The Meaning of XIO

 The Meaning of XIO

A group participant: Michael, could you explain what XIO (encapsulating symbols that are significant in the OneLife work) means?

Okay! The One in the little motto stands for the individuality, the individual self that we use to go through life. And the Zero refers to the universal space that we have been connecting with in the seminar, with which we connect in all seminars. That is more impersonal. It is an energy space out of which all forms of energy come. Let’s say it is the formless energy that supports and is the ground of all energies that take form.

So there is a duality between living one’s ordinary life, and relaxing, letting go and falling into a generalised space. The Zero space means giving up one’s individuality to some sense of universal self or universal spirit, which may or may not move into your life. If it does, you act, and if it doesn’t, you don’t act.

For a while when one finds one’s centre moving away from the normal centre, the ego-satellite which is whirling around in space and has no real solid foundation in either your reality or God’s reality, then maybe one re-centres oneself in a space of deep meditation and oneness. Then there seems to be no urge to do anything, but just be there. And it is very beautiful to be just there.

But if you stay in that space for a while, suddenly you will fall into a kind of slot, a groove in the open space, which is still in the universal space and yet somehow again has the flavour of individuality. When you are there, you find that you are not an anonymous being - although in some ways you are - you find that you are a unique part of the universal space. And although that universal space is all one, it is also composed, as everything is, of many elements that make up the whole, and each element reflects the whole and all the other individual elements in it. This truth is expressed in Hinduism in the symbolism of Indra’s necklace. Indra’s necklace has many jewels in a big circle, and in each jewel all the others are reflected. So every jewel contains all the jewels, each one contains the whole. This is what you find and this is the X.

I call it X, because you cannot grasp it or know it, you can only be it. You have to allow yourself to be held by that X when it comes, and then from there you can move into the world and be a ‘Oner’, or you can move into the Zero and be a ‘Noner’.

The X stands off though from them both, at the same time as it enters them. In no way are you caught up in either, because you have transcended both. You can go into a deep meditation space, but then if you say, “Now I have to get on with my life,” you simply come out of it. There is no feeling that you can’t come out of it, that you have to wait until it finishes, which is sometimes the experience in the Zero, because you are simply no longer in control. It is good to go through that to really deeply taste the Zero space, but then you graduate from it. You graduate from the One to the Zero, and then you graduate again from the Zero to the X.

In the X you are again master of your own life. You recognise the beauty of the Zero, and you can choose to be in it or let it happen when it comes, but you also have the capacity to say, “Right now, as I see it from my universal self, not from my ego, it is time to come out of this and move into life.” And then you don’t get lost in life. You move into life and you act - but when you come back you can say, “That has finished now, so I will just sit quietly for a while and feel the emptiness.”