You are Just Like that

You are Just Like that ! – A story of Universal Oneness

The idea that You are Just Like that can help you every single day of your life. It will remind you how to be more tolerant and patient with other people, and yourself! If you see an angry person, who is having a bad day, just like you have sometimes, you can just remember that You are Just Like that too. An old yogic teaching, that can really help us understand that at the end of the day we may be different colours, shapes and sizes, but underneath it all, we are really all the same. Further, we are made of the same stuff as the stars, the animals and the trees. We even breathe the same air. Yet, we don’t often deeply or intimately connect with nature, the world and other things all around us. Contemplation is the study of being. If we just look around once in a while and remember that everything on this little blue ball, hurtling around space, is on the same side, we can change our attitudes, our outlooks and our lives. Now Just Like that is also a children’s book. So here is how it goes.

You are Just Like that ! – A story of Universal Oneness

One day it just happens. Just like that! You breathe in a little differently, a little deeper. Gently waking up, you start to think. And then you notice it as you look around, as if for the first time, and realize… There is something quite miraculous going on here. You may not have seen it at first but then you recall the wonder of it, the marvel of life unfolding and unfolded. 

At the train station you notice the ticket clerk seems rather sad as she sighs but still works hard and smiles at strangers when she gets to connect with others a little. Then, you sigh too as you realize that You are just like that!

A bustling businessman bellows that he is in a hurry to get somewhere, pushing past the crowds to try and get ahead of people who appear tired of the race and the rush and routine. Sometimes, you think, that You are just like that and you wonder if just maybe he has been hurt and un-loved or disregarded and rejected. You think that maybe he distracts himself to avoid the deeper feelings, just like you do, as you intimately see that what he seeks, is divinely seeking you too. 

“You are not a drop in the ocean; you are the entire ocean in a drop.”

Rumi

You sit across from a stranger who’s filled with energy, optimism and passion and intuitively relate to them, like silent partners with words unspoken, you mindfully see how you both reflect on the very same things. She becomes thoughtful, and you contemplative, as you both let your thoughts ripple across the room as you feel her explode with inspiration and emotion and you realize that You are just like that!

So, one day it just happens. Life is alive, and it is a process that is happening all around me, and for me, in all its forms everywhere, and You are just like that! You discover that life is the very process of love itself, a dance and a ritual of life, by life, for life, that it is expressing itself everywhere, without exception and it is astonishing and astounding and incomprehensible all at the same time and you now know that You are just like that!

Noticing life, you feel an awareness surging up within you. Oh, you say to yourself, You are just like that awareness. You are the awareness too!

It is just then that you remember the garden of flowers, feelings of love and compassion and the beauty of the universe ablaze across the night sky that falls at your feet in ecstasy and you plainly recognize yourself in every star and breathe in the mystical cosmic dust they exhale and you say ah, there I go again. In another form those stars and comets and moons are just like you. We’re both bursting with life and wonder, purpose, energy and mystery. Just like that you breathe in deeply once again and start to think deeply and perceive deeply. And then you notice it once more. That there is something quite miraculous going on here, and it is infinite and boundless Universal Oneness. 

The ocean is mysterious, tumultuous and as wild as any passionate life process is. Seen or unseen, known or unknown. Life itself is raging, inspired and divine. Much like a miracle. Much like you! You’re both tumultuous and powerful and passionately ablaze on some days, and on others you drift and ebb and flow and you can see, through the foreign designs, how your breaths rhythmically calm and align. You notice your chest heaves pacifically just like the upwelling of the waves. 

One day it just happens. Just like that! Awakening, you begin to see the birds absorbed in silence as they glide freely through the air, breathing in the freedom of the salty atmosphere Just like you do. You sense lightness in their wings as their eyes look for gifts to eat and new adventures to explore and then you remember yourself as a child. Yes you say to the sea, You are just like that!

You perceive how your brother the sun and your sister the moon trade places reflecting their brilliance over the ebb of the tide with unforced rhythm and grace. And you marvel at it all wondering how you ever missed this miraculousness before. You awaken to the knowledge that the Universe itself is who you really are. Mirrored together in cosmic relationship, all are part of it and it is part of you and you of it, and us, and them, and then and now. In presence you can see clearly beyond the veils of ignorance how every moment of now is in every grand vision to come and it all helps us to see what really, really is and you’re aware now that what really is, is purely gracious, conscious and wonderful without a single judgment for anything or any one. Today, in the right now of space and time, you can finally see life in all of its forms is reality, truth and light itself, all dancing together in Universal Oneness where every Alpha is just another Omega point. Nothing really begins or ends. Nothing is separate. Nothing excluded. 

And so….there it all flows, by the grace of God. The Creator of all things who became Just like you in the Universe so that You become just like that. And so, this is how you have found your way back to the Universal Oneness, where all things and no-things are Just Like You! 

Whatever you see, You are just like that!

Whatever you feel, You are just like that!

Whatever you imagine, or create or visualize, know or don’t know, You are just like that!

Be whatever you want to be, BE YOU, because You are just like that!

And that is the story of universal oneness. Perhaps our perceptions were mucked up metaphorically as the story of Babylon goes. If it’s so, then maybe, just maybe, we needed more time. Time to grow empathically. Time to open our hearts and minds, and live well and love well? All we know is that things are happening in this world at a pace. Good things. Never forget that those good things are like most things, like you! Namaste and benedizioni.

www.markllockwood.com