Unity Church of Portland

Today's Inspiration

It's very important to understand that everything that exists—the whole universe, including each and every one of us, is a manifest or material expression of that which does not exist. From nothing came something. The unmanifest became the manifest. From emptiness, from the void, this whole material universe, which eventually gave rise to life, emerged. So everything that exists came from nothing. Nothing is the source of everything that is. That which became everything is that nonmaterial spiritual essence. That's what you can experience in a deep state of meditation. The fundamental mystical insight throughout the ages is basically this: that the ultimate essence of everything that exists is this no-thing-ness. But when seen from this evolutionary perspective, what you become aware of is that the nothingness is not nothing. Why? Because in the absolute emptiness prior to the big bang there was still the infinite potential for everything that would be created. Everything was possible but nothing had happened yet. So even in complete emptiness, there is some kind of positive creative tension that is experienced in meditation as a suspended state of absolute awakeness. This quiet tension exists in consciousness because everything is possible but nothing has yet occurred. There is a vibration of empty fullness that is enthralling. And what we're very interested in, in the teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment, is locating that same vibration within our very own self—the same energy, the same intelligence that initiated the entire creative process at the very beginning. (Andrew Cohen)