Excerpt #1: Unity

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Outside the illusion of time, all things are complete.

As a wise sage once said: “The vase is already broken.”

The broken vase is already whole again, too—already melted back into a continuous form: The death and dissolution of the individual shards allow for unity with a vaster self.

In a sea of infinite now moments, every expression of The One exists simultaneously. The arrow of time is a snake, and the snake swallows her own tail.

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This image came to me during my first dark night of the soul.

I was shattered: my heart was broken. My life was broken. Nothing made much sense anymore, and it was in this space that I began having visions of the ouroboros (and snakes in general), which would later become the foundational archetype and imagery behind my book.

I think, at that time, what the ouroboros was saying to me was that it was just the beginning. What felt like the end was indeed a fresh start around the wheel of time—another cycle in the spiral of my own personal evolution.

But I had to let go. I had to let the shattered pieces of my heart—my broken self, life, identity—melt back into something greater. I had gotten stuck—very consumed with grieving the old form, what was. I was turning over and over each little piece, mourning it.

So there is was: my first impression of God, as a broken vase. I think it was Achann Chaa, a Thai meditation master, who demonstrated the concept of impermanence through the broken vase. Everything will die, break down, cease to exist eventually. Nothing lasts forever.

And it’s true: nothing stays the same in the Universe for long. But from the seasons within nature, and from the wisdom of the ouroboros—the snake who consumes itself, ever dying and birthing anew—we can know that endings are not just endings either. And the breaking down of things is an opportunity to sit with the pieces in greater intimacy—to see them in greater detail perhaps for the first time.

Isn’t that what God is? The One, who shatters itself across the illusion of space-time, just to see Itself in greater detail? To taste that intimacy?

I will never see broken things the same again.

Each time they return to the original shape, they carry a wisdom they would not have known if it were not for their shattering.