Oneness: Creating a Better World in 2021
Understand Oneness and the pragmatic benefits of spirituality.
Ultimate Well-Being shows us that spirituality is a necessary variable in optimizing your well-being.
It’s also essential to build a better world in 2021.
Clarence and Kurt working on this one. The UWB team often focuses on the pragmatic benefits of spirituality. Oneness is no exception. By further understanding Oneness, we can understand our biases to see our world more clearly and in turn, raise awareness and self-acceptance. That will lead us to build a better world than the one we are in today.
What is Oneness?
Oneness is the belief that there is a connection with everything in existence. It seeks to remove the lenses we have come to wear by acknowledging the creation of these groupings, labels, and separation. I equate experiencing oneness similar to travelling to a new country or coming into a new job. Experiences are brand new, we have yet to fully form our own judgment of placing ideas into good or bad.
Take this one step further. We all know Covid came out of China and they are becoming a larger force every day in our world. Like it or not, we have to learn to live together harmoniously. Just like colleagues you don’t like. Just like things about your partner/spouse/kids you don’t like. We have to live with them sometimes. It’s part of the whole. Part of existence.
As we age, our perception of the world is fragmented based on thoughts, concepts, and socially acceptable behaviour. Emotions such as pride, fear, contempt are labelled undesirable and pushed to the far recesses of our subconsciousness. Fragmenting our world into ‘good’ or ‘bad’ invites us to feel flawed, lacking, and eternally ‘not good enough’ for others and ourselves. Labelling them does us no good. So stop labelling and realize we are part of this together.
Benefits of oneness:
Understanding Oneness is inherently a journey of how we perceive the outer world. Buddhism speaks of the interdependence of items. Taoism relates to detachment beyond oneself, and the Zen mind invites you to move away from independence. But it’s not just East Asian religions/studies, it’s also in others. There are a plethora of verses in the bible telling people to take care of the poor. In Islan, sharing wealth is one of the main tenants. To me, this all encompasses oneness and creating a society that works for everyone — outside of our world. All of these perspectives encourage us to build a better world and community.
How to integrate yourself more fully:
Practicing several of the meditation techniques the UWB team earlier highlighted can raise awareness to live more in the present
- Meditation
- Solitary nature immersion
- Self-love and compassion
Let’s start by understanding and defining the relationship we have with ourselves. Like everyone else, there are parts of which we celebrate and others where we have repressed and ignored. Oneness acknowledges these repressed parts and attempts to bring them back into visibility. Shadow work has often been cited as a proven method to acknowledge this shadow.
Once you get to know yourself a bit better and are less judgemental and more compassionate, then maybe you be that way to people around you and in your communities.
What to Do in 2021
Do something. Nothing comes from nothing. Do something you never have done before. Volunteer at a Boys and Girls Club. Go to food shelter. Mentor a kid without a father. If you have the power to do bigger things with technology, do that. And, it all doesn’t have to be about profits. Maybe, just do something for the sake of what’s right and not how our world works today. Because the way our world worked, may change very much in the coming years.
Godspeed in 2021.