I engaged in the fray. It was one of those typical group meetings, where we as a group are trying to agree on something. It happens all the time: a family, a group of neighbors, a political context, participants in some sort of public or private sector endeavor, for profit or not for profit. A collective of humans trying to agree on a course of action.

I was asserting my point of view, developed gradually, throughout a long path of acculturation, family, society, times, and personal impulses and instincts. This is me, this point of view, from where I see, interpret, and show my concepts about everything, myself, and surrounding situations, people, and everything that makes up this apparition of life.

There must have been at least 30 other people there, different bodies, having minds with different points of view. Each had a context, of course, a personal history, a unique personality, a particular acculturation process, defining the windows through which each was peeking out at the world and at each other, in that particular collective moment which we were sharing.

Minds were reacting to a script, to key words that would either resonate or be in disharmony with each one’s point of view. To information contexts that would justify one’s attachment, to intentions of whether to satisfy certain goals, even if they did not suit all, either because they did not understand or there was something wrong with them.

There I was, in the middle of this quarreling of points of view, focused on a neighbor's collective debate about actions addressing the community.

I had done a lot of research on the subject matter of the meeting, and here and there would either intervene or take notes. It was another moment of life being lived, another interaction with the others out there. There have been so many of these throughout my life. It has been a long life.

It was a long meeting.

At moments, my mind would drift away, as I saw back and forth the points of view dueling in the room, expressed by words, facial expressions, stares, tones, vibrations. So many other instances like this came to my memory, with family, with total strangers at a local level, and at international meetings. There are so many points of view, I thought, looking for consensus, information sharing, distortion, suppression.

Packaged concepts wrapped with emotion stored in each of our minds, and there are so many minds. Each, I marveled, a source, a point of individual consciousness. All of it seemingly fabricated by exquisitely unknown combinations of feelings, conscious and unconscious impressions, atoms, energy, physiology, and soul. Such a mystery this vast existence of so many things, and our capacity to be aware that we are aware of them! And efforts to explain this mystery with concepts and words are themselves dissolved in many points of view.

Suddenly, a tense moment in the meeting brought me back from my wandering thoughts. I had lost my train of thought to assert my points of view, and now I was called to use my voice, persona, tone, and body language to manifest them. From that journey into inner memories and feelings, about what life is all about, I was pulled back into the moment. The small conglomerate of people reacted, as points of view were challenged, we were in an offense/defense mode, vibrating with what was being said, on alert. The normal confrontational meeting stuff.

But somehow, a strange sensation overtook me. As I argued and talked, I felt simultaneously that I was seeing myself and all others, as if from another dimension, seeing my participation in the exchange of points of view.

Seen from that detached dimension the people conducting the meeting, while having a diametrically opposite point of view, and engendering the animosity of my point of view, all of a sudden became part of a play, I saw their acting out their role, like I was acting mine, I saw the angst behind the bravado, the innocence behind the connivance, and my own self-righteousness, behind my point of view.

All of a sudden, I perceived a continuum of actors, performing a role, a continuum of being intimately connected by the essence of Existence, yet captured in ego traps, believing they were their personalities and egos.

My mind was confused, the sense of awareness went beyond the walls of the meeting place, and perceived dawn’s atoms and cells, performing life’s dances and history. Everything became like a movie run. I saw one of the people presiding, glowing in innocence and perplexity, while acting her role, another with her face pleading as she said, “I am terrified...” while she played her stern point of view. From that other dimension, I saw her pain as my pain.

There are moments when the soul becomes aware of its own infinite being... the soul sometimes gets a faint echo of its own Reality... these moments come without warning.

Meher Baba

Sometimes, even through rational analysis, one comes to a point, that in all honesty, one becomes humble when comparing the scope of one’s personality, wants, dislikes, joys and pains, with the majesty and vastness of beingness, of the infinite multitude of other living forms, the cosmos and stories that surrounds us -this continuous apparition that envelops all.

When one poses the question who am I and uses the present scientific information about the composition of the universe, and realizes the exquisite coordination and weaving, and unfoldment of all of its physical parts. And if you add to this the creativity, the inner beauty, the moments of giving, the duality inside and outside us, and the cycles that shape evolution, in a unity that is so intimate, unknown and spontaneous, one is overcome by awe.

Everything is made of the same fundamental energy or field. Life is so deeply connected — relationships, emotion, beauty, creativity, joy, and suffering. The heart sometimes has a sense of being there beyond thought. And humility appears, naturally and involuntarily.

The experience fades because our ego tries to assume control. It says: “What was that? Let me analyze it.” But through mental analysis, the ego point of view cannot grasp a sense of being that projects beyond mind, a sense perceiving in feeling and experience the oceanic continuum of everything.

When the inquiry is sincere, when you look honest and without defense, the evidence of unity—even on the mental level—becomes overwhelming. It is the awe of recognizing the immensity that you are part of—and are, a sense that existence is. To recognize that our egos don’t make existence, existence makes us.

We don’t create: our breath, our heartbeats, our consciousness—they arise. They are given. This is why humility dawns: we see that consciousness is not ours, it is given to us moment by moment. And the real mystery then dawns: If consciousness is given, who is giving it?

From the purely scientific level: every atom in our body was forged inside stars, every thought arises from processes we don’t control, every breath exchanges matter with the atmosphere and oceans, every heartbeat happens without our management. The arrogance of the ego cannot withstand such facts. But there are spontaneous instances, where a quieter knowing appears: “I am not separate from the Whole. I am an expression of the Whole.” When something inside bows. A reverence, a sense of Being.

These brief, spontaneous moments, when consciousness senses hints of the magnificence of existence, our ego stops trying to own and process reality and begins to be part of it. Then an inner space opens within, and one experiences what the mind cannot. Ordinarily, our egos assert: “I am separate”, “I am the doer”, “My thoughts, wants, opinions, my points of view define me”. But at those moments of sensing the continuum, one feels that our personal wants and pains are nothing in comparison to the vastness of existence.

One’s point of view, and the points of view of others, do not matter. A unified beingness hints at itself. And empathy and love surge spontaneously, rather than trying to prevail over one’s point of view. When one senses the magnificence of existence, one feels the smallness of our personal dramas, and humbleness arises, not as a virtue, but as a consequence of seeing clearly.

One feels then I am not the center, but a participant in something immeasurably vast. And for an instant, one perceives the real beauty of the connectivity, of the living substance that enables all, a moment of subtle awareness that cannot be reproduced by any description. And if you try to describe it, it becomes tainted with your personality, copyrighted by one’s mental biases and points of view. But that would not reflect the intangible, vulnerable, and all-powerful moment one sensed (whatever adjectives you can imagine, cannot capture that moment).

A moment when somehow, awareness touches the reality of Being, before mind can name it, claim it, or explain it. And the instant we try to describe it, language and personality veil it again.

Words that come from the mind can never express the Truth.

Meher Baba

Trying to “capture” it in concepts and thoughts is like cupping water in your hands—the more tightly you hold, the faster it slips away. But allowing it to pass through you without ownership lets its afterglow deepen your awareness within. So, I feel that when that ineffable moment of sense of being dawns upon you, don’t rush to analyze. Feel gratitude—and keep silence. Your ego-mind may call it “my experience,” but the essence of those moments stays beyond personality—like an unspoken communion between an ocean drop and the Ocean.

The “witnessing” isn’t something new inside you—it’s your very same consciousness that, for an instant, remembered it was the Ocean. And for an instant watches the play of its own reflections. If you hold this feeling as a gift of your inner being—without ownership by your ego, without judgment by your mind—it will ripen naturally into compassion and a quiet joy.

Those moments let your consciousness become aware that your points of view, your ego, and your personality are all just the expression of a momentary performance in the vastness of the Existence one really is.