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When one sees a blossom, each petal is the blossom, yet the blossom is all the petals, so the whole. If a petal were to be absorbed into another petal or the blossom, the petal would lose itself. The integrity of the blossom is both the unity of all and the self-unity of each. All Nature teaches us the unity that humans seem willing to try to deny, so perpetuate suffering in the self and in the world, as well as in Nature. So acting with integrity is not foremost speaking truthfully, but being true to oneself and the whole in one fidelity. Being true to oneself is simply being what you are, not trying to be anything or anyone. A petal does not try to be a petal, the blossom does not try to be a blossom.
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We cannot fathom how the self, the river, and the shore are not three, but three-and-one. Yet, oneness implies the parts are other to each other and one with and in each other. Every metaphor we use is exhausted in our effort to talk about this unity, but that does not mean we cannot know it, cannot experience being it. Direct experience of unity is possible, for being is not divided; being, or oneness, is that which projects the duality. Therefore, meditation is not first about relating with duality, though it often begins with such, but how duality is of a seamless unity with Consciousness, or in theism, God. In Buddhism this is like asking, "What is Buddha Nature?" "What is not Buddha Nature?"
So, the Silence embodies the harmony we invite into ourselves that we may return Home - within and in affirmation of the world. This reconciliation, even as the man Jesus cannot do the work of Christ apart from the Dove, or Spirit, effecting this unity between "Son" and "Father." So, the Son can say, "What I hear the Father say, that I do," and "I and my Father are one." The Harmony is possible, Jesus and Father, for neither is lost in absorption into the other.
So, the Christian Trinity - Father, Son, Spirit - is a metaphor of the harmony we speak of, as other religions have other means to indicate One is a unity-of-unities, a Whole-of-wholes. This same appears in the use of body, mind, and soul of the self, the self not being one of these, but all together. The self is a body, is a mind, and is a soul. So, to say, "I have a soul," is to lose unity. Or to say, "I am a soul with a body," is to forfeit oneness. To say, "I am in the world," is to lose the harmony. Where do you end and the world begin? When you speak, the world speaks? When you walk, Spirit is walking? How can this not be, when there is no point that separates one being from another? All Nature moves into the other, other into other, as paint runs into the diverse colors.
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We discover the joy of fellowship with the Divine in immanence and transcendence. Grace appears as the Totally Other to unite us with the totally here. We hold these as complimentary. And in this harmony, the tension between the sacred and the secular, the religious and the irreligious, you and the other relaxes into a primal, eternal One.
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In Life, apparent contradictions are a Unity, so embodying this harmony is virginal. The vow of chastity in monasticism we best see as a pointer to this innocence, not merely a non-engagement in sex. One can be virginal in enjoying sex or choosing not to have sex, even as one could live a vow of chastity and not be chaste. Virginal is about the harmony of the self in sacred intercourse with the unity that is Life.
Hence, holy means wholly living. Quiet meditation in the church or secular music in the truck, either is holy when entered into entirely - that is, the self in harmony with Life through the act. Unity is, so unity moves. So, what many see as religious can be irreligious, no longer being a mirror of and expression of the Sacred. That is, a religious act is irreligious, when lacking connection to the Sacred. In Wholeness, the self enters Life, and Life enfolds the self in the Harmony. Religion, then, in uniting one with the Divine, unites us, through the Divine, with everything and everyone.
Religion is un-religious when not effecting this reconciliation. Being alienated from the self, the self lives its alienation; independence becomes the self-incarceration of the self by the self, pompously parading itself as intelligent and powerful in the face of the Mystery of Life, even if claiming to worship the One. Isolated in a false intimacy with itself, it is isolated from others, even when amid others, and, so, it is isolated from Life even while part of Life.
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So, when, as the Hindus say, one is alone with the Alone, this is the way of being alone and with all others. The "Alone," or God, or Life, is the One in which all inhere as one. If one is truly alone in Prayer, one is not in isolation, but in communion with the All that includes all.
Therefore, the solitude of the self is not the self escaping the world, but the self retreating to include the self in the world, which is to say to extend itself into the world intimately, inviting the world intimately into itself. The distractions of the world can hinder this intimacy. So, the self immersing itself in the world loses itself and betrays its union and communion with the world; the self is absorbed as into a lifeless glob of objects among objects. Hence, many are lonely and isolated, constantly distracted, so not available to the natural flow of Love and the unseen Harmonies.
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