Restoring Wholeness in a Fragmented World
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LIVING oneness RESTORING WHOLENESS IN A FRAGMENTED WORLD A GLOBAL ONENESS PROJECT STUDY GUIDE Since 2005 the Global Oneness Project has traveled across five continents and met over 200 individuals who live and work with the consciousness of oneness. We’ve witnessed and documented the powerful impact these people are having on their communities and the world, and shared their stories through films and interviews. Impressed and deeply moved by how quickly and effectively an awareness of interconnection and the responsibilities it engenders helps bring innovation, compassion, and wisdom to the challenges facing our global community, we offer this study guide to help facilitate your own understanding and experience of oneness. contents Welcome! 4 Introduction 5 Attributes of Oneness – I 10 Attributes of Oneness – II 25 Dimensions of Oneness 34 Distortions of Oneness 48 Fallacies of Oneness 63 History of Oneness – I 75 The History of Oneness – II 100 Oneness and the Future 131 Oneness Now 151 Service 169 Living Oneness 178 About the Global Oneness Project 199 3 Welcome! We’re glad you’ve started the Living Oneness study guide. Most likely you’re reading this after watching one or more Global Oneness Project films. Stories about people living from the consciousness of oneness – the extraordinary generosity, ingenuity, wisdom, and courageous challenge to the status quo that they demonstrate – are some of the most important models for our time. It was always our hope that these individuals and their projects would inspire you to take the next step toward knowing and living oneness in your own community. We’ll provide lots of exercises designed to help you participate more consciously in these changes. And help guide you through the often confusing and sometimes subtle challenges of living one- ness in a world still greatly influenced and determined by a mindset of duality, separation, and extreme individualism. Who Can Benefit from this Study Guide? We’ve designed the study guide to be used in a variety of ways, from individuals studying alone, to small groups that meet regularly, to students in a classroom setting. You might find it’s more fun and enriching to explore the material in the company of other committed learners. You can play with more ideas, hear different perspectives, and get support for your work. If meeting in small groups, we suggest weekly or biweekly meetings of 5-12 members, in person. Reserve two to three hours for each chapter. We encourage you to use the resources on the Global Oneness Project website education page, where this study guide is available for download as a single file or by chapter, along with other educational materials, DVDs and discussion guides. the challenge Writing, talking, and learning about oneness is not a straightforward endeavor, so this study guide might be a bit different from approaches that can promise results as long as you put in the time and study hard enough. Oneness is not always cultivated through facts, figures, and effort. The consciousness of oneness is fundamentally shared and grounded through direct experience – through “aha” moments when the mind shifts into new territory and something unexpected is suddenly present. These kinds of consciousness-expanding moments are not only difficult to predict, they are also not easy to maintain. The direct and dynamic relationship between your consciousness and life around you is a foundation for experiencing oneness. 4 Introduction We live in one of the most precarious and exciting moments in history shaped by unprecedented pressures and opportunities. How we live with and relate to each other and the earth seems to matter now more than ever. The challenges facing us are rarely unrelated to the challenges of our neighbors, and solutions will have to serve not just a few, but many. It has never been so clear that we thrive or die together – dependent upon each other and how we move into the future as a world community. At the Global Oneness Project, we understand the urgency of our times to be a sign of great collec- tive change, including the opportunity for humanity to create new socio-political, economic, and even cognitive structures with the enduring, universal, and unifying powers of peace, compassion, empathy, and reverence. Or, in a word: oneness. Historically, the term oneness has most often been used to describe a spiritual experience – the revelation that our deepest human nature is essentially interdependent with the created world as well as the divine. In oneness, we understand the fundamental equality between all parts of life, that each part has a role to play in sustaining the whole, and that life is sacred. This deep and clear awareness engenders respect, humility, and a trust in the abundance and goodness of life and other people. Today the principles and attributes of oneness are being acknowledged in unexpected places, no longer limited to spiritual circles. Innovators in fields from economics and ecology to environmental and social justice are discovering that many of our world’s natural and created systems work most efficiently and sustainably when the powers of oneness are active and consciously engaged. As omnipresent as it is, oneness and its qualities make themselves available to each of us in our own unique ways. We might come to sense the basic non-hierarchical nature of life through our use of the Internet, which models the possibility of infinite connections and free and egalitarian exchanges of information. By volunteering at a homeless shelter we might discover the unlimited 5 introduction nature of our own generosity, how even when we feel we have nothing to offer we find that there is more to give. Joining bartering networks makes us aware of the potential for greater equality of participation in our economic structures. Growing our own food can sanctify our relationships both to the earth and to our bodies, and help us know these two seemingly separate entities are intricately and mysteriously connected. We can become aware that many of these insights and experiences are not isolated or entirely personal, but part of an expanding understanding available to humanity about our own nature and the nature of life itself—an understanding of oneness: how all life is interdependent, how responsible we are for each other and for our shared world, and how effective we become as we look past extreme self-interest with the aim to contribute. do you know your neighbor? As we move into the 21st century, we need new global structures to support and sustain our growing understanding of our global community. Not structures that allow one culture to dominate the world stage, but that support and even renew individual cultural identities and value their contribution to the whole. And, of course, support our increasing respect toward all the earth’s resources. Humanity will not go back in time to when individuals or independent communities could pursue their own interests regardless of the impacts of their actions. And we can no longer turn a blind eye to the suffering around us. Our vision has already expanded; we’ve woken up to the reality of interdependence and need to move forward establishing the relevant world structures that support this reality. Working with oneness is the challenge of our time. When Mother Teresa said, “I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?” she was pointing to the reality of oneness and the essential role of seeing beyond ourselves in order to discover and share the resources that nourish the world. To live and work with oneness includes acknowledging the constrictions and basic ineffectiveness of attitudes that emphasize “me” and “mine” as we aim to support the flow of resources where they are genuinely needed. As we cultivate the consciousness of oneness, we see that “me” and “mine” do not have to control life. There is an arena of experience in which these concepts have a place, but are not central – an arena in which deep meaning is found when we give ourselves to a greater whole, and when we develop courage and compassion to bring our deepest inner knowing into harmony with outer world structures. 6 introduction The intelligence and wisdom within this arena do not destroy or de-value “I” but rather help the “I” find the most potent and effective ways of contributing. There are many roadblocks to aligning with oneness, especially in the West where an emphasis on individualism and personal success has created and supported so many psychological, cultural, and economic compulsions towards self-interest. But many of these roadblocks are part of a world we can, and must, leave behind, a world of isolation from resources that we need in order to participate in life, powerlessness based on a sense that the world “out there” has little relationship with our deepest hopes, and apathy in the face of so many global challenges, are not impediments within oneness. By aligning ourselves with oneness, we find ourselves in a very different world – a world in which our contributions matter, where we are given what we need in order to make a difference, and where we see outer life as more flexible, more accessible, more part of us than we thought. In these ways, oneness is essentially empowering, helping us build communities that facilitate the flow of all resources – including the deepest resources of love and meaning – throughout the interconnected web of life. As we come to know and value the qualities and attributes of oneness available through our hearts, like peace, empathy, gratitude, compassion, and joy, we step into an arena that by its nature draws us further and further beyond the limitations of “me” and what “I” can offer and even cannot offer.