[Please note: ACIM passages quoted in this article reference the Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP) Edition.]
This past weekend and today I have been thinking about and practicing around the idea of oneness. The idea that “we are all one” seems like the most basic of spiritual ideas. Everything teaches it. Everyone believes it. It seems so basic, so ho hum. Heck, I’m bored with it myself. When I first read it at 18, I found it deeply unsettling. It loosened the moorings of my world. Then, when I got more comfortable with it, I found it profound. Now, I find myself thinking, “Yeah, I get that. Now give me something more interesting.”
However, I have recently found a new gateway into its true profundity and radical implications. A few months ago I wrote a chapter on the teachings of the historical Jesus. Specifically, I was commenting on those famous sayings about turning the other cheek and going the extra mile. In their original form, these were specific applications of the injunction to love your enemies. The idea was that, when your enemy tries to take something from you, rather than defending yourself and retaliating, you treat the enemy as if he was your best friend. Your only thought is for the need of this dear person. And so you make what he was trying to take into your free gift to him, and then, in a fit of compassion, you actually double that gift. You carry the soldier’s heavy pack an extra mile. You offer the other cheek. You give your coat as well.
In essence, while being attacked, you display blithe unconcern for yourself and overweening concern for your attacker. This connects with a whole thread in the teachings of Jesus, in which you treat people that would normally be in your outer circle as if they were the most treasured members of your inner circle. We see this not only in Jesus’ sayings, but in his behavior, for he was well-known, and criticized, for dining with disreputable people, with the dregs of society that everyone else looked down upon and kept away from.
How does this tie into the idea of oneness? I realized that our usual treatment, in which those who treat us poorly are retaliated against and banished to our outer circle, is based on a single thing: what we might call the self-other divide. At the very simplest level, we put ourselves in a fundamentally different category than we put others. There is this line we draw, this boundary between us and them, and depending on which side of the boundary one is on, one’s status is utterly different. On the self side of the boundary lies the one important thing in all the universe, the thing that all else revolves around—the self. On the other side of the boundary, the situation is entirely different. On that side lie a host of things that seem to exist only to serve the self. On that side lies the other. And the other is just far less important than the self.
So what I realized was that Jesus’ teachings only made sense if one dispenses with the self-other divide. Someone who treats the enemy with the same total concern with which one normally treats oneself is clearly regarding the enemy as oneself. This person has cast aside the self-other divide. It doesn’t exist anymore for him. Those on the other side of the divide are regarded in the exact same way as the self on this side of the divide. The divide, in other words, has gone.
To me, this attaches to the idea of oneness a host of radical practical implications that it doesn’t seem to normally have. I don’t know quite how people regard the idea of oneness, but it strikes me as a kind of spiritual form of aesthetic enjoyment. It feels good to be one with music. It feels good to be one with nature. It feels good to be one with people. It feels good to be one with everything. From an experiential standpoint, oneness is a cool idea.
But if we are really one with others, that changes everything, on the most concrete levels. It means there is no validity in having care and concern for others that is less than our care and concern for ourselves. It means there is no validity in having care and concern for strangers and enemies that is less than our care and concern for our spouses, parents, and children.
The Course talks openly about this: “All of the tribute you have given specialness belongs to him, and thus returns to you. All of the love and care, the strong protection, the thought by day and night, the deep concern, the powerful conviction this is you, belong to him. Nothing you gave to specialness but is his due” (T-24.VII.2:6-8)
In comparison to this, oneness as we usually seem to frame it seems quite narcissistic. I’m one with you, but I am in no way responsible for you. I’m one with you, but if you’re in need, that’s your business. You didn’t apply the Secret well enough. I’m one with you, but you’re just my projection, just an aspect of my psyche. I’m one with you, but there’s no one out there, so you don’t exist. For me, all of these statements directly contradict the opening phrase: I’m one with you.
Are we ready for the real implications of oneness? Not oneness as the narcissistic “I” having the aesthetic enjoyment of being one with nature, music, and oh yeah, other people. Are we ready to face the prospect of giving the other—no matter who the other is—the same care, concern, and importance we give ourselves? Are we ready to give the love and care, the strong protection, the thought by day and night, the deep concern, the powerful conviction this is us, to someone else, to everyone else?
OK, I’m not ready. But I want to be. So that’s what I’ve been dwelling on lately. It strikes me as a double standard that cries out for correction. Why am I so much more important than everyone else? Why do I have one standard for me and another for all others? It just doesn’t make sense. It is the lie at the heart of all other lies.
