Om, a sound used in various religions, thoughts, practices most notably used during meditation or prayer.

The short version of its meaning is abstract concepts via spiritual, consmic or just in principle of Nature encompassing the things beyond which we can ever know but know in some sense as to be the beginning or the beginning of the beginning…you get what I mean.

Deities are often conceptulized as literal beings who have understood and have tried to pave the way forward looking inside and outside for the answers that we seek about our truest nature.

While I personally don’t believe them to be literal beings which many do, the concept is an expression who became enlightened through themselves and careful observation of life or the Universe in which we are in every way inseprable.

I think the concept goes wayward when deities are mistaken as actual divine gods and the focus becomes a worship of a thing and meaningless rituals or practices that result in meaningless answers    which lead to destruction and war and a life that has become sufferable and delusional in many areas of what constitutes us and the idea that we are separate from Nature, some sort of creature or being that has acquisitioned for itself another beginning another “mother or father” if you will, that leads nowhere because it’s a false idea.

The lotus, one of my favorite symbols comes from the thought that, like a lotus that grows in the mud, so too are we able to grow in the most inhospitable conditions and the will of us to do so comes from inside; the seed of compassion, kindness, love, understanding, empathy, forgiveness, non-judgment, compassion buried under muddy conditions: hate, suffering, anger, destruction…

When we look within us to find what is still beautiful inside, we grow out from harsh conditions and begin to take root until what we are meant to (at least so I think) become begins to blossom and give birth to more lotuses until a path in the mud is made and we walk along it never forgetting where we were but never minding it because that’s is also where we grew.

Sometimes it is hard to see past the mud but it becomes easier when we embrace that the whole of life is a duality and neither destruction or growth can be without each other but you can walk with one foot in each side.

Feel not that all life is suffering or that all life is love but that all life up/down to wherever it began/didn’t begin, only that Om (abstract nature) for whatever the purpose or without purpose is always present and always giving even when it seems to be taking.

When you can understand this without thinking, you’ll know you’ve found the center because the path hasn’t a beginning or an end but resides within us/universe as the whole center.

So because our minds aren’t able to understand, visualize how far reaching the Universe is, we make up concepts that scale it down if only for the purpose of a path/understanding.

Be grateful that we even have the opportunity to experience this thing we call Life.