Recently we had a typical March snowstorm that dropped 9.1 inches of snow with 45 mph plus wind gusts. It is my morning habit to walk my 90 lb. Malamute. On this morning, she was ecstatic pulling me through all 9 inches of snow with three-foot snowdrifts. By the end of the walk, I was exhausted. I laid down in the snow beneath the branches of an old Aspen tree. As I had done countless times before I stared up through the branches at the patches of blue sky that showed through. As I did, a sense of stillness and peace descended upon me. The constant hum of the urban noise faded away, leaving me with a sense of deep contentment.
I soon became aware of a presence, not a solid presence. No words were exchanged, yet it was as though a ripple of response went through the earth itself, and certainly through the tree. It seemed that some living language had been spoken, which I could not hear, but to which the world around me responded with delight. Even more wondrous, I felt something in me respond also to the realm that surrounded and enveloped me. I experienced the Aspen, its rising sap, its relationship with the soil, with the wind, with the squirrels in the nest high up in its bare branches, as if suddenly they all became aware of me and sent back their own response to me. I was invaded with waves of joy. It lasted maybe 40 seconds, and then I was back, aware again of the morning urban noises. I knew I had experienced once again reconnecting with the web of creation. These moments have come more regularly, yet they cannot be willed.
Imagine being someone born into this unified force field, no longer unaware of it, and living comfortably in the experience of it in their body. Perhaps this is why so often you hear people say they see galaxies beyond space and time in the eyes of a holy person. Or, in the case of medicine people, why their gaze can be wild and fierce. Both are people who embody the ecology of which they are a part. It is a form of connection to the world in ways that are latent if not atrophied in ourselves.
This characteristic of being an embodiment of an ecosystem has nothing to do with nature in the way we tend to think of it, and everything to do with being deeply integrated into the Oneness underlying the whole of creation. It is the fusion of transcendence and immanence in the body – the fusion of spirit and matter. Here, perception, power, capacity, and service in the world unfold differently.
AN ALCHEMICAL PROCESS
This seems very akin to alchemy. Alchemy requires both an ascending and descending force to change lead into gold, and they must be occurring simultaneously. Ascension is where most who are spiritually endeavoring spend their time. There becomes a realization of a greater visible self, and its eternal ground beyond space and time. This is an expansion of consciousness. It’s an ascent. There is a realization that we are not the emotion, the compulsions, the moods that come through us. We are the space that they move through and the host of the space.
Yet, in alchemy there must also be a correspondent descent. I’m proposing here, embodiment of unity consciousness is the descent in which spirit enters the depths of matter. We must touch but also be touched. Something must flow inside or invade us. Something must pour down into us, all the way to our root, in every cell. Our nonphysical touch must go deeper than merely feeling the world. It must go to the place where touching travels both ways. It involves a living exchange between the human and nonhuman world, and eventually, with the world itself. Here, we experience the body itself not just as a temple for the spirit, but as a place where the spirit manifests in a new intensity of fusion with our matter. This alone transforms the whole of reality.
This descent in which the spirit – the love that is enfolded in everything – enters the depths of matter and raises it to a new mode of existence – the embodiment of unity consciousness. Matter – the body itself becomes the medium. It becomes the field of an embodied spiritual consciousness. The body becomes ‘spiritualized” at another level of consciousness. This is not a transformation in consciousness. It is a metamorphosis in consciousness.
Unity consciousness is not a concept, or use of the imagination. It cannot be apprehended; it can only be experienced through an open heart and openness to being touched by the invisible force field behind creation. This means of communication has no word in the English language. For lack of a better word, I call it “being-meld” when it happens. In truth you will cease to be an observer and reconnect to the experience of the whole. You are no longer listening to the music; you are the music.
By engaging in this means of communication, we break a very powerful cultural injunction that is present in many Western cultures. We abandon the view of life from a place of separation which keeps human beings isolated in their own house, disconnected and set adrift from a connection to the whole. I think about the daily life of so many. When I look around, I see a multitude who are weary and listless, enacting the same movements every day without understanding or feeling. This is due in part to the loss of spirit, this state of unconnected-ness that we have created for ourselves. Embracing moments of embodied unity consciousness opens one to lasting effects of joy, equanimity and freedom – the freedom to love all that is enfolded in our world currently, no matter the turmoil. The old separation consciousness simply pales in comparison.
Christina Donnell, PhD, clinical psychologist, author, spiritual teacher is the founder and director of the Winds of Change Association, a Minneapolis-based educational organization offering programs that cultivate humanity’s evolving consciousness. She is author of two award-winning books,Transcendent Dreaming: Stepping into Our Human Potential (Winner, 2009 Next Generation Indie Book Awards; first place, 2009 Reviewers Choice Award 2009; first runner-up Eric Hoffer Awards 2009; finalist, National Best Books Awards; finalist, Montaigne Medal), and more recently Encounters with Living Language: Surrendering to the Power of Words (finalist, Inspiration category, 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.)
For information about Christina Donnell’s books and courses, and Winds of Change Association, visit: ChristinaDonnell.com
“Unity consciousness is not something we do. Nor is it a personal capacity.
There is no need to seek it. It is already within us.
We become quiet, and by doing so the door to silence opens and the unitive experience is eventually granted.
It comes. You recognize it when it does. You feel the presence as an invitation.”
—Christina Donnell
