Awaken To Oneness And Soften To Judgment

During this talk, we'll contemplate the experience of Oneness and a more peaceful, less judgmental way of being in the world. Through teaching, personal story, and self-inquiry, you’ll begin to soften the sense of separation from yourself, others, and the divine. You’ll leave feeling more grounded, connected, and open to presence.

Music: Epidemic Sound. Purchased with subscription.

Transcript

Hi, And welcome to this talk entitled, Awaken to Openness and Discover a New Way of Being in the World. I'm really glad that you're here. Let's take a moment to arrive. Let your body settle. Let your breath be natural and unforced. You might want to close your eyes and simply soften your gaze. And just notice that you are here. There's nothing to fix. There's nothing to understand. There's nothing to figure out. There's just this moment, Your breath and your awareness. I want to explore the question, What if you're not separate? What if we're not separate? What if the sense of distance from others, From life, Or even what we might call God, Is something that we've learned, But not something that is ultimately true? Many of us, And I'll speak for myself, Sometimes we feel like we're separate. That, You know, There's me having this individual experience and no one else is connected to that. We forget that all things are connected, Or I forget that everything is connected, And I'm going to share an experience that I had in a moment that sort of disproved that to me. But can you relate to that? That in our life there's like my thoughts, There's my struggles, And then there are other people out there, And we're not connected. And then we also try to protect this sense of me. We try to manage it. We try to improve it. We try to defend it, And that can be really exhausting. Again, I realize that one of my Achilles heels is trying to look like I have my act together, And I'll do all sorts of things to protect that and to appear that way, Even sometimes not being really truthful. I hate to admit it, But that's the way I respond sometimes, Just by trying to protect myself, To protect me. And it's quite natural, And I think all of us do it in some sort of way, And the thing is it can be really, Really exhausting doing that. And I've actually found the opposite, And that is when I'm willing to be vulnerable, Willing to be open, Willing to be as honest as possible, That's much less exhausting, Because there's less to protect. I'm just out there. And hopefully just take me as I am, Nothing to prove, Nothing to hide, Just being me. There was a time years ago where I was walking down the street one day, And I was working at a place called Mission Possible, And it's in one of Canada's poorest postal codes. And as I was walking down the street, A person was coming towards me, And they were obviously in an altered state of mind, Maybe drunk, Maybe high, Who knows. There's all kinds of drugs and things going on in that area, Including mental illness, But this person was definitely on something, And they almost stumbled right into me. And what was interesting is what happened in that moment, Is that I wasn't moved to judgment or I was maybe a little bit afraid, But what the thought came to me is that I'm no different than that person. And I think that thought came to me as I walked past them and walked a little ways down the street, And I was just like them. I have pain, They have pain. I have addictions, They, I'm assuming, Had an addiction, They appeared to have an addiction. And yeah, It was so interesting that it wasn't a judgmental moment. And you know, We also have our own ways of trying to cope, And they were trying to cope, And I try to cope. I have my ways of trying to cope as well. And I mention judgment because I think that's one of the really helpful results of practicing oneness is that judgment just seems to slip away. Is that when we enter into and experience oneness, Judgment seems to slip away almost instantly, And the boundary between ourselves and others disappears. It becomes less solid, The illusion of it just, And almost without any sort of effort. It's like the only effort is to remind ourselves that we are one. We are one with others. We are one with the situations that we find ourselves in. We are one with what is. And this wisdom, The wisdom of oneness, Is found across many different traditions, And the wisdom is that what we call the separate self, The sense of being distinct, This isolated me is actually an illusion, And it's not as real as it appears. It's one of those things, You know, In spiritual language that it appears to be real, But in reality or on the spiritual plane, It isn't as real as we might think. On the spiritual plane, We are all one. We are all connected. I had another moment once, Standing beside a pond and just thinking, The thought came to me to be as still as the tree behind me, And when I think about it now, I became sort of one with the tree. We were both still. We were both present. And then out, As I did that, Almost very quickly, Almost immediately, As I remember it, There was like a flash up in the right side of my vision, And I just had this sense that everything is connected, And I call that my oneness experience. And what was interesting at the time was this was like 20, 25 years ago, And I'd never really been introduced to that concept. I maybe had heard John Lennon's song that we can be as one, You know, Kind of thing, But I hadn't really put too much thought into it. It was like at that point, The universe was introducing me to this concept, And I've been unpacking it ever since, And I really don't have a problem with that. I don't have a problem with experience leading the way, And then continuing to unpack the mystery by learning from other teachers and other traditions, And even Scripture, You know. Yeah, I won't go into it now, But some Scripture comes to mind. So just for a moment, I know this is a talk, But I'm just going to repeat the word, One, And see if you make some sort of a connection or some sort of shift happens. Just even in my saying that, Let go of that. Just go into this without any expectation, But just relax for a second. Be still in your mind. Be still in your body. And as I gently repeat this word, Let it land in your awareness, And the word is one, One, One. We are one in that we all exist. We are one in that we share awareness. We are all aware. We are one in that we all suffer in one way or another and experience pain. We are one in the sense also that it is in our nature to be happy and to experience joy. It's not all difficulty and all negative. There are positives. We are one in the fact that we live and we experience life and we have life. We are one in that we all experience darkness and we all experience light. I know that was awfully quick, But as I'm saying these words, Are you experiencing any sort of a shift in your body? Is there maybe a bit of a softening? Maybe you're becoming a bit more open. Maybe you're experiencing just being. I think oneness is a portal, A gate, If you will, To that. It's a gate to just being. Oneness is also love. When we are one with others and the judgment drops, That is love. That is a form of love. Oneness is an expression of love. And when we practice oneness or when we are aware of it, We're more able to meet others with a sense of shared humanity. We are one in our humanity. And as I've been saying, We just really aren't as separate as we think we are. The distance between us begins to soften when we practice and are aware of our oneness and our connectedness. And oneness is dynamic because it changes the way we are in the world. And we're able to be one with this moment and then this moment and then this one too. And so as things change, As things move along, There's a dynamism to it. And we are one with things as they move, As life flows and moves along. There's a little bit of a practice of semantics that can go along with this, And that is using the word we instead of them or they or just simply me or I. When we think of even the problems in the world instead of blaming others, Saying that we are responsible for this, I think of the environment. I won't go political on you, But I think of the environment and I think of the ways in which I am complicit in the degradation of our planet. And it's really hard to get away from it. And I can think, Oh, It's just those big polluters that are the problem. But no, I mean, I'm the problem too. I look at all of the food waste that we have and the packaging that we use and the gas, Et cetera, Et cetera. You know, It's a we. Then it becomes, When I look at the ways in which I am complicit, It becomes a we thing, And it moves it away from just blaming others and connecting with the problem or the issue myself, And it becomes a we problem. So I'm wondering, As you're listening to this, Can you feel the we, W-E, Instead of the me, Even for this moment? Can you feel into the we? Can you feel into the oneness with others? Can you be one with your own experience? I think that's where it begins, Being one with your own experience, Being one with traffic. Boy, That's a big one for me. Can I be one when I'm in the grocery store? Can I be one in social settings? Can I be one with the disturbances, Quote unquote disturbances, Right, As they arise in my day? Can we be one? Thank you for joining me today. In a sense, We have been one by participating and contemplating this talk and contemplating and participating in oneness. Take good care.