In trying to understand the world and our lives, I quickly get into consideration of the concepts of spirit and the real world. Everyone believes that the real world exists (why wouldn’t they? – we experience it) but a lot of people doubt the existence of spirit. Now, there’s one thing I believe is true…
Nothing exists but spirit.
Only four simple words, but I’ll bet they are creating a whole range of emotions in the people reading this page. I mean exactly what you think I mean, everything is spirit and what we think is the real world, does not exist (at least not how we think it exists).
Ok, maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t think so (many very wise people have said the same thing over the centuries, but maybe not in exactly the same way). I’d like to explain more about spirit and the real world, but I’ll keep it brief and not go into too much depth. I’d love to know if this resonates (or not) with you.
What is spirit?
Spirit is something we cannot see, touch, smell or hear. It has no form. It has no substance in the sense that we’re used to from interacting with things with substance. It doesn’t exist anywhere in particular. It doesn’t need anything to exist – it just is. However, spirit is the force behind the things we don’t understand. Spirit is the ultimate answer to all of our dilemmas.
Behind the form we see as ourselves, we are spirit. Our essence is spirit. Everything we have that’s important has come from this spirit.
What about the real world?
We experience the real world every day. We have to struggle with our bodies, feel the pain that bodies feel from time to time, feel the reality of things when we bump into them and feel the hurt when somebody puts us down.
What we think of as the real world doesn’t exist. We just think it does. As long as we believe it is real, we experience it as real. Some say the real world is like a dream and that’s not a bad analogy.
We all share the same spirit
The next big step is that in actuality, we all share the same spirit. We’re not different, not really. If spirit is the force behind everything, then there can be only one. You can’t have several forces behind everything, it’s that simple.
So how did we get where we are?
If everything we think is real isn’t and it’s all something like a dream, how did we get here? Of course, I don’t know for sure, but it could be something like this.
Consider that a part of spirit started to imagine that it was separate and not part of the one spirit. Instantly, this simple thought implies that separate entities exist. Introduce the individuals and all the “things” we see. Once you have separate things, you need space, because there has to be something between the things. Once you have separate things in space that can all make certain actions, then you need time, as something has to be between all of the different actions.
So when spirit simply thought of being an individual, it instantly created space and time. Now things can begin and end. Now all the individuals can do different things. Spirit itself only does “good” things, but now that different individuals have been imagined, they can’t all do the same “good” things or they wouldn’t be individual. Now we have the possibility that some individuals can do “bad” things. Now we have hate, injustice, greed, envy and war. Beginning to sound like our world now.
What to do now with spirit and the real world?
That’s easy (even though it appears not to be). Wake up. Snap out of it. These thoughts of being individual are not working out too well. The only thing that works perfectly is the world of pure spirit. Other worlds that we can imagine always end up being a nightmare. Just let all the thoughts that bind us to this world gently go (that’s the hard part – we are bound to this world and our ego mind doesn’t want us to let go). Once they are gone we reclaim our pure spirit which has always been there, calmly waiting.
Even if we’re awakened and fully aware of our spirit, there will be a period of time (even though time isn’t real) where we exist in the world as we know it, but with the awareness of our common spirit and our oneness. We will have an experience of living in this strange world but with full awareness of our real selves. This phase of spirit and the real world will be a delicious experience and one well worth all the anguish we’ve suffered in this world so far.
Related links – Spirit and the Real World
- We have everything – unless we think we don’t
- Your World Movie – playing near you now
- Here’s a fun article pointing out how science might be proving that everything we see and feel isn’t really real – Reality is an illusion: The scientific proof everything is energy and reality isn’t real
- A couple of quotes from Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now”;
- “The only thing that is ultimately real about your journey is the step that you are taking at this moment. That’s all there ever is.”
- “The essence of all things is emptiness.”
Yes, I absolutely agree. We have entertained ourselves with the idea that we are separate, but we really are all one. Guess we get bored from time to time and need to tease ourselves!
Thanks for the comment Mellie. I guess that’s what we often think, that if the world was perfect, like our idea of Heaven, then it would be boring. But I often wonder what the feeling of never-ending, supreme happiness would be like – probably just amazing.
I received an interesting comment from a friend via email. I’m going to paraphrase it here and attempt to answer it below.
This “article on spirit was a little harder for me to follow. I guess the part I have a hard time wrapping my head around is the part about spirit having a mind to think that it needs to be separate. Does spirit have a mind to think with? Maybe I just don’t totally understand what a spirit is. I guess no one really does.”
That’s a really good comment, especially the question of “does spirit have a mind to think with?” which really made me stop and think.
When we consider “mind” we often think of “brain” as in some sort of computational machine. Here, I have the tendency to try and soften that somewhat and just consider that spirit has “awareness” or “consciousness”. To be aware of oneself, do we need to have a computational mind? Maybe not.
One thing we can say that spirit must be able to do is create. Everything we experience (including ourselves) has derived from this single thing we’re considering as spirit. So it has created everything. Maybe all it needed to do to achieve this was consider the possibility of separate things existing. Is this “thinking” with a mind or is it more like simply pondering a possibility?
In the end, I’m sure you’re right that no one really understands what spirit is. It’s most likely true that it can’t be described in words and as soon as we start to try, we’re wrong.
The best thing to come out of this is that by knowing we derive from spirit, and what we’re experiencing is temporary, and everything in the big picture will work out just fine (somehow), we can move closer to peace.