Oneness is the understanding that everything in the universe is connected. The Golden Rule tells us to “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” This is a simple solid foundation for how to live in our family, circle of friends, workplace, groups we belong to, and our community. It’s simple, but it’s not easy.
It’s not easy because our ego gets in the way. Our ego tells us we are special and our ego is offended when others do not recognize our specialness. We can see how this works by looking at a loaf of bread.
Think of a loaf of fresh bread coming out of the oven all golden brown and smelling delicious. This is how we’d like to experience our community; warm and inviting. Now consider what makes up that loaf of bread; flour, eggs, yeast, sugar, perhaps molasses, raisins, cinnamon or a variety of other ingredients. Each ingredient has a special purpose in the recipe that makes bread taste so good. Any ingredient by itself does not give us the same pleasure as we get from combining them in just the right way. In other words, the ingredients are not special but their purpose is special.
Consider the pleasure derived from a community (the bread) when individuals in that community (the ingredients) work together. By removing the idea of our individual specialness we are freed to focus on our purpose. For it is in our purpose that we each contribute unique and necessary talents that will benefit not only our community but ourselves.
One’s ego is a master of deception, however. Specialness is disguised in many ways; race, religion, political persuasion, education, job title, economic status, health status, age, heritage and more. These types of specialness build a fence around us that excludes certain less special individuals. To further complicate matters, when one tries to set aside specialness the ego introduces fear. Fear of being wrong, different, rejected, ridiculed or worse. And to complicate matters more, our ego has made these reactions automatic so we aren’t generally aware that we are responding in these ways.
Living in Oneness within a community means overcoming our specialness in spite of our fears so that we can focus on our purpose. Our purpose is to love one another just as we love ourselves.
Thinking From the Heart 