receive the intimations of Peace in that representation. This question is alike the question, "Can anyone hide the Christ?" Or, "Can anyone hide the I we are?"

To some degree, maybe hiding what we think, feel, and do is essential and wise in most cultures. I know in mine, we are not prepared for inclusion, possibly not even to tolerate the graceful diversity we are and Life is. We speak, sing, write, and dance of love, yet, sadly, we have not stabilized ourselves beyond tolerating others in a passive disrespect, wherein we allow differences but ignore those different or that we see as too different. We say we tolerate, and, if we do, we do behind our walls. If this is tolerance, this is not the inclusion of diversity we need, we, then, have not transcended our prejudices to agree and disagree without walls. These psychological walls indicate we fear the power of that unlike us, so fail to trust the stability of that we see ourselves to be.

* * *

Heaven, to me, is a being including all rays of the Sun of Love. The true Heart already includes all, for the true Heart has no fear or ignorance to shut out any tint of Light. As Love internalizes Itself within us, we rejoice in the Many-Splendored rays of Grace.

* * *

By loving the diversity of Love, I love Love and welcome the Kindness of this Effulgence into myself. I come to see I am myself, even in this human disguise, a face of one Grace, and Oneness does not rely on how I believe or feel at any moment. To say I am becoming means I am becoming I am. I am does not discriminate, but welcomes all Love as an expression of its own being Love. And in this welcoming, one discovers the sacredness of being a person making up a communion both transcending and including persons. Person finds its transcendence of person, then, in communion and, so, lives in a flow of fulfillment arising from the communion.

* * *

A mystery of communion is persons do not form a communion. Two persons or millions cannot form or be a communion. Rather, we arise from communion. Sharing heart-with-heart feels natural and joyful to us, for communion is who we are.

*Priya Saihgal. 'Diversity ... '. Flickr

*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2019