The Book of Secrets - Deepak Chopra [12]
Now step into your social world. When you are with your family or friends, listen with your inner ear to what is going on. Ask yourself:
Do I hear happiness?
Does being with these people make me feel alive, alert?
Is there an undertone of fatigue?
Is this just a familiar routine, or are these people really responding to each other?
However you answer these questions, you are assessing your world and what is going on inside you. Other people, like the objects in your surroundings, are a mirror. Now turn on the evening news, and instead of watching it as if events are happening “out there,” tune in personally. Ask yourself:
Does this world I see feel safe or unsafe?
Do I feel the fear and dismay of a disaster, or am I just being titillated and entertained?
When the news is bad, am I still watching basically to be entertained?
Which part of me does this program stand for? The part that dwells on one problem after another or the part that wants to find answers?
This exercise develops a new kind of awareness. You begin to break the habit of seeing yourself as an isolated, separate entity. The realization dawns that the whole world is actually nowhere but inside you.
Exercise #2: Bringing Home the World
To say that you are a creator isn’t the same as to say that your ego is. The ego will always remain attached to your personality, and certainly your personality doesn’t create everything around you. Creation doesn’t happen on that level. Let’s see, then, if we can get closer to the real creator inside you. We’ll do this by meditating on a rose.
Get a beautiful red rose and hold it in front of you. Inhale the fragrance and say to yourself, “Without me, this flower would have no fragrance.” Take in the glowing crimson color and say to yourself, “Without me, this flower would have no color.” Stroke the velvety petals and say to yourself, “Without me, this flower would have no texture.” Realize that if you subtract yourself from any sensation—sight, sound, touch, taste, smell—the rose would be nothing but atoms vibrating in a void.
Now consider the DNA that is inside each cell of the rose. Visualize the billions of atoms strung along a double helix and say to yourself, “My DNA is looking at the DNA in this flower. The experience is not an observer looking at an object. DNA in one form is looking at DNA in another form.” Now see the DNA begin to shimmer and turn into invisible vibrations of energy. Say to yourself, “The rose has vanished into its primal energy. I have vanished into my primal energy. Now only one energy field is looking at another energy field.”
Finally, see the boundary between your energy and the rose’s energy fade as one set of waves merges into another, like ocean waves rising and falling on the vast surface of an endless sea. Say to yourself, “All energy comes from one source and returns to it. When I look at a rose, a tiny flicker of infinity is rising from the source to experience itself.”
Having followed this trail, you have arrived at what is truly real: An infinite, silent energy field flickered for an instant, experiencing an object (the rose) and a subject (you the observer) without going anywhere. Awareness simply took a look at one aspect of its eternal beauty. Its only motive was to create a moment of joy. You and the rose stood at opposite poles of that moment, yet there was no separation. A single creative stroke took place, fusing you both.
Secret #3
FOUR PATHS LEAD TO UNITY
ALL THE SPIRITUAL SECRETS from this point on, meaning the vast majority, depend on your accepting the existence of one reality. If you still think of it as a pet idea held by someone else, your experience of life won’t change. One reality isn’t an idea—it is a doorway into a completely new way to participate in life. Imagine a passenger on an airplane who doesn’t know that flight exists. As the plane takes off he panics, thinking such thoughts as