The same difference

For those of us on a spiritual path to inner freedom and peace and those of us that are not seeking any deeper meaning in life, both sides of the spectrum may have heard about the concept of oneness or togetherness.

While the idea of oneness may sound promising when spoken or read, the reality we commonly experience is far from this. Even when we try to work on our egos, our illusions of a separate self, even when working on this for years, it is still not easy to see how we can be in harmony with our environment and with those around us. Not even on the level of our close relatives and family, it simply seems to be impossible.

We feel that we are separated by race, sex, nationality, political opinions, religion, to name just a few. We feel that how is it even possible that anyone can ever understand how we feel? How can anyone even claim to understand our suffering, when they have no idea how we feel on the inside? This idea we have of our own suffering, of being victimized, this shuts us down from our surroundings, because we then magnify this idea of self VS others, me VS them. We make the ego appear as more real and solid, feeding it with victimized ideas. With such an approach, we can't experience oneness.

How do we live in harmony even with our parents and relatives, when our views are constantly different? When we feel they simply cannot understand our anger, our frustrations, and our pain? Again, this makes us feel completely cut off from them. Now, if we cannot live in harmony with our direct family, the people that love and care for us dearly, how can we tolerate strangers?

Changing our perspectives

What if we try another approach to this? What if we change our perspectives around this situation?

When we are all suffering, all seeking peace, all unhappy, let's start to listen to another. Let's start to hear why someone is in pain, why someone is feeling victimized, and how this makes them feel. When we give just a moment of our time to them, to understand what is happening in their realities, we can start to open ourselves to sympathizing and empathizing with another. We can share their pain, frustration, sadness, and grief because it is similar to what we feel on the inside.

As soon as we can open up to this, we can come closer together. We realize that even within our different ways of thinking, different nationalities, races, problems, different masks we wear, we share the same feelings on the inside. We want to be acknowledged, we want to be loved, we want to experience peace and happiness. We all seek fulfillment.

Understanding this opens the door to bringing us closer together, as we start to realize that we are actually the same. Wearing different masks, protesting for different causes, but wanting the same result, wanting the same satisfaction. It is this aspect of us, this deep internal aspect, which connects us and makes us one.  

We need each other

Another viewpoint on oneness, is when we look at how we need others to grow and to develop. When we utterly despise someone, when we hate someone or can't stand the idea or the sight of someone, that is the clear pointer to us that this person we impute hate or anger on, is our most precious teacher appearing right in front of us. The mere fact that this person points out to us that there is still hatred and anger in our hearts, makes them so precious to us. They are the most precious teachers we can wish for at that moment because they show us that we can transform our anger and hatred into compassion and love. They pave the path for us to peace and happiness, and they offer us the opportunity to practice forgiveness. Where else can we learn how to forgive? Who else can teach us these valuable aspects? See, this is extremely important.

We need each other. On all levels of our incarnation, we need another. Our parents, our siblings, our students, and our teachers. It is extremely diverse. Each role we play, each time we wear a mask to play a different role, the relationship between the two actors allows them to grow and develop, to grow from each other.

Understanding this, we can bring peace to our whole environment, we can allow others to fulfill their roles too, and bring harmony to each level of relationships we have. Knowing that 'others' need us too, we tolerate their anger, we forgive them, we empathize with them. When we have internal peace, we can offer it to those around us too, spreading it all over.

When we come to this understanding, we realize that we could never be without others, and we realize again, that after all, we were always one. 

In the end, what does it matter if someone does not agree with us, if we feel someone is wrong? What is this wrong we speak of? Is it only our own opinion? How does it help us to carry hatred in our hearts when we are just destroying ourselves? Why can we not forgive immediately, but instead walk around with anger, spreading it? We may come to see that this has no benefit at all, it is only the ego-mind that believes this, and it steals our most precious peace, happiness, and presence.

This may not be clear to us at a first glance, but when we meditate on this, when we contemplate our lives and the connections we have to others, we shall soon realize that the idea of separation is only an illusion, and that we are all part of one organism. Not only are we in connection with other human beings but with our whole Universe, the form and the formless. Nature, the elements, nothing is separate from us.

We share the same space, and we are connected by the same thread of Awareness. The love we experience in our hearts, has the same Source. Deep down, we are all that same Source. We are one.

Sub Ek.

Bees can serve as a reminder that we are part of the same organism, and not a separate unit in our environment.