The threads of our existence are what bind us together. Some threads exist in space, like the clothes we wear, but our most important threads are spun in time. The ancients compared them to the work of the "Norns" three old blind women who incessantly wove the cloth of time. One warping, one wefting, and the third one knotting the threads and cutting them. Birth and death knot us together. What seems like a multitude of lives is woven out of one string. Hence it is just illusion to see our "selves" as seperate from one another. The Moslems are right that the unary experience of spiritual life is non-dual -- Or to put it in their terms "God is one." We are all sharing the same fabric of life.
And yet, the fabric of faith time is complex enough that it has room for other patterns besides there pattern. Jews are right about a surprising number of things. The Bahai have some things right. The Sikhs others. Christians yet others. The universal things that are true may speak different languages but they convey the same truths.
When they seem to contradict that is a matter of perspective. All us humans like blind men trying to figure out this fabric covered "elephant" which is life. And all of us busy weaving away on our part of the interlocked threads -- until the time for that cut. Snip Snip. Do I dream? No a new thread is knotted.
Posted by cholte at December 17, 2004 01:20 AM