Part two: unity: Each wisdom traditions seem to relate to the notion of the power of sound, word, and silence as vehicles of creation and connection to the divine. I wonder then could the relationship between wisdom traditions bring unity.

In Jewish mysticism, especially Kabbalah, the Tetragrammaton – YHWH – is considered the unutterable name of God. Not fully pronounceable, lacking vowels, which preserves its mystery and sacredness. Sometimes YHWH interpreted as a breath-like sound, suggesting that God is as close as our breath—a presence beyond form or articulation. YHWH is also associated with the creative power of speech: In Genesis, God speaks the world into being (“Let there be light…”). Aligning with the canvas metaphor, YHWH as the canvas and the breath, the sound before sound, the word that contains all words.

In Hinduism AUM is the primordial vibration from which all creation arises. It is both sound and silence, form and formlessness. It’s chanted to align with the cosmic rhythm and is considered the seed of all mantras.

In Christianity there is the notion of the Logos: “In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Logos is the divine reason or creative principle and Christ identified as the incarnate Logos, the Word made flesh. This reflects the idea of divine sound or thought becoming manifest, the paint on the canvas of creation.

In Sufism God has 99 Names, each a vibration or attribute of the Divine. The Name “Allah” is said to contain all other names, and its sound is considered transformative. The practice of dhikr (remembrance) involves chanting or breathing the names of God, returning to the source of being.

From the Tao Te Ching: “The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.” The Tao is the source of all things, beyond language and form. Here naming is seen as the beginning of duality, while the Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth. This reflects the canvas before the paint, the sound before the word.

Many Indigenous traditions view language as sacred where to speak is to invoke. Stories and songs are not just entertainment but acts of creation and memory. Here Silence is often revered as the space where spirit speaks.

I feel these relationship of sound and word, canvas and paint transcends dogma and theologies, a unifying insight that lies at the heart of many mystical and contemplative traditions. The idea of separation as illusion, and that compassion naturally arises when we perceive the underlying unity of all things.

At their mystical core the traditions point to a primordial source (sound, silence, breath, word). A shared essence that transcends form, identity, and belief. The illusion of separateness being the root of suffering and realization of unity as the path to compassion and liberation. This realization is not intellectual, it’s experiential where the ego softens and the boundaries dissolve and what remains is Love, Compassion, Presence, Stillness, Silence…

Compassion the natural response when we see others not as “other” but as expressions of the same source. Compassion no longer a moral obligation, it becomes inevitable.

“When I see I am you, how can I harm you?” This is echoed in:
Buddhism realization of anatta (no-self).
Christianity “Love thy neighbor as thyself” becomes literal when the self is seen as universal.
Sufism where the lover and the beloved are one
Kabbalah, the divine spark is in all beings.

The canvas the shared ground of being, pure awareness, the Self, the Tao, the Divine. The paint the diversity of forms, language, culture, identity, belief. When we mistake the paint for the whole, we see separation, When we remember the canvas, we see unity and compassion flows.

“Thou art That”

Hi Anita
I really appreciate what you shared and the psychological and emotional lens through which you viewed the phrase “When I see I am you, how can I harm you?” You’re right, it can be incredibly difficult to see innocence in others when we struggle to see it in ourselves. I feel that is a aspect of our shadow work, where we wrestle with seeing both the best and worst aspects of ourselves and instead project them onto others. In projection, the last thing we want to, or maybe capable of doing, is to see others as ourselves.

What I was pointing was something a little more like the spirit behind the word Namaste “The divine in me recognizes the divine in you.” Or even deeper, There is no me and you, only This. As the Upanishads say: “Tat Tvam Asi” “Thou art That.”

It’s not just about seeing my goodness or badness in you, but about seeing that we are not separate at all. That at the deepest level, we are made of the same light, the same breath, the same being. Each of us a arising and returning to the canvas. From that place, harming you would be harming myself. Its a moment of non-dual realization, where the illusion of separateness dissolves (as would any measurement, like innocence), and compassion arises naturally, not from similarity or shared traits, but from oneness.

I think both perspectives are true and necessary part of our unfolding. The psychological healing of reclaiming our innocence a step toward being able to glimpse that deeper unity.

One of the intentions behind the blank canvas post was to point to this shared truth across wisdom traditions. That this realization of oneness is not exclusive to any one path, but a shore we all seem to be sailing toward. A unifying current beneath the surface of our many stories.

Synchronicity the Center Action and Contemplation daily mediation I think speaks on this. I don’t think they will mind me sharing

The Dazzling Darkness of Unknowing – Wednesday, July 16, 2025
Reflecting on the wisdom of the mystical traditions, theologian Douglas Christie writes of spiritual darkness:

“In a dark time, the eye begins to see,” says Theodore Roethke. [1]… This brings us close to the heart of how Christian mystics have long understood the task of seeing, especially the seeing that becomes possible in darkness. Gregory of Nyssa refers to this as the “seeing that consists of not seeing.” [2] Dionysius the Areopagite speaks of the “brilliant darkness” that one enters “through not seeing and not knowing.” [3]… The contemplative gaze nourished in the night is open, receptive, and free. Darkness subverts the all-too-common inclination to determine (or overdetermine) reality to fit our own narrow understanding of things. It invites instead a way of seeing rooted in simplicity, humility, and awe….

Is this perhaps a kind of faith? Not simply a denial of faith or an assertion of faith’s impossibility, but a way of thinking about and struggling with the most difficult questions, especially those arising from fragility, pain, and absence?…. What emerges instead is an awareness that we must let them go and learn, as the author of The Cloud of Unknowing put it, to “rest in the darkness.” [4]

This sounds, perhaps, too simple. As if such rest can be found without difficulty, or that all the night asks of us is to let it surround us with its gentle, healing presence. There is little in our experience to suggest that this is so…. The experience of the night can be terrifying, bewildering, less a place to rest and heal than a dispiriting struggle with pain and absence. Still, there is also something about the enveloping darkness, its silence and stillness and depth, its inscrutability and ineffability, that comforts and soothes, that releases us from our compulsive need to account for everything, explain everything. [5]

Translator of the mystics Mirabai Starr guides us in the wisdom of Spanish mystic John of the Cross (1542–1591):

When the dark night descends on the soul, its radiance blinds the intellect. She can no longer formulate concepts; she doesn’t even want to. It is tempting to consider this inability to engage the intellect as a failing. It is easy to assume that you are wasting time.

Do not force it, John wrote. Stop trying to figure it out. Drop down into a state of guileless quietude and abide there. This is no time for discursive meditation, no time for pondering theological doctrines or asserting articles of faith.

Your only task now is to set your soul free. Take a break from ideas and knowledge…. Content yourself with a loving attentiveness toward the Holy One. This requires no effort, no agitation, no desire to taste her or feel her or understand her. Patiently persevere in this state of prayer that has no name.

“Trust in God,” John wrote, “who does not abandon those who seek him with a simple and righteous heart.” By doing nothing now, the soul accomplishes great things. [6]

HI Anita
To your point “Your philosophical and poetic reflections could act as a shield, elegant and thoughtful, that sits between you and raw vulnerability.”

As most such things it has been both and neither. Today I no longer view it at a shied if only because it hasn’t worked as one 🙂 If anything the reflections have increased my sense of isolation. My family would reject most of what I have written and not understood.
So the pondering has changed little of what is “painted” but has restored a relationship to the canvas… ( I sleep a little better and handle panic attracts a little better) The tension between remains and I can only try to hold the tension without seeing it as something broken. It is and I am That.

“I’m having this image of a blank canvas full of dark colors, representing the ache and I’m nowhere to be found on it. The ache feels heavy, unbearable… until someone, with a few brushstrokes, paints me onto that canvas. What a relief: there I am. I didn’t know I was there.”

I have lived in that space waiting for someone to paint the brushstrokes… if only I could see myself… We live our lives reflecting and reflected the illusion of separation between the observer and the observed… But… What if the brush has always been in your hand? What if the ache isn’t a void, but a whisper reminding you that you are already on the canvas, even if the colors feel too dark to see?

I use too many words… I return to the riddle..

We are “bigger then big and smaller then small and we have it ALL” where in each breath, we can simultaneously feel expansive and grounded, infinite and finite, everything and nothing… avoiding the tension we tend to notice only the what is causing us grief or the one we wish to escape to. The observer the observed lost in the painting and forgetting the canvas and or running from both.

How often we get caught up in the details of life (the painting) and forget the underlying reality or awareness (the canvas) that holds it all. We are, I am That. The painting and the canvas. not as separate but one.

That is not comfort in the sense that we tend to seek comfort. Comfort as a release from pain, fear and uncertainty. It is the tension of ache Life asks us to hold. Maybe their is a kind of comfort in that… We may feel alone in our wonder and our pain, but were not when we remember.