


Jarred woke up feeling numb and a little disoriented. He found himself putting his hand to his chest but wasn’t quite sure why. His heart rate was slow and steady and he seemed to feel a sense of calm he hadn’t felt in a long time, if ever! He had woken from a dream that seemed so real. He remembered sitting on a stump thumb wrestling with an opponent with a crowd of people sitting around cheering them on. Jarred remembered looking down at their hands and there was something very familiar about the hand of his opponent but he couldn’t quite make out what the familiarity was.

The competition seemed intense and the crowd kept getting more vociferous as the contest continued. Jarred found himself feeling exhausted by the exertion he was putting forth and beads of sweat began trickling down his forehead. One drop rolled right down the middle of his forehead and to the tip of his nose. He felt his opponent’s hand squeeze tighter and the fingers begin to dig into his palm as they pushed further and further into his flesh. Jarred could hear the crowd roar with excitement in the background. The drop of sweat was perched at the tip of Jarred’s nose and it seemed to be distracting him from the match as it just hung there.

After what seemed like an excruciatingly long period of time, the droplet of sweat fell off Jarred’s nose as if in slow motion. Jarred watched the drop fall slowly to his hand and when it hit the top of his hand, he saw it seep through the cracks formed by the index finger turning back toward the palm. He then noticed blood trickling out the bottom of his hand and heard his opponent laughing. The laugh also seemed familiar to Jarred but he couldn’t place it. The next thing Jarred knew his hand began to merge into the hand of his opponent. Jarred felt a sudden terror come over him and for the first time he looked up at his opponent’s face. His opponent stopped laughing and looked directly at him. It was Jarred himself!

At that point of the dream everything changed. The crowd disappeared immediately and everything was perfectly quiet. Jarred was now totally alone standing looking at the stump he was only recently just sitting on. He felt exhausted and a little confused. Suddenly the stump began to grow and transformed into a man. It was Isha, now looking at Jarred with a broad smile. Isha looked warmly at Jarred and said, “How is it that we don’t see that warring with each other is like thumb wrestling against ourselves? If my left thumb overpowers my right thumb do I win?”

Jarred remembered just standing there with a bewildered look on his face trying to comprehend what had just happened. Then Isha started to talk and when he did, it was as if his words were coming to Jarred through a tunnel. Everything else disappeared. The only thing left was Isha’s face and the words coming from his mouth. As Isha spoke Jarred felt immobilized, but instead of being afraid he felt very comfortable, as if he didn’t want to move and was glad he could comfortably stand so quiet and alert while Isha spoke.

Isha said, “God is within you, there is no doubt of that. God is everywhere and in everything. Practically every religion dating back thousands of years embraces this philosophy. God is the life force that flows through us all. We must remember this truth when interacting with others. The statements in the bible that refer to us being one body are real, both in a physical and spiritual sense.”

“The story in Genesis tells us that God created all creatures from the dust of the earth, including mankind. God then breathed life into Adam. Later, God created Eve from Adam’s rib. Next, Adam and Eve began having children, who had more children. If we trace our current physical bodies back to the beginning of time, we can see that this story is a symbolic representation of how we are all from the same physical body. That physical body in this particular story is the earth itself, and the breath that sustains these physical bodies is the life force provided by the breath of God.

“When the bible say’s that we were formed in God’s image, it is referring to our spiritual self; the one who was breathed into us by God in the beginning. Whether one believes in the bible literally or figuratively, or whether one believes in evolution matters not. Evolution basically tells us the same story; only the characters and timeline are different. Every physical body still comes from the same source, which can be traced back to the earth and then to the stars and then to the big bang itself.

“If it stands to reason that all physical forms can be traced to the same singular physical source, then does it not also stand to reason that all life force can also be traced to the same energy source? Indeed, according to evolution, all energy on earth comes from the sun, which came from the same original source from the big bang. In the depictions in the bible, the life force came from the breath of God, and the life force from each subsequent human being came from that same life force. Again, irrespective of whether one looks to evolution or to the literal or even figurative translation of the bible, the basic message of the story is the same.”

“How could our inner self be any less real than our outer self? The simple fact of the matter is it cannot! Our inner self, or soul, spirit, consciousness, or whatever else we choose to call it, is what witnesses our physical self, so if anything, our inner self must be more ‘real’ than our physical body. It is this inner self that is connected with the One life force of energy. The ideas we are taught throughout our lives about how we are unique, separate, special, and different from everyone else supports and expands our egos, both individually and collectively. It is the ego that then directs the body and tells it how to act. The ego then stands between the soul and the body. How can this be good for humanity?

“Teaching the interconnectedness of all life has a much higher purpose than teaching of the benefits of individuality and has more truth than the teaching of this separation, which is only real in physical form, made possible by the senses and perceived by the ego. In reality, physical differences are merely present through the functionality of human sense perception so that our physical self can interact with others and with the environment. If we trace the source of both our physical self and our spiritual self, we can see that there is only One. If then we can be the witness of both our physical body and the ego, we can come from the place of spirit, which is the life force provided to us by the Universe.

“We are not separate from our environment, we are a part of it, much like the words on the page of a book are inseparable from the page itself. We can consider ourselves like those words and our environment like that page. We cannot have one without the other. Similarly, all of humanity comes from the same body, the planet earth. Included with humanity on this planet are all of the forms of life, including plants, animals, insects, and microorganisms. If we fight with each other over the right to use these resources, or we take from the earth unabashedly, without allowing time for the land to recover, we are, in effect, warring against ourselves. By understanding this principle we can come to work with our environment rather than against it.”

As Isha continued he took on a more direct approach and rather than speaking globally, he spoke directly to Jarred as an individual. “Jarred,” said Isha, “you are a man of science and have a background in biology. Imagine the earth as a giant living cell and the people, animals, plants, and all other life cells must maintain homeostasis in order to function properly and go on living. In order to maintain this balance, the cell has a membrane, which allows objects to enter and leave its body. It utilizes the information provided by these objects in order to provide the cell with the necessary ingredients to function properly, such as using the amino acids from protein molecules to build more cell parts, and extracting energy from the chains of complex carbohydrate molecules to do the work necessary to build those parts.

“If a virus enters that cell and tricks the cell into believing that it needs to make more viruses, then it will do that, even at the expense of the cell itself. If it then produces enough of these erroneous physical bodies, the functioning of the cell will be compromised and the cell will surely die. However, the immune system of any individual organism is in place to protect it from invading bodies such as viruses. It will seek out and destroy these foreign particles in order to maintain homeostasis.

“Similarly, the earth must maintain balance in order for it to survive. It, like the cell, has a protective membrane, its atmosphere, which helps to maintain this balance, allowing energy from the sun to enter and the extra solar radiation to leave. The energy is then utilized by the life forms on earth. If a group of life forms uses up too much of the energy in any given area, they will eventually die out and give rise to other life forms. In essence, balance must be maintained by the life forms themselves or the earth will see to it that they are eliminated so that the overall balance of the planet can be maintained.

This phenomenon can be seen in the form of large herds of grazing animals that become over populated. Soon their numbers become too great for the sustainability of that area and food supplies become limited. The population’s overall resistance to infection lowers and many die off. With their numbers reduced, their population can be maintained as the vegetation is allowed sufficient time to be replenished. In contrast, if individual animals did not die off from disease, and were allowed to graze until the land was barren, the entire population may starve to a point of extinction. In this way, the invading viruses that attack these vulnerable animals act as a protective mechanism for the population as a whole, and help to insure that the earth will survive.

“Now imagine man’s place on this earth. Many come from the perspective that the earth is here for our purpose and we can use it as we see fit, without thinking about the repercussions of overuse. When this happens, the population of humans becomes too great for the given area to sustain it. Soon, the humans begin fighting each other for the right to use those resources, much like animals fight each other for the use of the territories they live in. One group of individuals might win out and have the resources to sustain their population for a given period of time. However, as that group’s population begins to soar the resources again begin to run short. Eventually, the people begin fighting amongst themselves.

“This cycle could continue on forever, that is until the earth has had enough and finds a way to eliminate the source of the problem, which in this case would be us. The earth might then treat us like an invading virus and find ways to destroy us to preserve its own homeostasis. For example, there are times when forests become so depleted that the weather patterns in that area begin to change, causing torrential downpours and floods that wipe out many of the living organisms in that area. Given enough time, free of the invading life forms that caused the over-forestation, the land can be replenished and the forest can return.

“We must always remember that we are of one body and if we choose to fight others we are actually fighting against ourselves. Can a finger tell another finger that it doesn’t belong? And if one finger is lost does not the entire hand suffer? Are the four fingers and thumb of the hand not stronger together than any of the individual parts? Only when we begin to teach the principle of oneness to all our children, above the principal of separateness through individuality, will we find peace and harmony amongst the human race. Only then can humanity thrive in a way that has yet to be seen on this planet since the beginning.”

With that final remark Isha morphed back into the stump in which he came and Jarred was again left standing there alone in absolute stillness and silence. He stood and gazed at the stump for some time without moving. In fact, he could not even sense that he had a body and didn’t remember having a single thought. He simply stood gazing at the stump in awe. It was at that point that Jarred woke up.

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