Seeing the Oneness of our Reality – Part Five
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This is Part Five of a Five Part Series of Seeing the Oneness of our Reality. See previous installments: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four.
In this five part series, we will explore the meaning of Oneness – the concept of one interconnected consciousness that gives rise to all beings and matter. There is no self and the other, they are one and the same. In my opinion, it is the understanding and experience of Oneness that is the key ingredient necessary for us to progress forward as individuals and for society to solve its biggest problems. Think about it, progress on any of the major issues we face – rising poverty, food and water shortages, climate change, rising energy prices, growing inequality, deteriorating education standards, immigration etc – are all stale-mated at the current time because we have become hyper-polarized as a society in terms of us versus them, what’s mine is not yours, and winning is everything. Yet, collectively, we have enormous technology, intellectual, and financial resources to solve or at least significantly mitigate almost any problem, if we would only cooperate. But if we think we are separate and different from “the other person or group”, that cooperation will be a long time in coming, if ever. In this five-part series, I’ll take you on a tour of what the latest information form the world of Science, Spirituality, and Psychology is revealing about our true reality. These things have been spoken about by ancient spiritual traditions for thousands of years, but our modern world took a detour around 400 years ago and is now finally catching up. Hopefully more will awaken to our underlying interconnected and shared reality and we can finally move forward to realize our true potential. -JK
Part Five
Nirvana, Non-Duality and The Taming of the Ego
If everything and everyone is part of a single energy plane, then you and I are the same, and connected. Non-Duality means that there is no Self or Other; rather, it is all One. Yes, we have different physical forms, but underneath, at a sub-atomic and spiritual level, we are identical. If then I am mean to you, I’m essentially mean to myself. Therefore, the ultimate goal—the meaning of nirvana—is to experience this non-duality, this utter lack of separateness between all of us.
The way to achieve that is to act with love toward all people. Love is when you see the other as yourself. When we say we would be willing to give our life for another person, it’s because we see them as ourselves and we would certainly want to help ourselves. Unconditional love is true love, full of acceptance, compassion, and forgiveness.
Living in the Moment without the Ego
When we come to the conclusion that we (people, all living things, and all material form as well) are all connected through a universal life energy force, this of course has huge implications for how we live our lives moment to moment and day by day.
Much of what we’re taught growing up is how we are different from others, and a separation arises in our minds between “us and them.”
We’re judged in terms of our grades in school, our athletic achievements, our “artistic gifts,” and our successes in our jobs and professions. Literally from birth, we are rated, sorted, measured, and classified. It can be no wonder then that we naturally develop a tendency toward conflict, the need to win, and the need to be right.
But if what metaphysics and science are pointing to is a universal connection among all of us, then when we engage in conflict, aren’t we just hurting ourselves? Think about it: we are from the same Source, connected to each other in an electrical field. The field, like an electrical circuit, has feedback loops—when I give energy, it comes back to me; when I take energy, it is taken from me as well. In this way, it is synonymous with the Christian teaching of “those who give will receive.” Or from Asian traditions, the concept of Karma’s cause and effect.
It is also said that the very things we push against or resist keep appearing in our lives until we learn the concepts of acceptance, forgiveness, and love.
When we absorb this concept, it is hard to look at people and situations the same again. If we are the same, if we are connected, then a good way to view others is that we are co-creators in this life we’re sharing. In any situation you encounter, if you believe the others participating with you in that moment are co-creators who have come together and have the ability to collaborate and raise (or lower) the energy level of a situation, it can dramatically alter your approach to life. So the natural question of course is:
What if the other person doesn’t see the world in the same way? What if they are still in the mindset of conflict, competition, or aggression?
Well, if we go back to the concept of being connected at a subatomic level in the field, then our approach and our positive energy can have an effect on the person(s) we are interacting with. If our approach is based on acceptance, understanding, forgiveness, and love, it will have an affect on the other person, lower their resistance, and the positive vibration will come back to us.
In any given situation, we can choose to take the view that conflicts are due to people’s having their own challenges and that how they deal or interact with us is not personal. We can give them the benefit of the doubt and know that they are on a journey of self-learning through this life just as we are, and though we may not be synchronized today, we come from the same place. We can choose to be of assistance to them through our understanding and acceptance and view them as co-creators with whom we can collaborate toward win-win outcomes.
In this way, you in fact have an enormous amount of power in any situation. You control your own reaction, and by eliminating the separation between you and someone else, you provide them with that power, achieving a much better outcome for all involved. And although you may not experience the result you want right away, a positive gift of acceptance and forgiveness is always returned.
A related outcome of this mode of thinking is that we reduce or lose our need “to be right.” Our view or position doesn’t have to be accepted immediately by the other person. We start realizing that we are all in it together and though we should certainly put forth our ideas, thoughts, and constructive feelings, the fact that they aren’t accepted right away is ok.
People need time—we are all seeing the world through a different set of experiences and filters. The more patience we have with each other, the more we move toward common understanding and shared experiences.
Sometimes we can actually see people becoming more aware and realizing the Oneness among us in real time. Recently you may have seen some politicians change their stance on certain social issues—gay marriage for example—because someone in their family revealed themselves as gay. Now, after decades of being against gay marriage, they announce they are for it. What happened is that what they previously saw as “other,” they now see as themselves. They love their children, and since their children are not “other” but the same as they are, then they must love others as well because they, too, are one and the same.
As love was the answer in allowing those in the above instance to erase the separation, so too does love have influence in other situations. When someone who strongly opposes climate change policies, for example, personally experiences a major climate event causing great loss of life, property, and large financial impact, climate change is suddenly not some abstract concept happening to someone else. There is no other—there is us—and since these people care deeply about their own, they now recognize that we are in it together. In both instances, experiencing love and caring firsthand were necessary to erase the need of the human mind (ego) to create separation and highlight differences between people.
In sum, we of course hope that not every politician or business leader must experience profound personal trauma in order to make decisions that are in the best interest of all people. I’m not sure our country or the planet could afford that! We simply need them (and ourselves) to understand that we are all the same, all part of one energy stream of consciousness, and that when we help others, we help ourselves; when we hurt others, we hurt ourselves.
Love is the only real fuel for our lives; everything else is merely fumes.
Mastering Our Thoughts,
Mastering Our World
Over this five part series, we have learned that the leading edge of science, the Eastern spiritual traditions, Christian mysticism, revelations from past life regressions, near-death experiences, and channeled communication from the Source all suggest the following:
We are all spiritually interconnected in a vast Energy Matrix that is connected to the Universal Consciousness.
Our thoughts are high-frequency energy, and thoughts turn into physical manifestations in our world.
We are thinking all day long (and night through our dreams).
This implies that we are creating nonstop! If that’s true, then it would be a safe next step to say that we need to be on guard regarding our thinking all the time, right?
That’s exactly what successful business entrepreneur Trevor Blake has learned over the years and explains so beautifully in his 2012 book Three Simple Steps. It is one of the most unique takes on the Law of Attraction, and Trevor goes to great lengths to show you how he implements his three steps in his daily life. I highly recommend you read his book. Not only is the information important in transforming our lives, but Trevor’s life story of rising from childhood poverty in England to entrepreneurial success is a moving and motivating one.
Trevor calls his process of minding his thoughts “guarding his mentality.” He has learned to be ever-vigilant in not letting negative thoughts infiltrate his psyche. He discovered this key insight during his difficult childhood. When everyone around him was negative, Trevor discovered that when he changed his focus away from what they were saying, spending time in nature and at the library, he was able to create uplifting thoughts, and he started to attract positive change into all areas of his life. What was once thought impossible for a poor child living in rural England became possible through his removing the negative and believing strongly that he would achieve whatever he wanted. He did not let doubt enter into the equation.
The key takeaway from his experience is that in our modern-day world, we are constantly faced with a barrage of negative information —from the sensationalist news programs on TV, to irritated colleagues at work, and even angry parents at an eight-year-old’s soccer game on the weekend. When that stimuli enters our minds, our brain goes to work and creates mental images of that negative information. Apart from causing us emotional distress at the time, our mind also acts like a giant search engine looking to turn thoughts (energy) into reality (matter). Unwittingly, we start attracting similar negativity to our lives.
Our mind doesn’t know if a thought is good or bad, or if we want it or not. It just converts without discrimination.
Even simply watching the nightly news after work can lead to unintended consequences. Even though there are numerous things that actually go right in a given day, they manage to cram ninety minutes of the worst of humanity into a thoroughly depressing program. Are we better off by knowing every single horrific event that has happened that day? To some extent, there are current event topics that a well-rounded and aware person may want to know about. But many media outlets don’t present thoughtful and carefully balanced information. And what do we do with the information once we know it—does it change what we actually do on a day-to-day basis?
Typically no, but our mind does something. The negative stimuli are turned to mental images, which then lower our energy levels and attract other low-energy events to our lives. If, after watching the news, you have images of death, economic collapse, and political gridlock now burrowing through your subconscious, then your mind’s search engine will try to manifest other unhappy things into your life as well. On the flip side, it is no accident that “positive investor sentiment,” “unbridled confidence,” “enthusiastic optimism,” and “a glass-half-full attitude” seem to have a multiplier effect on our lives.
When we shift our minds from what we don’t want to what we do want in our lives, magic happens.
We must focus on the affirmative and think I am healthy and happy not I don’t want to be sick and lonely anymore. The mind’s search engine says in the first case: Oh, you’re happy and healthy and therefore your circumstances need to match this. In the second statement, the mind’s search engine says: Oh, you’re sick and lonely and therefore your circumstances need to match this. In both cases, you get what you think about.
The challenges are how to control the negative stimuli coming to us in the first place and then how to control our reaction to it. The first part is done by adopting the shift from a reactive to proactive mindset. We need to be very particular about what sources of information and entertainment we consume and the people with whom we choose to interact. That said, we aren’t able to choose our environmental circumstances all the time —that co-worker or boss isn’t going away anytime soon. And your child will be very sad if you tell her she has to quit the soccer team because some of the other parents feel winning is life and death, calling forth every bit of anger in their cheering to help defeat the other team. What to do?
The answer is that it is our reaction to the annoying stimulus (not the stimulus itself) that allows us to remain free of its bad effects.
Going back to the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, we suffer when we become attached to arising thoughts. If we release those thoughts—let them slip by us like passing cars on the highway—then we simply observe and stay calm. Trevor Blake quotes his mom Audrey, a truly enlightened soul, on how she taught him to control his thoughts: “When I was growing up, she was always telling me to pause before I spoke, ‘to give your reaction time to sort itself out.’”
The best way I know to develop our ability to control thoughts, and our reaction to them, is meditation. A daily meditation practice strengthens our brain’s ability to stay centered and calm and be clear of unwanted thoughts. Meditation is usually associated in the West with stress reduction, and that is one of its greatest benefits. But as we have just discussed, it also can help you master your thoughts, and thoughts are essential to creating the reality we truly desire.
~Jay Kshatri
www.ThinkSmarterWorld.com
To more deeply understand the harmful effects of the ego and the remedy for them, turn to modern-day spiritual master Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth, Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. You can in fact watch a free online course on the book that Oprah did with Eckhart back in 2008—there’s one video segment for each of the ten chapters:
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