Exploring Unity of &

Categories: Blog Mar 17, 2019

I’m a child of Schoolhouse Rock. On Saturday mornings during my Super-friends cartoons and Scooby-Doo, Schoolhouse Rock would come on with musical, educational cartoons. One of them was Conjunction Junction. Do you remember this one? Conjunction Junction what’s your function? It was about using “and,” “but,” & “or” to combine words, phrases, and ideas. “And” was the additive, or the unionizer. 

& brings things, parts, pieces and ideas together. & makes things whole, removes separation, and brings unity. Beyond simple grammar, & is really powerful. It often reveals the underlying truth between lines drawn in the sand, between radical shifts in the “pendulum”, and between us & them. What is that underlying truth? Unity. Oneness. Wholeness. Togetherness. 

Often in life we like to think of things as separate. This or that, true or false, love or hate, us or them. We seem to use “or” as our go-to conjunction. But often “or” only hides the truth and ushers in complexity and division. “Or” gives us a foothold to fight from and a position to defend. But what if we weren’t meant to use “or” as our default? What if we were meant to view things as separate from the whole? 

In a simple example, in the movement world, we often separate ideas like stability or mobility, strength or endurance, fast or slow, flexion or extension, mind or body, muscular system or cardiovascular system or whatever. We use “or” to our detriment. By using “or” we automatically and unconsciously draw lines in the sand and we view things as being separate. This allows us to isolate our focus on parts, or symptoms of an individual and not see the whole body, the whole person, or the whole creation. 

But & unifies and provides clarity. By seeing through the lens of & we can see that the body, the mind, & the spirit are one; they are whole. It isn’t stability or mobility or any other quality. It is stability & mobility & power & speed & joy & balance & focus & agility & strength. They are all one because they all dance together and they were never intended to be separated. & offers a lens of truth from which to see. A perspective and a paradigm that offers a path to restoration for things that would be broken from separation. 

& doesn’t draw lines in the sand between ideas. & doesn’t separate parts of the body from other parts of the body. & doesn’t separate us from them. & makes whole. It is a unifier, a foundational truth that we often miss through living in a world full of “or”. 

& makes us whole and removes illusions of separation. Things really aren’t black or white, up or down, left or right. Things are friends & family & neighbors & strangers & them & us & you. There is unlimited strength in &. When something is whole and working and moving together as one, as it should, it is flowing with potential and power. It’s unlimited. When something is fragmented and segmented it is not powerful at all. It is disjointed, agitated and turbulent. But that is not so with &. & is unlimited. 

Even it’s symbol hides this truth. Can you see the limitlessness represented in the symbol “&”? Wholeness, oneness, is limitless. & is without limits. It is unlimited potential because it is a unifier. 

What’s the point to all of this? I’m just sharing my amusement with the symbol &. 

That, and I think we experience most of our pain through the lens of “or”. Whether it is a pain in our body, our relationships, our jobs, our lives. I think pain comes from separation, generally caused by fear of some type. If we see things through “or” we place ourselves separate from the object of our sight. But a house divided cannot stand, so maybe it hurts, then maybe it falls. But through the lens of &, the approach of &, maybe the house can be mended, maybe the whole house can be restored. 

When I was 5 years old, I could never have imagined the thoughts that the Conjunction Junction train would lead me to forty years later... What is your function? How do you see? 

To see the quick cartoon of Conjunction Junction, click here: https://g.co/kgs/agHDJi

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