THE HOLE THAT IS GREATER THAN THE SUM OF ALL ITS PARTS
Book Review of Chuck Hillig’s Illustrated Explanation of The Whole Paradox of Existence

....by Laurel Airica
....If you wanted to explain God, the Pregnant Void, and our own place in Creation – in simple terms without benefit of religious ‘persuasion’ – where would you begin?
....In Looking for God: Seeing the Whole in One, author-educator Chuck Hillig begins at the Beginning – with Absolutely Nothing. And to help his readers visualize how everything in Creation could emerge from – and disappear into – the w/hole at the center of all Being, he has placed a hole at the center of his book through which we can survey the world.
....Using simple terms, large print and amusing illustrations, Hillig begins Looking for God by asking us to consider who we are beneath all our stories, concepts, philosophies and dogmas. He then helps us see that the eye/I that looks out through the hole in his book at everything in our personal environment exists independent of our titles, roles, body, mind and ego. As he writes –
....“After you exhaust all of the many possible answers to the question, ‘Who am I?’, then maybe a sense of quietude and peace will finally begin to slowly arise in the Heart. You might, for example, then discover that the phrase ‘I Am’ actually has a period after it.”
....This I Am – that you and I are – is the same no matter who or where we are, explains Hillig. For All there is is One Being – being and seeing ItSelf through everything in Creation. This means that which appears to be separate from us is really just another expression of the same single Source that is the force behind and substance within everything in Creation. And because the human being is a highly conscious projection of this Source – and is endowed to some degree with its creative capacity to make something out of no-thing – much of what we encounter in our lives and mis-take for reality is merely solidified particles of mind-stuff shaped by our own conceptions. However, until we come to recognize that the world is a mirror of our minds – we tend to see what we believe and to develop fierce loyalties to our inherited myths and memories of an illusion.
....In a chapter entitled ‘An Allegory for our Time,’ Hillig explains how this belief in the singularity and superiority of our limited perspective on the Ultimate Reality can lead to the w/holey wars that have erupted periodically throughout the history of humanity. The fighting will go on – as it is today – until people finally recognize “they’re really fighting about …nothing.”
....Of course all wars begin with the ones we wage against ourselves and against the way things are in our life at any moment. He addresses this tendency as well – and makes clear why we are doomed to fail when we say ‘no’ to what Is.
....He explains that since the Pregnant Void says ‘Yes’ to everything in existence, when we resist or run from our current situation we actually set ourselves up for suffering since we place ourselves in opposition to the infinite power of the Universe. He writes –
…“by welcoming every seemingly contradictory position that ever appears in it, the void comfortably embraces the apparent opposites of yin and yang without discrimination or prejudice.”
....Accepting the unavoidable, landing in the Present, getting centered, realizing Oneness, and enjoying the freedom of unlimited Being that comes from surrendering into the Void is the goal of all searchers for enlightenment. And this is precisely what Hillig hopes his books will help his audience to experience.
....At a time when the world is once again succumbing to the destructive conflicts that originate in false beliefs that divide the world into good and evil, the search for enlightenment is no longer a pastime for the idle rich. Awakening to our illusions is now a matter of life and death on the planet. And because Hillig writes so simply about the most deep and profound issues, with Looking for God he has extended the reach of life’s most fundamental considerations to those who may need it most.
....Regardless of where the reader is on the path of awakening, Hillig’s book serves to clarify and articulate essential issues pondered by physicists and mystics alike – such as the fact that no matter where we are or what time it is, it is always and only Here and Now. Thus,
....“When you allow your mind to dwell on the painful past or scare yourself about the unknown future, you’re moving your attention into areas where you have absolutely no real power to affect anything whatsoever.”
....With the help of the many poets and sages from every tradition that Hillig quotes in the pages of his book, he makes it clear that we, ourselves, are the answer to our quest for God and the question of Self-
Realization. So, Reader Beware: If you follow Hillig’s step-by-step guide from Nothingness to Being, it may rearrange your whole Point of You.

Laurel Airica, creator of WordMagic, writes and presents on Using the Word for the World’s ReCreation. She can be reached via email at wordmagic@earthlink.net