Road to Wholeness

Is your life complete?

Or, putting it another way, do you have all you need? All you want? Are you happy?

These are the days in which people are heard to say, My life is missing something.There's an emptiness in my life. More than ever before, people are looking for completion, for wholeness—and they are, at last, living in a culture that enables them to voice this feeling. In order to achieve wholeness, one must first realize that one is not whole. That is happening and it's a start.

But, here's the weird part: We are whole—right now. Each of us. All of us. It's not that wholeness is missing from our lives, after all. It's the realization of wholeness that's missing. If you can achieve that realization, you will find happiness—fulfillment—joy—because all of those things were, and are, part of your being, all along. The key is bringing that realization into the fullness of your being.

Wouldn't it be great if all we had to say to you was, You are whole! and the light suddenly dawned, and you replied, Oh, right! You're right! I am whole—whole at last! Unfortunately, the words alone won't do the job. We can describe wholeness, and the feeling of wholeness, in hundreds of Web pages; but it wouldn't help. Wholeness must be experienced to be understood.

That's what this Web site is for: It provides information and exercises you can do to help you find the wholeness you think is missing.

Now, a full and complete realization of your whole self is not possible for a living Human being—it would, in a sense, kill you (actually, cause you to transcend the Human experience entirely). But it is possible to allow yourself to expand your awareness of your own wholeness, and, in so doing, rise above many of the petty trials and tribulations we have come to associate with that feeling of emptiness inside. This expansion of awareness is what many people refer to as spiritual awakening, spiritual evolution, or the like. And those terms are not inaccurate; because, as one's awareness of one's wholeness becomes more vivid, one does indeed become more spiritually aware—it really is the same thing.

Now, let's say that a state of wholeness is over there, on the far shore. And, here you are, on this shore, the vale of tears, and you want to be there. To get there, you need a bridge—something that can help you realize you are there, already and after all. That's the purpose of this Web site.

ONA is said to be an ancient word meaning whole self. Wholeness, in this sense, goes far beyond the idea of not having anything missing—it carries the concept of completion to the nth degree, of inclusion that omits nothing—in other words, it is a name for all that is you.

In the Yoruba language, spoken by about 40 million people in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo1, the word ona means way, path, road, or direction; but it also has a deeper meaning of wholeness, completeness, or perfection in the context of the Yoruba worldview and spirituality. The concept of ona is related to the idea of ori, which means head, destiny, or inner self in Yoruba. The Yoruba believe that every person has a unique ori that determines their life purpose and fate, and that one must follow their ori to fulfill their ona and achieve wholeness

If you explore this Web site, and do the exercises, and ponder the implications of the information presented, as time goes on you will find yourself experiencing wholeness, to a greater and greater extent; and, as these experiences become more and more frequent, you will find your awareness expanding at a dizzying yet joyful rate. Since ONA offers practical, testable methods for having these experiences, we have coined the term spiritual technology. ONA is not the only place you will find spiritual technologies described, though no one previous to us has (as far as we know) used the term. But one of the precepts of ONA is that there is no one path to enlightenment and Self-realization; that all teachings, religions, and technologies have their truth. ONA recognizes only one lie, the idea that any one path is the only path, that any body of truth is all Truth. –And even that isn't a lie to the person who believes it. What ONA asks is that you release yourself from this self-imposed limitation. There is a Universe (and more!) of experience that is waiting to take you to ever greater and greater heights. If wholeness is your goal, you will find it to your advantage to embrace, or at least acknowledge, all.

Wholeness, when realized, is empowering. Hilary Rodham Clinton has offered the sentiment, It takes a village to raise a child. In Wholeness, you realize you are the village…raising yourself! You are complete—but that doesn't mean you must reject other people or things. It means you understand that, in a profound way, those others are, in fact, aspects of you…and you, of them.

Wholeness means understanding that God is you…and you are God.

If you find any of these ideas challenging or threatening, relax. No one insists you embrace them. ONA is not a discipline of dogma. You can follow the concept of Wholeness to whatever depth you like. But be prepared: In our experience, things we rejected as preposterous a year ago, we now accept as commonplace—the ONA exercises are that effective.

But, you have to do them. ONA suggests that, if spiritual enlightenment is the goal, perhaps one must master, or at least explore, many disciplines before achieving it.

That is, admittedly, an intimidating prospect. Most people would love to reach Nirvana by taking a pill. Heck, most people would like to get their taxes done by taking a pill! But we know taxes don't work that way, and we shouldn't be surprised if it takes discipline and knowledge and practice to gain spiritual enlightenment. Gaining spiritual awareness requires work, but it is doable.

Think of this Web site as the bridge between the land of physical reality here and the Land of Mystical Spirituality there—which, as you'll discover after you've crossed the bridge, was really here…after all!