What is beauty? How do we view the world? Are we victims of the universe or are we the universe itself. One of the ways we begin to see the actuality of our being is defining our boundaries. Where do we start and where do we end? What do we define as ourselves? 

Is it our conscious voluntary actions? What about our bodies? Our voluntary actions cannot be separated from their stimuli. We decide to turn on the fan or air conditioning. That action belongs to ourselves we believe but the action of turning on the fan is inseparable from the stimuli of the heat. We would never act in that manner if it were not for the stimulus of the heat, just like we would not scratch our head if not for the mosquito. Is the mosquito separate from ourselves or is it part of us. 

As for our bodies we might define the ends of ourselves as our skin. But what about the air that we breath that becomes the oxygen in our blood, are we not codependent with the air? Could the air exist without us? We certainly could not exist without the air. Or what about the food that becomes our body? Our skeleton changes every 7 years, our blood every couple of weeks. We are inseparable from our environment in a purely physical manner. 

When it comes to our ego, our persona we see even more that we are inseparable from our environment. We would not exist without our parents, would we even be the same person without the love and hate of those around us? What about the people around them?

As we begin to dig deeper we see that we are heavily interconnected with every single aspect of our environment. We are caught up in the web of existence and that we are one with all the things around us.

When we meditate on how inseparable we are from our environment we see that we simply would not exist if it weren’t for everything and everyone else. We see that we are not just part of the universe but if we expand our concept of who we are we begin to see we are not just part of the whole, we are the whole. 

Just as a wave cannot exist without the whole ocean, the whole ocean cannot exist without all of its waves. This leads us to another crucial part of spiritual evolution: the extension into compassion. We begin to see that whatever harm we do to who and what is around us in turn actually harms ourselves. The suffering we see is our own suffering, the good we do to others is in fact done to ourselves.

At this stage we need to begin cultivating a heart of compassion. We need to see that every victim is ourselves; as well as every perpetrator. When we begin to see our interconnectedness we begin to develop a sense of responsibility not just for our egos but for our true selves (all this). 

We cultivate a sense of compassion and we see that all the good done in the world is done to and by us, but this fact needs to be recognized without the dual quality of mind. For not only is all the good done in the world done too and by us, but all the evil is too.

We take responsibility for ourselves and we take responsibility for our true selves too. This means that whenever we see injustice we are responsible. So how do we begin to set the world right? How do we begin to cultivate this sense of compassion in the rest of ourselves and the rest of the world. 

Just like a virus in yourselves we need to make compassion contagious. The way to better the universe (which is ourselves) is to better the lives of all sentient beings around us. We need to take responsibility, we need to be accountable for all the evil in this world because we begin to see how even the slightest action from our being creates a ripple effect throughout the whole cosmos.

To better the world we need to use mindfulness to see where we are doing harm, and through the heart of compassion we need to do right to those closest to us and then the ripple of love will spread. When one is loved it gives them strength to love another. We begin to see how changing the mind and heart if our own being begins to change the mind and hearts of others. 

We need to show others who they truly are and that compassion to another sentient being is actually compassion blessed upon ourselves. We need to recognize that suffering for some of us is suffering for all of us.

So how do we develop this heart of compassion? The same issue before is that there is no method. We cannot shovel away the dark here either. We need to see that connection to all beings is the only truth, that we are not one. We are the whole pretending to be one realizing that it is the whole.

Would you cut off your own healthy arm? No. Once we begin to see that we are all interconnected and that we are simply one grand cosmic being that is the whole of all existence we see that any harm done to anything is harm done to ourselves. To cut off another man’s arm is to cut off our own.

We are one. Simply and wholly. That there but for the grace of god goes I. We are inseparable and compassion shown to one is shown to all.

How do we go about displaying this compassion to others? There again is no how. When we truly see ourselves as we are, compassion flows freely towards other beings. Just as we would not harm ourselves we would not harm others. When we develop this quality of mind not insulting/hitting/hurting another is just as simple and obvious to us as not harming ourselves.