Lately conceptualizing an overarching, ubiquitous consciousness within which we, as individuals, are immersed always.  The consciousness is a broad river, constantly moving.  I picture our bodies like cups.  I see a string of cups suspended just above the river, each with a tiny hole in the bottom.  The river rushes up and fills the cups, but then, slowly, day after day, the water from the cups drains back into the moving river.  Once you've gone completely back into the river, are you the same as you were in the cup?  Yes and no, back in the river you're not configured the same way, but you're not destroyed either, you're free to join your source--to finally rejoin the whole.  The separation, the cup, is temporary--it's limiting, confining, and fragile.  The river is forever though, and will keep on filling different cups--an endless variety of cups--that in turn will drain back into the river, on and on, etc.

It's hard to believe in God, it's hard for me.  I'm reading a book on Hermeticism and one of its major precepts is that old chestnut: "As above, so below" which the Lord's Prayer also echoes ("Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven"). Occurred to me suddenly while watching TV yesterday, probably not a revelation to anybody else, but--look how a mother is a model for God on earth.  A mother loves her child unconditionally, sacrifices herself, devotes herself to the child's needs.  The mother creates the child in her womb, the child is part of her, yet separate.  The child might receive adequate love and attention from the mother, yet still turn out to be selfish and irresponsible. Not every mother is God-like in her child's life in the sense of being very loving  or even in the custodial sense, but every one is in the creator sense.  It's a universal truth, not even just a human truth--the drive of the mother, after having created her offspring, to protect and care for them.  When you zoom out from this planet, from this plane of existence, I believe this pattern probably persists at a macro-level.  A benevolent creator who tries to guide, who tries to nurture its creation--not just for the sake of the creation, but for the sake of the creator itself.  It's not just an altruistic, self-sacrificing drive either--in a way there is self-preservation at stake too, the deep desire to perpetuate one's being through progeny, to be a part of the future---of indefinite generations going on--in a way, to live eternally.  What's set in motion, stays in motion.  For motion's sake alone! 

The squirrels came and ate all the pears off of Joe's trees and afterward he commented how much stronger the trees looked--how they weren't sagging anymore and the leaves looked greener, more lush.  Sometimes when you lose everything you thought was valuable it's like a new vitality comes over you.  When you unload your fruits, you are stripped of the weight of all the expectations that accompanied that fruit--all the pies and cobblers you would have had to produce! There is a new freedom in just having to put energy into the core, build up the roots and trunk, don't worry about the products anymore.  Take the sun and water and put it right into your very center and next season--watch out.  The bounty will be astounding.