Atom and Eve

[Originally appeared in What Shines newsletter Issue #22, April 2003]

"Regard the universe often as one living being, having one substance and one soul;

and observe how all things act with one movement;

and how all things cooperate as the causes of all that exists;

observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the single texture of the web."

~ from Meditationsby Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor, AD 161-180

It's official: the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate, fueled by a mysterious substance astronomers call "dark energy". Satellite maps reveal the universe to be just four percent atoms by weight, 23 percent dark matter (presumably, elementary particles left over from the Big Bang) and 73 percent dark energy.

This turns what we used to believe about the composition of the cosmos on its ear. All this time, we thought the universe was mainly atoms, yet this is only the tip of the evolutionary iceberg. We've been looking at ocean froth, thinking it's the ocean.

Here on Earth, we're in an era of diving deep, mapping a new world as a planetary organism. In the midst of our collective birth process, the astronomical course correction suggests a macro-micro view: "as above, so below."

The journey to self-knowing is frequently referred to as the "dark night of the soul." We descend to the depths of our being, releasing the "ordinary world" of everyday awareness to discover what has been hidden in the "Underworld." It's an initiation. The successful navigation of this often arduous passage signifies a quantum shift in consciousness.

The dark also equates to the Feminine, because it embodies the rhythms of Nature: a dwindling and replenishing, an ebb and a flow. It's an instinctual process: trees shed their leaves in fall and bud again in spring; we heed the call and step into an inner wilderness. This transformation awakens our cellular memory. Like a snake shedding its skin, we leave behind what no longer "fits" as we expand into the fullness of remembering who we are.

Is the mass of dark energy the cosmic oversoul, ready to reveal itself to a species on the brink of deeper development? If we are collectively at that liminal place between the worlds, we might think of it as the Eve of our planetary emergence into unity. Reunion means no duality. Dark and light are simply aspects of The One, life's spiral, the yin/yang. "Uni-verse" is, quite literally, one song.

It's a concept. Since scientists have no idea what either dark matter or dark energy is, these substances that comprise 96 percent of the universe ... maybe it's us, along with the highly probable life out there in other star systems. Perhaps dark energy is our readiness and intention to evolve.

© Copyright 2010 by Amara Rose. All rights reserved.