The Big Picture

In my book, “The Art of Radical Self Love: The First Steps to Healing and Well-Being”, I occasionally touch on what I term “the Big Picture”. In the Preface, I explain that my worldview is that Unconditional Love is the common thread that ties together all aspects of life, especially healing.

Since the book’s publication, I have continued on my journey toward radical self love. Between finishing the book and having it published, I became a widow for the second time, that husband succumbing to the aftereffects of COVID. I have spent the last five years adjusting to living alone for the first time in my life.

I remind myself constantly that I only have control of my own thoughts, words, and actions. And that my individual choices influence the well-being and health of the collective consciousness. If I treat myself with loving kindness, that energy contributes to healing the world.

When you have been a lifetime caregiver like me, making yourself your primary object of affection can be challenging, especially when it comes to personal health practices that no one else is observing or getting objective benefit from. All my life I felt I had to stay healthy so I could take care of my family. Those who remain are all independent now and rarely ask my advice. The realities of an aging body not responding as quickly and completely as before to repair after injury or illness is annoying. My daily maintenance is a routine easily neglected in favor of doing something more interesting at the time.

I’ve been backsliding, because I’m human. So I’ve begun rereading my book and getting back into practice. Interestingly, the “Big Picture” concept shows up as a theory of everything – that we’re not alone, we’re all connected, we’re tasked with loving the world back to health starting with ourselves – basically the “Big Picture” describes Unconditional Love as Consciousness. Lately, what has become very interesting to me is that people and institutions well-known for something else have begun to publicly write and do podcasts about the subject of Consciousness, often coupled with the concept of non-human intelligence. And we’re not just talking about pets and animals being sentient.

Billionaire aerospace tycoon, Robert Bigelow, of all people, has launched a podcast where he expounds on his theories of levels of consciousness, based on personal paranormal experiences and the conclusions of scientific researchers. The Institute of Noetic Sciences, which I referenced in my book as a source of research on spontaneous remission data, is hosting a webinar on expanding the boundaries of consciousness to include Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP). The California Institute for Human Studies is an accredited university that offers a Master’s Degree that includes Consciousness with an offered elective in UAP.

It appears that evidence from credible sources supports Shakespeare’s famous line in Hamlet: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” What I like most about all the emerging theories of an expanded reality and revised concepts of Consciousness is that all is still rooted in Unconditional Love. The cast of characters may be expanding, there may be bad actors and mysterious roles, but the moral of the story is still love yourself and one another, because the originating spark of love is common to all.

And that’s the Big Picture.