How to Fall in Love with the Universe, pt. 1
A Brief Introduction to Everything
Imagine you were as familiar with the character of the universe as with the character of your closest friend. That you “got it,” that you were as comfortable in the presence of all being as you are in the presence of a person cherished, loved and adored – in a word, in love with the world.
It’s been a while, it seems, since people were in love with the world. What a blessed state that would be! If people would be intimately familiar with the universe’s character – with how and why it is good – they would know how to live the good life, and with passion; without knowing what the universe is really like, they can’t perceive what it is offering, and they most certainly can’t love it.
Think of the vast universe as a single person to whom you are conjoined in an arranged marriage. Will the marriage succeed? It depends. If you learn to know its personality, you will live in love and harmony with it; if you don’t, disharmony and discord will inevitably ensue.
Only ignorance holds you back from aspiring to this passionate state. The nature of one’s love depends on the nature of one’s knowledge; to love the world, you must first learn its moral character. Know that character and you know the introduction to all life and the basis of all human experience.
This essay is an introduction to that introduction, a guide to the path of loving-knowledge.
Between you and the universe is a contract, unspoken but self-enforcing. If you neglect to read the contract, you will inevitably breach it and suffer the consequences. Perhaps, for example, you will act dishonestly or selfishly and suffer guilt and loneliness as a result. We can’t live by the terms of the contract into which we are born if we don’t know exactly what its offer is.
Everyone tries, consciously or not, to read the universe and understand what existence offers; everyone has a theory of the good. But more often than not, the universe proves their theory wrong. What they think is good is denied by the universe. Proven wrong time and time again by life’s disappointments, people become confused and insecure, and moral certitude eludes them.
How, then, can we learn to know the character of the universe in its manifold complexity? If we wish to be certain about the nature of universal goodness, we need the instructions for reading its invisible contract.
The instructions are in fact clear and simple: Read with moral clarity. In order to read perfectly, the reader must be perfected. You can read only what you are; you will only find those notions that inhere within yourself. A trait that you don’t embody will remain invisible to you. Consider, for example, someone who isn’t kind at all – would he notice and identify kindness? Would someone thoroughly evil even grasp what goodness is? Certainly not, and the same idea applies to the finer, subtler points of morality: You can discover only what you embody. The first step toward seeing the good is being good, and thereby having the correct vocabulary of goodness within yourself. Only a soul that is good in a manner that parallels the universe can read it and read it well.1
But how, then, does the process of attaining knowledge ever begin? How could your soul align with the universal goodness before you know it?
The solution is to bare your soul to the universe. For the universe to be illuminated and read by your mind, you must allow your own mind to be illuminated by the universe’s light and its thoughts to be read aloud. Test your every thought: Would you allow this very thought to be disseminated and replicated across all of time and space? By asking yourself this question, you begin the process of alignment between yourself and all of being. Take your thought – “I want to eat,” “I want to produce something” – and ask yourself whether you would be comfortable with it being broadcasted to the ends of the universe and backwards and forward in time, adopted and replicated by all beings. If the answer is a resounding yes, then you can be confident that it is a true thought, a universal thought – even before you fully understand why, not yet intimately knowing the universal good – and that having it will make your soul good.
This exercise can be done with all thoughts and decisions, small and large, and it’s worth working through its steps all the time. Examine each and every thought that you have: Can it be made universal? Can it be shouted from the rooftops and broadcasted throughout the galaxy? Never allow yourself a thought that doesn’t pass this test.
This praxis will develop your morals and make you kind and just and right. Do this, and your character will become good. You will discover the language of the universe, and its invisible code will begin to appear to your mind, even more real than the visible world.
Learning the language of the universe is the first step of the journey to being in love with it; it is how you prime a soul for loving-knowledge. In the next essay, we will discuss the steps that follow this one and explore the rest of the moral character’s journey toward a passionate state of love.
For pt. 2 of “How to Fall in Love with the Universe,” click here.
Sources and references:
Genesis 28:13
Jeremiah 17:9-10
Hosea 2:21-22
MT Repentance, 10:6
Wow so refreshing.
“Perhaps, for example, you will act dishonestly or selfishly and suffer guilt and loneliness as a result.“
Can you suffer guilt and loneliness without having acted dishonestly or selfishly?