It is a truly frightening conclusion to realize that I cannot know the totality of my Source without including the totality of humanity.
Ouch.
While concepts of Oneness are energizing and uplifting to ponder the reality of it is confronting, chaotic, revelatory, and often exasperating. In a world of social media, instant information, political mania, and constant terrorism images of people grossly unlike me are parading through my consciousness with relentless frequency. It is at the surface level of our shared humanity that they are unlike me. This is not the level at which we are One. We are One at the level of Essence. We are One at the level of Spirit. We are One at the level of Principle, not of personality. We are forever One within our Source.
It is the remembrance of our Source and of our shared Oneness that is at the core of why we are here. If I choose to focus only on ways that we are different it will be a long and arduous road to the experience of Oneness. If I choose to allow and embrace the experience of what feels so different between us it will be a road of awakening. There are far more ways that we are alike than that we are different. We all have a deep and intrinsic need for connection, belonging, acceptance, and love. We may go about the pursuit of those in bizarre and even tragic ways. Levels of unconsciousness are always out-pictured in unskillfulness. If I really want to know Oneness I am called to look at my own unskillfulness as a way of discovering my unconsciousness. If I am sitting in judgment of you it is a reflection of MY limited perception. If I am only focusing on the ways I think you are wrong it is a reflection of my own mistaken identity. If I confuse behavior with what you are it is me that is fooled. I am the lens. You are what I am viewing in the mirror of my consciousness.
I lived in fear of letting others in almost my entire life. My early wounding left scars that shrouded my heart. I was hurt in relationship and it is in relationship that I will heal. It is in relationship that I will challenge the tendency to recoil and pullback. It is in relationship that I will come to know the depth of what I am. In choosing to love you I will come to know the One Source of Love. It really is an all or nothing proposition. To know an essential love I must love at the level of that Essence. I will love and compassion your unskillfulness as a way of knowing that I live in a field of ultimate love and compassion. My opinion of you will either open me or close me. And my opinion of you will often painfully reveal my hidden assessments of myself.
I am grateful to finally be courageous enough to acknowledge that I need you. I need all of you individually and collectively. I need you to awaken to a felt-truth that we are indeed One. Sometimes it is messy. Often it is painful. It is frightening indeed. And it is always necessary. To love you is to love God, which is really just loving Love. That is why I am here.
