One Idea That Could Change Your Life: Oneness

Oneness; it sounds complicated at first, but it is simple in the end, and will change your life forever. It did for me. Oneness is more than a concept, it’s an experience and a way of living. The idea of oneness showed up first in the spiritual traditions of the world. In every culture throughout time there have been saints, mystics, sages, shamans and prophets whom have come to the same conclusion: all things in this world are deeply interconnected, and ultimately are only diverse expressions of the one original source energy. This was the essential experience and conviction of most of the worlds’ religious founding leaders. They called the Oneness of life different things: God, Allah, Hashem, The Great Mystery and so on, but the idea of oneness is universal. Oneness means we are each united with all of life.

Oneness is not just a spiritual or religious idea, it is now a clear scientific principle. Einstein died trying to prove the unified field theory, a belief that all of life and matter are united by an underlying energy or consciousness. The great quantum physicists David Bohm, Arthur Eddington, Max Planck and many others were convinced that at the very deepest (smallest) level of all things was an energy universal in form and without end. Deep within each cell, each molecule, each atom and nucleus, deep in the hart of matter breathes an energy so subtle and yet so essential it could be called “spirit.”

The environmentalists and ecologists also are convinced of this oneness. There is too much clear evidence that the pollution in one part of the world impacts the climate, air and water in another. The chemicals that the smallest animals eat from our waste and farming practices travel up the food chain until large doses of those chemicals appear in our daily diet. Changes in the habitat or population of any one creature sends a ripple effect through the world. Oneness is the law of nature: what we do to others we do to ourselves.

It is a big idea to grasp at first, but imagine it like this: what if the force that preceded all life were like an ocean? In time, out of the very nature of the ocean was the capacity to freeze under certain conditions and form ice, floating on the surface. The ice is unlike the ocean, it floats on the ocean, and it doesn’t even look like the ocean. But in time, the conditions change and the ice melts back into the ocean. What it every really different? Separate? Or was it always one thing in many forms? This is how mystics and physicists think of life.

Regardless of whether we believe in the garden of Eden or the big bang we have to accept one thing in common something came before it all: a vast, endless, infinite, eternal something – ONETHING. That same source-force is here right now. It gave rise to all things, and it is inside you, around you and will exist long after we are all gone. Which means that we are all related through this origin and oneness. We really are one family, one body, one mind.

If you truly understood this, you would not need to be told to be kind, you would not need to be told to recycle or forgive or love or respect yourself. You wouldn’t worry about who wins, you’d be sure that no one loses. You would love others as yourself; you’d see the spark of the divine in all things; and you’d know that every experience is a lesson, a chance to grow toward understanding ONENESS.

By Jonathan Ellerby PhD, author of “Return to the Sacred” www.returntothesacred.com