Note:
All communication between The Omnipotence and Itself happens without words and without sequence. It is depicted here in a way that should make sense to the everyday Earthling reader, via dialogue, but please remember that in actuality, it all happens simultaneously. Even now it is happening and also has already happened. As have all the events described, considering it is always now.
Also note that, alas, the limitations of Steve’s universe and human language make it impossible to outline what transpired (and is ever transpiring) without contradicting ourselves -- especially when it comes to the concept of time. Very well, then, we contradict ourselves repeatedly. Just go with it. Om Shanti.
In the beginning there was only energy.
There was no space and no time. There was only (“only”) pure, boundless light. Self-sufficient. Holistic. Zen. In the beginning, there was simply The Omnipotence.
The Omnipotence was One, but it was also Many. The collective consciousness - Soul - was composed of raw creative energy as well as many unique and individual “souls.” And among the many souls was a soul that, for the purposes of this story, we shall refer to as Steve.
Steve, like all other aspects of the Omnipotence formless and timeless, was nevertheless also an entrepreneur and a salesman. Like most of his fellow souls, he was constantly manipulating frequencies and combining energy in order to create something new. And one day Steve coaxed the energies of his domain into a really special something. This something had form and was defined by time. This something was the universe.
Entrepreneur/salesman Steve the soul created the universe. And he wanted it to be utilized. Specifically, Steve wanted some of The Omnipotence to materialize itself and to test out his latest and most original creation (the universe) by assuming form and time to live in it.
Steve put together a pitch to this end, framing his offer as THE solution to the most considerable pain point of The Omnipotence: lack of experience. You see, The Omnipotence simply WAS. It didn’t DO and it didn’t FEEL. What it knew, it never learned. The Omnipotence had zero experience. And, quite frankly, The Omnipotence was a little bummed about this fact. Steve, as part of The Omnipotence, could easily empathize with the situation -- the Omnipotence Condition -- and, in turn, exploit it.
A hearing was never held but you might imagine one in order to picture in a helpful way the communication that transpired between Steve and the remaining Omnipotence about his idea.
“What if I told you,” said Steve at this fictional hearing, “that I’ve come up with a way for us to directly experience our own glory?” And imagine that in response to this hook, the vibrational frequency of The Omnipotence perked up.
“You don’t say,” said The Omnipotence, if you can imagine. “But how?”
“I’ve designed a container for us to have a comprehensive experience of Who We Are,” replied Steve. “It’s called a universe. Well, multiverse, technically. But don’t worry about that. All we have to do is make ourselves physical. Then we can experience life and thus realize - through EXPERIENCE - what it means to be our Glorious Self.”
This idea incited The Omnipotence. After all, The Omnipotence was all-knowing, but it was also curious. So “Om” it said. “Why not?”
Huge mistake.
This is the story of what happened next.
So what did happen next? Well, The Omnipotence said yes to Steve’s proposal - we’ll give this “physical living thing” in this “universe” a whirl, WITH the stipulation that a few souls remain behind as pure energy to simply observe the experiment. All other souls would come to the universe as Living Beings.
Steve considered.
“That works,” he said. “But I request that each soul that DOES come to live as a being in The Universe stays until it has remembered where it came from and who it really is.”
“Sure,” said The Omnipotence, without hesitation.
Steve added, “No matter how long it takes.”
“How long it takes is of no consequence to us,” The Omnipotence replied. Remember, everything happens more or less simultaneously from the perspective of The Omnipotence, which is not bound by the dimension of time. “However, let each soul get a reminder between lifetimes. We believe this is a fair ask.”
Steve conceded. “Of course, Our Divinity.”
“Well,” said The Omnipotence, “Let’s do this then.”
And with that, they closed the deal. 80% of the many souls making up The Omnipotent Soul packed their spirit bags to commence life as material energy on Steve’s universe’s most habitable planet: Earth. The rest of the souls remained to observe and to continue working on their own side projects of creation.
“One more thing to note,” Steve added, “before I transfer living energy to Earth.
“Each soul,” he said, “has a right to come back at its own pace, in its own way.”
The Omnipotence was pleased with the freedom inherent in this condition. “What else?” it asked.
“That’s all, actually,” said Steve. “The rest is up to Our Grace to figure out. Through experience.”
It was time to assemble. The Omnipotence organized its soul energy in such a way as to become material, having a concept of what it meant to take on a physical form (atoms, matter, movement, etc.) but, again, no direct experience of what it truly FELT like.
Some souls split themselves in two for a fun personal challenge - would the soul-mates be able to reconnect in Steve’s universe? How long would that take and what would it feel like, they wanted to know. All preparations were made in a state of humming fervor.
Steve, of course, planned to stay back to manage the operation from a distance. “I’ll help provide reminders as needed,” he said. “But I’d really like to set clear expectations around this ahead of time: I’m not going to do the task of remembering for Us.”
The Omnipotence smirked. “Nice one but We’re God,” it said. “Becoming whole-some again shouldn’t be too hard.”
Steve’s Life Pilot launched on Earth, with just one soul to start. A particularly keen soul called Evedam had begged to come first. Steve decided she was as good a choice of soul as any and when the time came (had there been time), he fetched his UniverSteve3000, braced himself and carefully flipped the switch that gave form -- two forms in this case, as Evedam was among the souls that, in the spirit of experimentation, had split itself in half. And thus life began.
For many Earth years Steve simply sat on the edge of his proverbial seat and watched the first conscious being to ornament his universe grow up among misty greenery and gentle animals. She/they spent day after day, year after year, exploring every nook and cranny of the garden that was her/their home, observing, touching, smelling and tasting everything around her/them with curiosity, in a state of pure love and wonder. Steve saw that life was even more elegant and awe-inspiring than he could have ever imagined.
The rest of The Omnipotence also looked on with interest as Adam and Eve discovered the unique pleasures Steve had invented and built into the human form. Eating amused The Omnipotence, for example, as did napping. And The Omnipotence really loved watching as Evedam frequently joined its two physical halves in titillating ways.
Soon more and more souls were signing up to try out Life, and, as things seemed to be going well so far, Steve agreed to open up the pipes. The next round of souls materialized as Evedam’s children. Before they came down, Steve repeated his spiel (“Don’t forget who you are,” “Take your time,” “And have fun,” etc.) but they barely listened. Each new soul was shot through the UniverSteve3000 and came out from between the legs of Evedam’s Eve half, much to the amusement of The Omnipotence.
But Evedam herself, even upon being joined by a few fellow souls, still couldn’t seem to remember exactly where she came from. The evidence being she kept waking up on Earth. And confident as she had been that her two soul halves would recognize each other as oneself, each day this became less and less the case.
It all started when one day Adam woke up and told Eve he had a dream that Eve came from his rib and was thus inferior to him. This began an ugly downward spiral of the two soul-mates drifting further and further apart from each other.
Fear was introduced where there had only been love before. Competition took the place of compassion. And a thirst for ownership replaced mutual respect. Unfortunately all this was passed down to the second round of souls in Steve’s Life Pilot. Evedam’s children watched Evedam and adopted the same behaviors. Greed, anger, clinging, avoidance -- all of it.
Meanwhile, above, Steve raised an eyebrow at The Omnipotence, as in “Not so smug anymore, are We?”
“Relax,” said The Omnipotence. “If we have anything, it’s time to kill. Let’s see how this plays out.”
Despite the odds, it’s not like the line to experience experience ever grew any shorter. The Omnipotence was curious about shooting stars, watermelon, boobs, fire, frogs, and pooping, among other things. And each individual soul wholeheartedly believed it would be able to enjoy all of these pleasures and nicknacks without forgetting the Truth: that they were merely participating in an experiment and their lives were not in fact separate or permanent, and neither was anything else. In fact, they looked forward to completely embodying this Truth, feeling it in addition to merely knowing it for the very first time.
Steve’s status as an influential Creator and entrepreneur rose as the bodies multiplied below. But The Omnipotence began to shake its head when a couple thousand Earth years had passed and not one soul had yet graduated from the experiment. New souls kept coming in, but old souls couldn’t leave until they remembered that they were The Omnipotence -- they could only get recycled. Everybody was making the same silly mistakes. Nobody was remembering, at least not for more than a few moments at a time, even though between lifespans, as promised, Steve gave each soul a reminder.
And it was a blatant reminder, too. In the period between dying on Earth and getting recycled to a new Earth body and life, each soul was rejoined with The Omnipotence, with all its fellow friendly souls. There were always tears of joy at these reunions, as well as exorbitant laughter at the various universe-ly things the soul in question became obsessed with during its most recent lifetime on Earth. Each reunion was marked by the reuniting soul promising that it would never again forget its Omnipotence, and meaning it too, followed by an optimistic parting. Of course, optimism was hardly enough to do the trick.
It’s a good thing Steve was under no deadline when it came to returning The Omnipotence to its incorporeal, boundless Self. Steve hated to admit it, but in all his planning he did not realize just how difficult it would be for The Omnipotence to remember its omnipotence with all the distractions of his physical universe, characterized by impermanence and the illusion of separation.
So eventually Steve decided he should probably make an appearance on Earth to hand-deliver some help. He came and delivered his reminders via short and catchy quotes: “We are not separate” and “Love thy neighbor as you would thyself” and “This life is not everlasting so stop acting like it is” and “All you need is love.” But it didn’t work. Not the first time, not the second, not the third. He came down as Jesus, as The Buddha, as Muhammed, as Rumi, as Gandhi, as John Lennon, and as many other individual human life forms over many thousands of years. (Keep in mind that technically he was embodying all of these forms simultaneously, but that didn’t make it any less exhausting.) Some souls did listen, sure, but then they turned right around and forgot all over again, recommitting instead to Ego, a pesky byproduct of human existence.
“What am I supposed to do if they won’t listen to anything another soul says, given how ingrained isolation is in their stupid beings, so ingrained they can’t recognize they’re looking in the mirror when they look at another?” thought Steve. “I need to come up with a foolproof way to make these boneheads listen to themselves.” And that’s how Steve reinvented yoga.
In fact, Steve had originally designed beings of his universe with a built-in recharge functionality. To connect back to The Mothership, so to speak, for a direct daily reminder, all one had to do was, well, nothing at all. The simple act of NOT doing, of sitting still with a quiet mind, would attune a physical individual's energy with that of all The Omnipotence.
Steve had even diagrammed it out for The Omnipotence before the pilot launched. To explain the low-tech charging mechanism he had drawn a picture of a being sitting in a cross-legged position, spine erect, with a tube of white light beaming down from above, entering the crown of the its head and exiting straight down through its root.
There was nothing simpler, he had explained.
“Now you’re just being a weasel, Steve,” The Omnipotence had said, cracking up. “Try not to underestimate God, huh?”
“But look who’s talking now,” Steve thought, a few eons in. The beings living on his universe could barely sit still long enough to relieve themselves of their cell fuel remains, even with their hand-held AI devices to keep them company. The beings who believed they were “finding themselves,” self-actualizing, took to hyperactivity, not stillness, to do so. And each year it got worse and worse. They behaved like hamsters in their own homes and offices. They traveled across the world seeking everything but what they already had. And they spent every available minute planning out the steps on their personal domination path. Some of them even took up the motto “I’ll sleep when I die!”
The Omnipotence looked on with a slight frown. “Well, Steve,” sighed The Omnipotence eventually. “Looks like We were wrong and you were right. Not that right and wrong exist, but you know what We mean. We guess the question at this point is: what’s your strategy?” The Omnipotence started missing itself and was getting anxious for reconsumation.
“Our Glory, if We want to move,” Steve said, “Why don’t we give Ourself a moving meditation?”
“We’re listening,” said The Omnipotence.
It came to pass that Steve revived and revamped a yoga asana program program inspired by Ayurvedic practices he had observed invented on his Earth thousands of years earlier. This was his elevator pitch:
“First we wring out the body and create concentration. This will still the mind and loosen the knots preventing chakra alignment. Then the practitioner will be able to tap into Our Grandeur with minimal interference.” Steve couldn’t be sure such a practice would catch on, but anything was possible. (After all, Beanie Babies.)
The Omnipotence gave a short nod and helped get the posters ready.
Lo and Behold,much to the delight of The Omnipotence Steve’s Physical Yoga did catch on in the realm of his universe, and peerlessly so. Reader, I’m sure you’re aware that at present Earth time, in many parts of the Earth there’s a yoga studio on every corner and a rolled up mat in every other human’s tote bag. Yoga is all over your parks and your Whole Foods’ and your Instagrams.
But is it working?
With Steve’s yoga in the universe, has anyone successfully reintegrated with The Omnipotence yet? Has any soul realized its full glory?
Alas, much to the chagrin of The Omnipotence, the answer is still no. Yoga hasn’t worked like Jesus didn’t work. (If anything, yoga has only strengthened the power of the Ego. When it comes to yoga to-Earth-date, most beings end up getting too caught up writhing on their mats and worrying about when they’ll be able to balance upside down on their heads or how they look in their yoga pants -- an item of shape-hugging clothing worn by some during Steve’s Yoga -- or how they can change their behavior to seem like even more of a yogi.)
In all fairness, it’s true that yoga has not yet hit its prime. So maybe We should rephrase the question to be: WILL yoga eventually save the day? And if not yoga, then what? Well, as far as you’re aware, that’s still TBD.
Of course, WE know the end of the story. Remember? There is no time in the steady state of Whole Omnipotence. There is no past, no future. There is only now. But even without getting into all that of course we know because we’re omnipotent. (Duh.) So you (as a unique, individual, separate - for now - soul) will have to wait and see. We sincerely hope this story helps you get your shit together, though, but at the same time how long this takes (years or lifetimes to you) is still of no consequence. Just know you WILL get your shit together. (Spoiler alert: Steve is not a quitter.) And, until then, don’t forget to try to remember, any way you can.
Plain old sitting hasn’t yet been tested thoroughly, by the way (aside from by monks who are actually Steve visiting Earth to demonstrate his “foolproof” recharge tool). Just saying.
Om Shanti.