What Is Oneness And Why You Should Care
You may have heard the familiar refrain how “we’re all in this together!” Sure, each of us on Earth is sharing the same experience of being alive on this rock hurtling through space. This is where the similarities used to end in my mind, so I viewed the idea of oneness with skepticism.
The true concept of “Oneness” as a study has a deeper meaning. It means we share more than just a common human experience – we each are the whole universe at once. We have a hard time understanding this concept in the way a dog can’t understand the complexities of life happening around it. What it means, though, is that we are literally each other and all of us together form one whole.
No matter your religious or scientific beliefs , we’re seeing the importance of treating each other kindly more and more. Racial killings, global emergencies and deepening political divides highlight how much it hurts when we separate ourselves and how good it feels when we come together. Whether you’re a true skeptic or diving down the rabbit hole, aligning your life to oneness will help you create a more peaceful and harmonious life.
Oneness Highlights Our Fundamental Similarities
The simplest explanation I’ve found for oneness is in Season 3 of HBO’s Westworld. I’m going to ruin this plot point for you now, so skip ahead to the next section if you plan on it later.
The main character, a robot “host” from Westworld programmed to appear human but do everything actual humans ask her to, escapes from the park to blend in with “real” human society with a few of her host friends. She brings several hard drives with programmed personalities, presumably from other host characters we’ve come to love, and places them into other artificial bodies. This starts as a fun guessing game about who is in who’s body, until we learn that each of the hard drives originally had the exact same program on it. What we thought were different characters was actually the same character in different bodies and situations. Even though the characters make different choices and create their own agendas, all these decisions started from exactly the same place. The same initial “program” evolved into totally different experiences based on the body and circumstance it was placed in.
Picture now that you and everyone else you see also began from the same essential program. Your underlying consciousness, the “you” that exists even beneath your name, is the same that’s in every other person you see. What choices might you have made if you were born into that other person’s body and life? Can you see how you might (or actually did) arrive at the same actions as them?
It Provides A Calming Context For Life
Tuning in to oneness can take a lot of pressure off your shoulders. Since the universe is experiencing itself through all these different existences, you’re off the hook for missing out on any other experience you’re not currently having. All you have to do is keep having the experience you are and embrace it fully.
Writer and philosopher Alan Watts put this point beautifully when he said, “What you are doing in the here and now is something the whole universe is doing, in the way that a wave is something the whole ocean is doing.” We can see individual waves from the beach and we know they’re all part of the same ocean. When you see another person, understand you are both waves rising out of the same universal ocean. The ideas which separate us exist only in our own heads.
The calming thing about aligning your life with oneness is that you don’t have to be anyone other than yourself. You are having exactly the perfect experience you/ The Universe wanted to have, and all you have to do is keep having that experience. You don’t have to be someone else, because you’re already being someone else through their experience.
Oneness Underscores The Importance Of The Golden Rule
Have you ever heard the phrase “There but for the grace of God go I?” People usually use it when they see someone in a bad situation they themselves could easily have encountered. When you align to oneness, you will realize this phrase is actually always literally true. “Thank god that’s not happening to me” doesn’t work , because what’s happening to someone else is also happening to you. This means doing to others as you would have them do to you is more than just about being nice. The Golden Rule is about protecting yourself.
When you judge another person for their actions, appearance or other choices, you’re essentially judging yourself. Oneness tells us we all are all pieces of the same whole, so another person’s choices are actually your choices made in their circumstances. When you say you don’t like how someone handles themselves in public, you’re really reacting to your own embarrassment about how your own self might make choices that you in your current circumstance would not.
All the evidence you need to support this is inside yourself. Think about how you feel when you have a positive connection with one or more other people. Doesn’t it feel great and fulfilling? Now think about how you feel when you judge someone else or put them down. Just like we can feel physical pain, we each have a sense for “moral pain” that tingles when we create separation with others. Avoid that pain by doing to others as you would have them to do to you. Be kind to yourself.
Where Do We Go From Here?
There’s lots of evidence of our desire to connect with one another in deeper ways. Social media is an excellent example of our need for large-scale connection. Oneness helps change interactions with strangers into catching up with old friends. Hearing others’ experiences helps us understand our own. Think of someone you find very different from yourself and think about how you might be in their circumstances.
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