A Different Creation Story

This is a poem from my new book 'Spirit Walk: Journey of a Soul Embodied'.  I renamed the poem here because it really is a different way of understanding the Creation Story, a way, I believe, that inspires hope.

The Oneness in Our Separation

The Chief took me to the fire circle.

As I took my seat,

  spirits of my beloved-departed gathered.

  Then more and more joined the circle

  until I could no longer see the land,

  only spirits gathered about the fire.

They put their arms around each other,

  holding each other in pure love.

  And then, he spoke.

‘For many generations, the people lived as one.

  There was joy, harmony, love, compassion.

  Each distinct person was honored as of

  essential value to the whole, the ONE.

  Uniqueness, difference, was celebrated

  as all understood that each was necessary

  to unity, wholeness, ONENESS.

‘One day the Creator

  gifted them with awareness of individuality

  and invited them to be co-creators,

  to consider how they would add their

  unique light to create life.’

The people,

  mistaking the gift as

  a severance from ONENESS,

  became frightened.’

‘They mistook the gift of individuality as a

  disconnection from the whole, not realizing that

  individuality and wholeness are indivisible,

  the essential alchemy of ONENESS,

  the potential leaning toward,

  the energy that creates.’

‘Devastated by the perceived loss,

  they sought to understand the banishment.

  In their confusion, they crafted a story of that moment,

  "The Separation from the ONE."

'Unable to fathom that they were so terrible as to cause it,

  and fraught with guilt created from misunderstanding,

  they sought others to bear the burden of responsibility,

  and they assigned fault and punishment accordingly.’

‘Where once there was joy in being ONE with the ALL,

  there developed a feeling of separateness and isolation,

  and a belief that the others and their differences

  were somehow to blame.’

‘Fear replaced love and the people grew thirsty, hungry.

  Striving to satisfy the unquenchable need,

  they stood on the shoulders of others,

  unaware they were crushing the others into the ground.’

‘An undulating mass of humanity clawed toward the sky.

  Voracious was their hunger, insatiable their thirst,

  gluttonous for more, ever more, but never sated.’

‘Searching, climbing, acquiring, using, discarding;

  leaving behind destruction, death, sorrow;

  creating separation, isolation, aloneness;

  frenzied, frightened, climbing, climbing, climbing…’

‘Never realizing that the hunger, the thirst,

  were, in fact, not hunger and thirst.

  They were the soul’s sorrow, the soul’s inability

  to live in this illusion of separation and isolation,

  the soul’s attempts to reconnect to the ONE.’

‘Unsated, lost and misguided,

  humanity struggled in vain in the

  illusion of separation and isolation.’

‘Drinking water that cannot quench thirst;

  eating into obesity, but never sated;

  blaming others..all to quell the insidious,

  devastating perception of aloneness.’

Gazing at us in compassion, the Chief explained,

  ‘We will never find our way on this path.

  It is ONENESS we seek.

  There and only there, will the

  obsession to fill the emptiness be quelled.

  There and only there, will we find peace.’

‘We need only remember,’ he offered,

  ‘we are ONE…

  unique, different as stars in the sky, but always

  ONE.’

‘In our liberation from the illusion of separation,

  we will discover love, compassion, peace.

  We will witness, once again, the light

  within each and every one of us.’

‘And, we can become that which the Creator envisioned,

  co-creators, givers of life, beings of light and love.’