Bubble Bath

Love pulsates in silence. Out of this vibration arise countless worlds, like a foam of bubbles on the still sea.

I may call this vibration of love "the Word of God," or "Shabda, the sound-current Om," or "Fluctuations of the Quantum Field at the threshold of Planck's Constant." But one thing is certain, I am taking a bubble bath. 

Luxuriating in this cosmic bubble bath, how foolish to grasp at one tiny bubble and call it, "mine!" Yet that is what I do, again and again. Through desire, I entered this world.

Now I see the entire cosmos from inside my bubble. Sometimes this is called "ego." In Vedic philosophy, it's called "maya," illusion: the universe distorted through the membrane of my own little translucent sphere.

In this world, I meet others of a like mind, a like desire. I meet the very souls I need to meet in order to confront my grasping, and become free through self-knowledge. Every person in my world is the mirror of my desire or aversion. (Aversion, of course, is just negative grasping.)

This bubble of "mine" will burst some day, and I will awake once again to the luxury of the bubble bath. Then, after relaxing awhile, I will once again become fascinated by another tiny fleck of foam, and foolishly grasp at it. The popping of a bubble only lasts an instant in that realm of infinitely expanded ungrasping awareness, but from the perspective of the bubble, it is a lifetime.

There will eventually come a time when I cease grasping. Then I will simply bask in God's luxurious bath, Vishnu resting on the ocean of milk. The only difference, in fact, between Vishnu and this human soul, is that He is awake while I am lost in the bubble of a dream.