#42 Ice Cubes - Musa Muhaiyaddeen

It’s very difficult to conceptualize what we can’t see. It’s very difficult to imagine what we’ve never encountered. Even though people explain things to us and tell us that this is the way things are, it’s difficult for us to incorporate ideas into our being as if they were real until we somehow are able to fully grasp them and integrate their meaning into ourselves. For instance, when people say, “We’re all the same,” and when we look around, and we don’t look the same…We can’t walk through each other because we bump into each other and knock each other over. So what does this, “We’re all the same,” mean? How are we all the same?

When teachers tell us it’s necessary for us to feel the pain of others in order for us to become advanced because that’s the true state of our nature is that we’re all combined. And when we separate ourselves from others’ feelings, we separate ourselves from the truth — it’s hard to conceptualize that. It’s hard to truly understand what that means because we have an external nature and an internal nature. And as we walk through the world, we see the external nature.

Now, imagine ice cubes, and imagine if I took a large number of ice cubes and put them in some water. And the water was cold and we were churning the water somehow. Now, these ice cubes would be constantly bumping into each other. They also float because ice weighs less than water. So, these ice cubes are above the water floating in something that’s exactly the same as them. Yet, there’s all this turmoil between the ice cubes, and there’s no turmoil in the water below them. Yet, somebody tells the ice cubes, “You’re all the same! And the fact that you’re bumping into each other and banging into each other doesn’t really mean anything! It’s false! It’s an illusion! That’s not what’s going on. What’s going on is what’s underneath of you that you really can’t see where it’s all the same.”