Fostering Oneness

Right now I am sitting in my friend Lindsey’s apartment in Boquete, Panama writing this blog, while a sewing class for indigenous women is going on in her living room.  Lindsey has been living in Panama this past year working to empower the lives of women and children through her non-profit, Sowing Seeds of Love.  A few months ago Lindsey and her sister approached some indigenous women and offered them the opportunity to make some dresses that Lindsey had designed with the intention of selling in the states as a way of not only funding her non-profit, but giving women a chance to earn an income.  I can just imagine what these women must have thought when Lindsey and her sister approached them.  It is unfortunate to note, but there is quite a division between the indigenous, Panamanians, and the ex-pats (people who have moved here from the states, Canada, and Europe) that live here.  Most do not intermingle, or if they do, it is with a clear division in social status.  Lindsey is working to bridge this gap in social status by giving the least fortunate an opportunity to better their circumstances.  She believes in seeing and treating all as equals, especially those who tend to be overlooked.  Though these women are not accustomed to be sought out and helped, some of the women connected to her truth and took a leap of faith with her.  It was the beginning of an incredible journey to ignite a light in these women that previously lie dormant; all because one person decided to see another as someone beyond their circumstances.

Lindsey with the sewing instructor and two of her students.

Every spiritual journey is about recognizing the oneness that we share.  Too often we are caught in the illusions of separateness, whether it is through thoughts and attitudes of either superiority or inferiority.  This is highly evident when we see and treat others based on social status.  Instead of seeing the person beyond these illusions, we only see the illusions…that they are different than us because they were born of different circumstances.  This creates a wall between us and them.  Our ability to connect to one another is inhibited by this wall.  Sometimes we create these walls because we cannot handle seeing the plight that exists.  We protect ourselves from the pain by closing ourselves to it.  Sometimes we do so to distance ourselves from those who have more, as a way of blaming them for our perceived scarcity.  All of which, only serves to separate instead of unite.  The more we see through eyes of separation, the more we uphold these illusions.  Our role is to see beyond these illusions.  In doing so, we move towards oneness.

If our perception of the world is determined by how others respond to us, it is not static, and instead is dependent on variables outside of ourselves.  We cannot bring about change if we are waiting for others to see as we do.  We must break through our past conditioning, which only serves to keep us in a reactive cycle towards others.  If we are only kind to those who are kind to us, how can we see through the attitudes of those who have not yet grown in this manner?  If someone is disrespectful to us and we respond with ruffled feathers, we are not moving towards oneness; we are upholding separateness.  We must learn to stay centered in spirit so that we can move beyond these illusions.  Once we learn to center ourselves in love, every reaction will be one of love (versus how our ego would prefer to handle the situation).  With practice, this can become our standard response to all situations.  In this way, we are working to bring about oneness.

Thomas Merton describes ego as being the immense conflict of the world.  If you were to begin breaking down your everyday experiences, you would come to see that it is ego that knocks us out of a state of love.  Ego wants to be right.  Ego wants people and circumstances to fit a standard criterion and when things are outside of that expectation, ego is frustrated.   Tolerance, acceptance, and allowance are key to shifting out of ego and into spirit, because they allow others to be just where they are, without wanting to control them.  If we can come to trust that each person’s spiritual journey is uniquely their own and that it is occurring in accordance with Divine timing, we can begin to let go of our desires to captain their ships.  This doesn’t mean that we close ourselves off to helping them in their journey.  Instead, it opens us to responding to them from a place of spirit (versus ego).  We open ourselves to spirit working through us.  Maybe we are meant to say something in a given moment, maybe we aren’t.  We leave it to spirit (versus ego) to guide us in these moments.  This is how we become instruments of peace, love, and joy.

Even though Lindsey has been called to devote her life to physically bridging this gap in socioeconomic status, we can each play a role in mentally bridging the gap in our perception that viewing others through illusions of separateness creates.  A Course in Miracles refers to this as correcting the errors in our perception.  As each error is corrected, we move closer to perceiving the world through oneness, the ultimate goal of this journey.

As always, the journey continues….

Much love to all,

Shanna