Oneness vs. Separation

February 17, 2008

Dear Friends,

Sometimes, after a year or more has passed, I might choose to repeat a message if I feel it is particularly appropriate at the time. Today I am choosing to repeat a message that I published twice last year. Sadly, it feels called for once again.

I am alluding to the shooting rampage that just took place at Northern Illinois University. Although there are rarely definitive answers as to why tragedies like these keep occurring, I believe that the underlying cause for many of these events is ultimately the same thing: a feeling of separation instead of oneness.

“Oneness” is about our intimately joined relationship with each other . . . a relationship that arises from the fact that we are all individual expressions of One Spirit—that creative, loving, all-pervading Spirit we call God.

There are times when we sense that holy connection more than others, such as when we pray, meditate, spend time in nature, or hold a tiny baby in our arms. And the natural result of that sense of connection is a wonderful feeling of well-being . . . of love.

But all too often we feel disconnected, instead. We forget that we are one with God, and one with all of God's children. We feel separate from others, and separate from everything around us. And that sense of separation—of being all alone and on our own in this world—can generate a fair amount of fear . . . which is love’s opposite.

Sometimes that fear—and the anger that often issues from that fear—can be so magnified by mental illness or negative mental conditioning, we witness the kind of destructive behavior that exploded on the campus of NIU on February 14th . . . on Valentine’s Day . . . a day devoted to love.

Although everything that happens in life is an opportunity for us to discover where our blocks to loving are, it may be quite a while before many of us are willing to feel compassion for the lonely soul who orchestrated that horrific event which ended the lives of five young people, and changed forever the lives of many more.

For now, let us remember that when we judge others—when we attack them, belittle them, and criticize them—we are not only mentally and emotionally separating ourselves from them, we are also mentally and emotionally divorcing ourselves from the One Spirit . . . from the All-That-Is that is God.

May we remember who we truly are at the core of our being: individual expressions of God, as inseparable from our Source as waves are from the ocean. And may we maintain that conscious connection—and the sense of well-being and love that comes from that connection—by seeing all of our brothers and sisters as equal members of God's family.

Steven

© 2008 by Steven Lane Taylor