Relationship and Oneness

Relationship and Oneness – are these experiences connected? I believe they are. Let’s begin with the concept – “There is no one out there” – and explore how that statement relates to oneness and the mirror of relating.

From my perspective, the concept of Oneness, often expressed as “we are all one,” lacks the depth of a true experience. Oneness holds such great promise and seems to be so important in the evolution of our species as we move into the New Earth paradigm. But what does oneness mean in simple terms? I will attempt an explanation using examples from my own personal experience.

The ego self perceives itself to be separate from all that is, even separate from God. Even if there is no God, we are still separate from each other. Ultimately, all of our waking moments are lived outside of our own skin, perceived by what we see, feel, hear, touch, taste and smell. The world of the five senses is the world of the three-dimensional existence.

But what if there truly is no “out there” and everything we perceive with our senses is actually a world of illusion, a world of pretend, a world of actors and actresses who have agreed on a soul level to play certain roles in the “game” called life?

What if those players in your life agreed on a soul level to play certain roles with and for and through each other? And what if the people who love us most agreed, before incarnating on planet Earth, to play the toughest and seemingly most darkest roles in our lives? Those who have been giving us the most pain and suffering and turmoil and despicable behavior may truly be the ones who love us the most and who agreed to play these tough roles for us so we could gain the most from spiritual growth.

A reflection of self
Oneness is a concrete experience when everything we perceive outside of ourselves is really a reflection of self, when everything we perceive in another is actually us. I will give you an example of this in relationship to what happened to me this past week through the reflection of my good friend Jewels.

Jewels and I have been working in Sedona, AZ, for the past seven years or so in a business that originally offered Sedona vortex tours, intuitive readings and massage. Jewels and many others were trained to guide clients in a unique journey created by our boss, Suz. Suz had created a tour of Sedona and the powers of the vortexes through intuition and guided information, incorporating her experience with the native elders. Suz has since passed away, and Jewels and I continued – along with many other original practitioners and guides – to offer these experiences to our clients.

The business named has changed over the years, with its last incarnation as The Sedona Spiritual Center. A few months after the closing of the center, Jewels was offered an opportunity to make a good sum of money teaching our competition the original Suz vortex tour. When she told me she was going to train the competition, I reacted by developing a knot in my stomach and judging her decision to be selfish. After all, a small core group from the business planned to reopen the original center under another umbrella. I felt hurt, confused and upset by her decision, and I wondered if this decision was reflecting her ego self. The decision to teach the signature Suz tour to our competition seemed based on fear and personal gain.

Inner searching
After a few hours of inner searching and talking with another close friend from our cooperative group, I came to the stark realization that because there is no one “out there,” Jewels was in her perfection reflecting back to me something very deep and unconscious within my self, and this situation was giving me the opportunity to release from my unconscious or shadow self, that part of us which is wounded and still feels unloved and unheard.

After being very honest with myself, I heard the still, small voice within me crying out, “What about me?” I felt left out and scared and alone, and I was truly concerned with the “me me me” inside of myself, but I was projecting onto Jewels that she was being self-absorbed.

When I came to this realization, I felt terrible because I had revealed a part of my self which I was ashamed of and judged – the shadow self, which had hidden any reflection of self-centeredness. I also felt bad because I had risked my relationship with a friend and dumped onto her that which did not even belong to her. A deep heart-felt apology and hug quickly solved the dilemma.

Unveiling myself
This whole experience with Jewels led me to a new level of unveiling my ego self, that part us which truly believes it is separate from everything and everybody. The next night, when Jewels and I attended the second class in a series of four about True Abundance at the local Unity Church, I experienced more “less than love” behavior within myself. After an hour of listening to the moderator spew forth truth after truth, he guided us in a meditation based on forgiveness. Prior to getting into the meditation, we were directed to write the names of four people we felt needed our forgiveness on a pink piece of paper (pink denoting the color of compassion). I wrote: my father, my mother, my grandfather and God.

Why God? I did not know until the meditation began. Somewhere in the middle of the meditation, in my mind’s eye, I saw Jesus on the cross. It felt very real and very present, and I felt myself there watching him hanging from the cross.

In my inner voice, I heard Jesus say, “Father, why have you forsaken me?” It felt as if those words were coming from my own mouth, “Father, why have you forsaken me?”

I began to cry to myself as the tears ran down my face, and I felt a very deep belief in forsakenness. Father. Mother. Grandfather. All relationships I have experienced with men in this life, probably many lives before, came up in me as pain and suffering. I felt, “Why have you forsaken me?” All the disappointments emerged as tears that dripped out of my heart.

I then began to experience how my own beliefs and feelings of forsakenness had created all my disappointments in love. I had believed in the forsakenness of my own being, and those feelings had actually caused me to create the very scenario I so feared.

Set myself free
Now that this has been revealed as a part of my still, small self within, I can set myself free. Forgive them for they know not what they do. Forgive me for I know not what I do. The unconsciousness within is so beautifully reflected in the images, words, actions and reactions of those who cross our paths – most profoundly by those who are the closest to us, who reflect that which is inside of us, that which we have yet to discover or reveal.

I do want to add that everything beautiful and wonderful and loving and magnificent that we see, feel and know about another is also a reflection of ourselves, as there is truly only one of us here. The presence of the all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving God/Goddess residing within each of us is called, among other things, the Soul or the Self.

Traversing this path of awakening to our true, authentic self begins with letting go of all that we are not and allowing the Self that we truly are to become the experiencer of the experience of life itself in its most awesome expression of unity and oneness.