You Know That Glass? It’s You!
Most everyone has heard the story about “is the glass half full or half empty”. However, take a minute and answer it for yourself. Don’t spend a lot of time judging yourself, because it is a rhetorical question. Then get realistic, and think about it. Raise your consciousness and realize that the glass is always full, whether it is air or water. Now comes the really cool part, the part no one realizes.
Imagine the ocean, vast, deep and lots of water. More water than we can even imagine. More than any river, stream, lake, pond or puddle you have ever encountered. The ocean is only contained by intermittent landmasses. When you swim in it, you cannot see very far. Even if you are in a boat or in the air, you can only see from horizon to horizon. So imagine that you are out on the ocean, far from shore, and all you can see is water all around you. More than you can imagine.
Understand that the symbolism of water is consciousness. Water also represents energy. So when you are in the water, you still are not water, you are separate from it. Even though you have consciousness, you are not like a drop of water that is a part of the whole. You are different than the water.
Imagine that you have a glass with you. Dip it into the ocean, fill it with water and bring it close to you. Look inside; what is inside, is it water? Is the water different than the water that you dipped it into? What is the difference between the water in the ocean and the water in the cup? The most important aspect of this visualization is the aspect of duality. When you were aware that there was water, there was no duality. When you realized that there was a glass, there was duality.
Imagine that water is consciousness, awareness. Pure consciousness, pure awareness does not recognize anything. It just is. It is our ego that recognizes, differentiates, and segregates. When the glass is filled with water, there is duality, separation, something else only because the water in the cup was different from the water in the ocean only because of the glass.
So understand that the glass is you. Even more, imagine the glass is your thoughts, your mind, and your personality. The glass is who you are to yourself. So when it is filled with the water from the cosmic ocean, you are separate from whom you were, in the sense that you were part of the vast cosmic consciousness before you went into the glass. This is the illusion of duality. When our bodies stop, the glass will break and the water will go back into the cosmic ocean and we rejoin the one.
When we think we are the glass, and forget about the water filling it, we believe that there is an “I”. However, the glass’s only function is to hold water, consciousness. The glass has no function without the consciousness. We are but a shell without the water that fills it. We have to understand that life is the consciousness that fills our bodies, and this is why we are a part of the whole. It is the metaphorical glass that thinks that it has power over the ocean. It thinks it can pollute it and the world without consequences. This glass thinks that it can create violence and not suffer. This glass thinks that it is better than, less than, or even equal to all of the other glasses when the only function of the glass is to hold consciousness.
This is the fundamental problem that causes suffering. We forget that we are nothing without the consciousness that fills us. It is the tail wagging the dog, because it is the consciousness that is life, it is the consciousness that connects us to the rest of existence, and it is the consciousness that will go back into oneness when the glass breaks. We are not separate from the ocean; we are part of the ocean.
So we need to start acting in alignment with our fundamental purpose, and that is to hold consciousness. We have to support each other, be aware and compassionate of each other’s pain and suffering, and when we meet another glass that is not full, fill it with more consciousness. The Earth does not need saving. We need saving.
