Many years ago, I held my 3-week old son, Ethan, on my lap, with my hands under his head. As I gazed into his eyes, the depth of silence and radiance I saw there took my breath away.  

As Ethan gazed back at me, I experienced being seen by Truth itself — by an imperturbable, never-changing Love. It felt like divine Presence, which grasped my heart, my brain, and my whole body. 

In the light of this Divinity that washed over me, I became very still. The stillness silenced my mind and ushered me into its peace.  It enveloped me completely, all soft and brilliant and fierce.  I knew I had glimpsed the Perfection of Divinity from which Ethan had arrived.

In that moment, I knew mySelf.

From Oneness to separation

Prior to this, through my upbringing in Christianity, I had embraced the notion of original sin. I grew up with the teaching that we needed to be rescued from eternal damnation so we could spend eternity in heaven.

Instead of original sin or damnation, in Ethan’s eyes I saw original Oneness. Seeing the Infinite gazing back at me marked the beginning of a several-years-long journey in which my religiosity disintegrated. Like the phoenix rising from the ashes, the stillness of Being transformed me. My religious belief system morphed into a unifying Stillness that underlies all belief.

Nevertheless, I never turned my back on my early Christian education and experience; I never threw out the baby, just got rid of a lot of bathwater!

I now see how we come to this earth-plane in the Oneness of God/Spirit.  In early childhood, we undergo a necessary sense of separation in order to take on the ego that enables us to live here in our humanness.  (I say “sense” of separation because we never really lose Oneness. We just come to believe we do.)

From separation to Oneness

As a result of the feeling of separation from our Divine connection, in a way we feel traumatized. Therefore, as the Enneagram (a personality description tool) teaches, we try to duplicate that original sense of Oneness. In order to decrease our sense of separation, we look for substitutes. These take the form of seeking relationships, knowledge, achievement, security, fun, perfection, etc. As we allow the ego to replace Oneness with its substitutions, without knowing it, we strengthen the ego.

In short, gazing into Ethan’s eyes that day marked a milestone in soul-opening that made it possible for me to zoom out beyond my cropped, contracted spiritual views to see the bigger picture.  It enabled me to bare my heart to the fullness of that Love which breathes and moves me.

Parenting relationships shift

In the light of Love, ego weakens and slinks further and further away each time we shine the light of our Awareness onto it.

As I learned to shine that light, I connected to the Stillness that lives me. As a result, my parenting shifted.   With practice, it became easier to access the Presence that made it possible to raise my three sons in a way that served them and sometimes seemed magical.  (Here’s an example)

As of yet, my husband, Steve, and I have no grandchildren. If/when they grace our lives, I will gaze into their eyes, knowing the Perfection from which they come.

I desire for us all to live in the awareness that we ARE that — the Oneness to which all spiritual “paths” lead.