Tag: oneness

Family

There are many meanings of the word family: bloodlines, cultural background, soul connection, life friendships, and more. It has expanded over time, with human evolution and world change. When I was in college years ago, a friend introduced me to the book The Family of Man [sic], a collection of photographs of people from all over the world in different countries and cultures, showing the unity in great diversity. Since then, of course, women have been more universally acknowledged as an essential part of that family, in language as well as perceptions. Widening the definitions even further, family includes much more than humanity.

This past winter I often gazed out the window at the leafless trees in the woods across from our condo building. Their various forms were quite beautiful in the changing light of the day. Then one morning I suddenly saw them differently: as connected, branches and roots energetically interwoven. One continuous entity instead of single side-by-side trees. I could see the trees as family, living their lives together, intimately linked in time and space, just as human families are.

There have been books written about how trees communicate through their root systems, as people communicate through our hands and voices. When I thought of this, my mind felt itself expand even further so that I could picture the family of trees and the family of humans as part of an even larger family of all beings on Earth—and even beyond that: part of families of stars and galaxies. We think everything on this planet and in the universe is separate and distinct, but from a multidimensional perspective, it is a river of unbroken energy, flowing endlessly as one.

The greatest sages taught this over the centuries. Their wisdom spoke of a oneness beyond human attempts to categorize life in order to understand it. “Understanding” becomes unnecessary when we hold acceptance and unconditional love for All That Is in our hearts; that’s when true “seeing” begins. Gratitude opens the door to grace. And the universal oneness that is the essence of family.

So what if all of us saw life on Earth this way, not occasionally, but always? Trees and people and animals and flowers all one within a rainbow of light. One breath of God breathing the world. If we could see that all our “roots” and “branches” are intertwined, how could we then hate one another and fight wars? How could we destroy forests and poison the air?

I stretch my heart and soul to believe that this vision of oneness is possible. Not only possible but arising more and more, not just within the minds of poets and prophets but in average people living everyday lives. Yes, there is dissension and conflict, seemingly everywhere you look, but there is also something else: softer voices speaking of kindness, compassion, and peace. And living it. We are not entirely lost in separateness and mistrust. Our “family” is not dead. Even if we can’t feel or see them clearly, our branches and roots are still intertwined, and our hearts pull us forward to oneness. We are breathing life into this world, every one of us.

On the Other Side of Identity

After I completed treatment for breast cancer three years ago, I went through several months of transitioning back to daily life without doctors’ appointments, tests, or procedures. Relief and gratitude came first, along with deepening trust in my soul’s journey as it unfolded. But then, unexpectedly I also felt a wave of sadness and apprehension about “what’s next?” I was a survivor (yay!), but I wasn’t even certain what that meant. As the days and months passed, I experienced an odd mixture of profound appreciation for life along with wondering if I had lost some of my life-force energy. I found myself not as interested in many familiar, but busy, activities. The one thing that continued to deeply engage my heart and soul was Nature. Walking among the trees, bird-watching, gazing up at the ever-changing colors of the sky and clouds. I guess I would say I was most drawn to being rather than doing. 

In some ways, it was not that different from how I had lived life previously; yet there was a certain “emptiness” to it that made me wonder: Had my core essence died with the cancer cells during chemo and radiation? I puzzled over this off and on for some time. Then I remembered a moment of spiritual transformation that occurred during my treatment process: the loss of identity! My identity—eclectic pieces collected over a lifetime (flower child, feminist, spiritual seeker, etc.)—fell away with the hair on my head and the physical appearance I was used to. When I looked at my body, I saw a temporary home for my spirit, or soul, which is in fact eternal. And the soul peacefully observed my life and identity with neutrality.*

Looking back at those life-changing moments of complete soul awareness, I realized that I was now living my life in an entirely different way. My identity was no longer filtering everything; it had faded to the background. What I thought was emptiness or loss was the vast beingness of spirit resting in my heart and soul. I was the observer, or witness, so often referred to in meditation teachings. An almost indescribable feeling: To be in a form but to feel formless, unattached, much of the time.

Our human minds tell us this world is real; our souls see it as a passing illusion, one we come here to experience and then finally break free of when we die—or sometimes beforehand, so that we can live freely, peacefully, as soul while still “alive.” The identity is the costume you wear on Earth; it dissolves at death or perhaps, unexpectedly, during a health crisis or other life-shattering experience. It may take time for you to feel fully at home with just a shadow of identity left; that was true for me. Patience and acceptance are part of the process.

When the identity falls to the wayside, your consciousness enters a different dimension. You realize that human inventions, personalities, and events come and go in the material world. Beyond all those transient illusions is something greater: a Light of Awareness that births all of life. This light is experienced most clearly in Nature, and that is why individuals often feel deeply connected and aware when they walk among the trees and flowers, listening to birdsong. In truth, it is everywhere.

When you look up at the stars sparkling in the infinite cosmos, there may come a moment when you feel one with all you see. If you have lost a loved one or your own sense of “self,” the vastness of the universe still holds you in its loving awareness. More and more now, I understand that that awareness is my soul’s home—on the other side of identity. 
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*See also the chapters “Shedding” and “Body and Soul” in my book Breast Cancer and Beyond: An Unexpected Soul Path: https://amzn.to/4aka0eu.

Remember Your Heart

How do we live through difficulties and challenges with our life spirit intact? The current political landscape is full of such extreme divisiveness and hatred, both nationally and globally, that it is hard to feel optimistic about the future. Almost daily my heart is filled with sadness, and peace on Earth seems like a lost dream. Recently, as I sat staring out the window at a cloudy winter landscape, I sensed similar cloudiness within me. I realized then that I had felt exactly the same way in the late 1960s when the Vietnam War was at its height, and fiery race riots raged in Detroit, Newark, Watts, and other cities. The world seemed to be in hopeless conflict, and I couldn’t see how basic human rights, justice, equality, and peace could ever come to be.

Many others of my generation felt similarly, and it was the birth of movements for nonviolent social change and the possibilities they held that helped us survive. Civil rights workers and peace activists, flower children and feminists, began to grow in numbers (yes, I was among them). The vision we held for a more loving and harmonious planet moved us forward, our hands and hearts joined. Music, speeches, marches. Hope lived in collective actions by thousands against war, racism, sexism, homophobia, and environmental destruction. Over the years, gradual but significant changes took place, even nationally. The end to the Vietnam War. The first African American President and first woman Vice President; a more diverse Congress. Women’s health rights. Voting rights. Martin Luther King Jr. Day; Earth Day. Legalization of gay marriage. Rainbow flags across the country seemed to symbolize the possibility of a diverse and inclusive future for all.

 Yet systemic racism and injustice, misogyny, anti-Semitism, hatred of immigrants, transphobia/homophobia, and the rise of the 1% economic elite continued to grow and become stronger. Right up to the present, when it all burst out into high-profile predominance with the current elected (and non-elected) government and its single-minded focus on power and money. Decades of social change are being battered and broken. Once again I/we are facing hopelessness.

At times like this, we need to remember what lifted our spirits and helped us through in the past. The positive energy that inspired us and encouraged us to continue. In books, articles, speeches, songs, films, meetings, demonstrations—in hundreds of places across the country and around the world, we have been sustained by our individual and collective voices of hope for human freedom, equality, compassion, and love. This is our Survival Kit for Troubled Times.

This past week,  I watched two classic Frank Capra films from the 1930s: You Can’t Take It With You and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Both films are quintessential Capra: average citizens pitted against ruthless wealthy businessmen and unscrupulous politicians. They struggle against seemingly impossible odds and yet in the end, “we the people” prevail. Each film is a hopeful vision as well as a cautionary tale. One with relevance today. How many times over the years have people been called to stand up and refuse to relinquish the dream of a just and free world, a heart-centered humanity? Sometimes it seems like a horrible replay that we don’t want to relive, but we came to Earth for exactly this. With each generation, there is a shift, a further awakening into recognizing the basic oneness of everyone and everything, even in the midst of our differences.

We have to remind ourselves that possibility lives within impossibility. In her book A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit writes about groups and communities of caring, support, and mutual aid that have spontaneously arisen within disasters, both natural and human-made. As unlikely as it may seem, when everything falls apart, humans often turn to one another with kindness and generosity and build connections anew within great loss. Such stories belong in our Survival Kits, along with memories of our own strength and resilience, our own optimism in the face of pessimism. Maybe “hell” will begin to recede as our human hearts reach out to each other with hope and resolve. As my friend Heather recently said, “Remember your heart.” Everything we need is within us and among us.

Breath

The breath doesn’t disappear when you stop breathing at the end of your life. It is the source of your breathing, and it continues, just as your spirit continues. Indeed, breath and spirit are one and the same (identical word in some languages). This is a wisdom we come to as we pass from this world to the next. The Spirit that brought you life as you know it here on Earth, through your breath, is never-ending.

If you are fortunate, you may come to this awareness within your lifetime. Sudden jolts to your habitual way of perceiving the world can awaken this cognitive/emotional expansion. Crises or change, as well as deep spiritual practices, frequently have a transformative effect on your view of yourself and all of life. What seemed solid and unchanging suddenly becomes fluid and ever-shifting. You begin to realize that the “unknown,” that which we haven’t yet solidified into facts, is perhaps your greatest source of expansive wisdom.

Birth and death bookend our physical lives, but eventually we see them as illusions that we invented to explain what appears to be a beginning and ending. In truth, we are part of an infinite continuity of being, the eternal Spirit that fills the universe and our physical forms with awareness. A profound soul awareness that expands with each breath we take, each experience we live. The entire universe is within you, as you are within it. Sounds contradictory but only when your mind organizes the world into inner/outer, beginning/ending. From the soul’s view, everything is one, without polarity or edges.

Some religious traditions see eternity as a heavenly after-life in which we are reunited with our loved ones who have already passed into a world similar to the one we live in here—but where peace prevails. We often picture gods and goddesses who inhabit that world, there to comfort and guide us. Yet perhaps it is we who are the gods and goddesses living on Earth in human form and there is no after-life, only the eternal Now. Divinity is everywhere.

The human mind longs to find truth, to define life and death, so that we can keep fear at bay. Fear, however, is a product of the mind and of the need to know. Peace arises from the heart and soul, from a profound acceptance and understanding that is beyond questions, answers, and definitions. I find that when I become lost in fear of the unknown and the vastness of infinity, it is because my mind is frantically spinning its wheels. If I breathe deeply and allow a deeper awareness beyond the mental to arise within me, I settle into the “peace that passes understanding.” This is the eternal breath. The journey of my lifetime, of all of our lifetimes, is to recognize that peaceful presence as Home and one another as soul family. In doing so, we experience eternity with every sweet breath in each present moment.

Speak Kindness into the World

Finding time for silence in your life is important; it soothes, calms, and centers you in your soul’s presence. When you do speak, your voice then expresses the loving heart of who you are, connected to that inner stillness. Your voice can also be an instrument of peace and kindness in the world, healing separation and judgment. We are currently living at a time in which antipathy is on the rise toward those viewed as outside of a very narrow frame of acceptability (one race, one religion, one gender). Our immigrant and transgender neighbors now fear for their lives. We in the larger LGBTQ+ community are also fearful. Along with many others, including people of color, non-Christians, and all women. Who’s next?

There is a famous quote by Martin Niemoller during World War II, when Nazism was sweeping through Europe. He begins: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.” He continues, each line adding another group that “they came for” (trade unionists, Jews), and he still does not speak out. The last line stands as a powerful statement, then and now: “Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.” In other words, do not sit silently while your neighbors are verbally or physically attacked. Speak up. Stand with them. It’s happening to all of us.

Speaking up doesn’t have to be a fight or an argument (try to avoid antagonism, if possible). It can be as simple as admiring people for who they are, appreciating “difference” instead of disliking it, answering negative comments with positive ones. It’s a delicate balance, because some people hold tightly to their opinions and don’t want to be contradicted or challenged. To speak with kindness and compassion for all people is what we are being called to do in the world now. We are all different really. We are also all the same at the core of our being. To live with that seeming contradiction, in a space of inclusiveness, is the challenge of the years ahead, the shift from a warring planet to a peaceful one.

It begins in your house, your neighborhood, your state, your country, your planet. In essence, everywhere. With each voice of kindness speaking quietly, soul to soul, the world opens its collective heart a little more. It may seem an impossible task, but all journeys are step-by-step endeavors. Many of us have been traveling this road for decades. I lived through the years of “America: Love It or Leave It.” I also lived through the years of civil rights, women’s rights, Earth Day, Black Lives Matter, and rainbow flags on the White House and national monuments. As human beings on an evolving planet, we are all of these things. Individuals who act with hate or unkindness are often fearful inside; they don’t want to “lose” what they see as their only security in the world. They hang onto their belief systems like a life preserver. And fear can form a wall between people. Actually, we all carry fear of one kind or another in us these days.

So how to find a way for all of us to live together in mutual respect and open-heartedness? Without fear. Without anyone thinking they are better than anyone else. No easy answers to that. The walls can feel like they are closing in, angry and hateful voices speaking louder and louder. Doing nothing is not an option. My/your voice is key—not to engage in aggravated (and aggravating) argument, but to find a way through disagreement to mutuality in spite of difference. We are alive at this time for exactly this reason, as difficult or frightening as it may seem. There are many paths to oneness and community, but they all begin with kindness. The peaceful silence within you will give you the courage to speak that kindness into the world.