When I walked into the room, I saw shards of glass, as if a glass had just slipped from someone’s hands and shattered across the floor.
There are many pieces, sharp and cutting. Each has a different size and shape, some closer to the center, some farther. But more importantly, each reflects the light in a different way.
The reflections shine in different directions, different intensities. With some shards, some light passes through. In others, it reflects an intense directional piercing beam. Still others, the light disperses in many directions. Most are combinations, and no two are the same.
Yet, each is still glass. It appears separate, and in time we forget each was once a part of a whole. But there is no difference in what they are made of or where they’ve come from.
When the light gives off heat and the temperature gets turned up on them, they struggle to hold their shape and to remain what seems to them as whole. However, it is the heat that purifies them and melts them to make them into a whole glass again.
Heat can bring out the fight in us. We are hard-wired for survival. Yet, ironically, we yearn to be a part of something larger than ourselves with deeper meaning and purpose.
Struggle as we may for independence and individuality that will somehow make us special, it is through following the yearning that we are returned to the whole – the deeper meaning and purpose, the belonging, acceptance, love, unity – where the light shines brightest.
No matter how many shards you see, how sharp they appear or how they reflect light or intensify the heat – there are no others. There is Only One.
