Reflections on Interconnectedness/Oneness

[Eric Revelin]

I've come to a stage where I believe every individual consciousness is interconnected but currently I'm unsatisfied with the conclusions this often leads to.

It feels like there's still a tendency, within others and within myself, to adopt a perspective as if it were the absolute reality even when we lack true understanding of the new paradigm.

I believe we are interconnected because it is what my intuition and my experience dictates. If consciousness were incapable of communicating via the ether then many insights I've gotten into other people would be impossible. I'm very empathetic, often to the extent that it's difficult to discern whether an emotion originates within myself or within someone that's around me.

But does this mean that I'm literally the same entity, projecting myself and every other person simultaneously? I'd use the internet as an example. When connected, every computer on the network is able to share information freely. If you disconnect a computer from the internet that capability is lost but the computer continues to exist apart from this connection. All computers are built with the same basic parts and they run on similar code but none of them are reliant on the others for their continued existence.(Although a solitary computer would eventually break down, never to be repaired, if it were the only one of its kind. Repairs would be difficult and expensive if parts weren't mass-produced, plus you'd have to be an absolute expert in maintenancing and improving the operating system since you'd be among the few, if not the only one, in the world that understood it.)

The reason I'm sharing my thoughts on this is because the only information I've found that builds upon the idea of interconnectedness leads to the conclusion that everything is one. I don't have a problem with the conclusion itself but I feel, both intellectually and intuitively, that there's a little more to it than that. I don't want to say that it's more or less complicated because honestly, I don't know. How could I? To understand trancendental truth is to trancend this realm of existence, or so I feel.

See, I'm open minded but I'm very careful about declaring more than what I know. When I feel I've stumbled across an astounding truth I've consciously formed the habit of adopting it as a path I should follow instead of a perspective I should get attached to. I've adjusted my beliefs so rapidly over the past few years that I've reached an understanding that what I call truth is, at best, transient truth, and while it contains the fuel for growth and a touch of the divine none of it is an accurate representation of the absolute. (At least in the literal sense. IE, it may be accurate to depict god as a human inasmuch as the god spark, as I call it, dwells in us, ergo we are gods and we're free to depict a god in our image. However, it would be madness to assume that creator God literally exists as a man or a woman. From where we stand the best bet is that God totally defies our comprehension. It may be equally true that we defy our own comprehension.)

I think of group entities, like Abraham or Ra. Usually they'll say something like, "we are you when you are further evolved and we are reaching back to you to ease your evolution." But what if this is a being that resides in an alternate dimension and merely represents one path (among many) that we could follow? Will all paths lead to this end, or will individual consciousness eventually evolve to the extent that there are multiple god-entities birthed from this universe? Or is the universe itself a womb wherein massive amounts of energy is poured so that it may eventually develop into a brand-new god entity? And what of the possibilities I have never thought to consider? Perhaps they are so far beyond human imagination that it would be folly to reach for them now, before the mind, heart and spirit become more expansive.

Language is insufficient to deal with these subjects, and each of our thought constructs is intimately related to our language. If the language is insufficient, so too are the constructs based on it. Oneness, separateness, godhood, etc. are all just thought constructs. They may be based on contact with higher entities, but I would think such entities would be more concerned with our overall progress rather than the specifics (which we will probably have to uncover on our own).

If I'm trying to communicate a complicated issue like morality to a child I'm probably going to start with a black-and-white foundation because it is easiest for the child to understand. Then as the child grows and becomes capable of more complex thought, I'll reveal the intricacies and the subtleties behind morality and then I will let that child discover the rest on his own, granting guidance whenever he would risk straying too far off a healthy path.

But even then, in my advanced understanding, I don't know everything. Perhaps it is less apt when it is an imperfect human being communicating with another imperfect human being, but it seems like something we should keep in mind. Many have begun to abandon the old religious framework upon which many of us were encouraged to build our lives, yet we haven't abandoned all the baggage that went along with it. We want somebody to tell us how to think, to tell us what to do, to tell us what is right and wrong.We undervalue the truth that lies within our own hearts and we overvalue the constructs our imagination builds upon those truths. These constructs are made solely so we can make sense of what we've uncovered and put it to use. That's how we grow. Like a child that has to move on from educational toys to formal schooling, so too must we be flexible with the concepts we adopt.

By no means do I wish to say the all-is-one model of the universe is totally wrong and should be abandoned. As I've said, I believe we are interconnected, that at the very least we're made of the same basic stuff and that yields an ability to meld and communicate in a greater capacity than we dared to dream. Oneness is, at the very least, a plausible explanation/outcome of this way of thinking. Indeed, interconnectedness in any capacity could be said to be a form of oneness. But even these are concepts built in a world of concepts, where we are but babes learning to say our first words. Many of us alive today are interacting with the larger universe for the first time.

This is an admonition, to me and to anyone reading this, to take a cue from our earthly development as children and adolescents (and in some cases full grown adults), when we learned to question what we were taught to believe unconditionally. We need to apply the same spirit to the thoughts we ourselves would think, to things any entities would tell us, as we stand upon our wobbly legs and take that first steps forward.

[Angela]

Hi, Eric. That was a very thoughtful post, and I totally agree with you that we are just silly if we think we can or should be be certain of anything! What I don't know is: everything. All I can do is experience what it is to be here, and I want to do so with great joy. Out of that great joy (inside of that great joy), I've found a few tools that work pretty well in living a life I love, and the sense that we are connected, that we are one, is one of the most profoundly effective tools for that. I don't believe we are One like, "it's The Truth" and everyone who doesn't see it my way is wrong. In fact, saying "I believe" doesn't really resonate for me at all. It doesn't feel like a belief, and it doesn't feel like wishful thinking. It doesn't feel like fear (like, "if we're all separate computers, we are alone and lonely and screwed"), and it doesn't feel like religion.

To me right now, the sense that we are all in this together, that we are connected and we are part of oneness, feels like a gift: a place to stand that has my heart overflowing with love, peace, and freedom. A perspective from which my life is a fun fountain. That feels like really something, you know? It's something to be freely shared, and that's why I share it.

We are connected and we are one -- it's not The Truth, and I won't try to convince you of it. And since we are one, I want all of us to feel good on purpose, so I want to put Oneness in my front window and make it available for anyone who passes by and wants to, to try it on and kick up their heels at how delightful it feels.

Does that make sense?

[wolfgang]

oneness and not oneness at the same time.

I like the idea of oneness and feel it at times to be with me or in me or of me.

I'm not sure if I feel it like interconnected like we are each computers on the Internet. More like a hologram piece. That in oneness we don't have to send signals to each other, because what ever is being thought in my mind is of the infinite mind anyway. Non-local mind communication knows no distance or time lag. of coarse just mental concepts.

All I can do is look for it more often and also find that my regular mind thinks it's a workable idea. Like my mind can think, since I'm also the infinite mind/self, if I choose to be happier then that is reflected into everything and peace is more available. Or to hurt some other being is really to hurt myself. But then I do wonder if it matters since experience is what it is, not a path of judgment and trying to make everything positive. Oneness is non-duality after all and duality has peace and that other junk. But, my usual self would rather experience peace... hmm...

[Eric Revelin]

Originally Posted by Angela

We are connected and we are one -- it's not The Truth, and I won't try to convince you of it. And since we are one, I want all of us to feel good on purpose, so I want to put Oneness in my front window and make it available for anyone who passes by and wants to, to try it on and kick up their heels at how delightful it feels.

Does that make sense?

That makes perfect sense to me. I freely acknowledge interconnectedness, and I'm the first to say that we're all in this together. One or not, we need each other.

However, while oneness resonates with a lot of people, and I myself find motivation and comfort in adopting a form of it, I think there are some wishing to be spiritual but they don't like religion and they don't like this alternative. It's not my responsibility, nor is it the responsibility of anyone else, to provide yet another alternative. I simply admonish people to seek what resonates with their own heart regardless of where the overall trends are leading, and to do so with the understanding that "truth" on this level is more about growing than it is uncovering immutable facts.

I see unity as an important thing for us to establish, but we need to be careful that we don't create it by the same flawed mechanisms as we did in the past. Religion isn't at fault, politics isn't at fault, philosophy isn't at fault... It was the notion at the heart of every institution that lasting unity could somehow be attained through coercion and homogenization.

I've seen a strong tendency even within myself to seek that which would put me back to sleep after I've awoken, no matter how joyous that awakening was (it was scary just how subtle it was the first couple of times). We need to remember that spiritual growth has little to do with specific ideas. It has everything to do with the heart behind it. Even this brand of spirituality leaves room for overblown egos with superiority complexes. We must remember that if we're not earnest, wakeful seekers then we're just putting fresh paint on a rusty ship.

[fellowtraveler]

Originally Posted by Eric Revelin

... spiritual growth has little to do with specific ideas. It has everything to do with the heart behind it. Even this brand of spirituality leaves room for overblown egos with superiority complexes. We must remember that if we're not earnest, wakeful seekers then we're just putting fresh paint on a rusty ship.

You're going on my list of posters to follow, Eric. I like your style. I also admire you and others who can write so voluminously and fluently at the same time. I'm simple-minded, so the best I can do is to reduce a concept to the simplest form possible and relate it in a few sentences.

I have a feeling it's a one-word answer, the Big Question. But it's the journey, not the destination, etc.

Indeed I've seen this brand of spirituality be used...to try and pick up chicks, lol. And overblown egos are everywhere and charge you for the pleasure of adoring them. Your caution is well placed...but on the other hand, anyone who finds themselves painting that rusty ship ahd progressed to just that point, and when they realize what they're doing, they'll go help build the new Ark.

[Gukkor]

I feel the same way, to some degree. What is it that makes "oneness" a desirable end? Why is it considered more "spiritual" to think that reality is illusion and everything is actually indistinct from everything else? Why is separation bad? Why is interconnectedness not enough?

While we're at it, what is this "spirituality" business anyway, and why do we care?

[bellemeadows]

I think that we are each called to our spiritual purpose, our spiritual house. So if you do not feel called, don't worry about oneness. Follow your heart; it will lead you home, wherever or whatever that is. As Joseph Campbell said so beautifully, follow your bliss!

Oneness for me is a definately state that I feel at times. It is a very powerful, and lovely state. I enjoy it, and it keeps me grounded. It is not about oneness with people, but oneness with The One, which is all that is, including the essence, the reality of every person I know or have ever known. It is pure life and love. It is so funny, people equate this state with death, because there is a belief in a separate, egoic self, that this state, this realization, this perspective shows not to be terribly important.

There are many folks who have written about this state. Brother Lawrence wrote The Practice of the Presence of God. He was fortunate, the church did not kill him as a heratic, as they well might have.

In my experience, oneness is not about bodies, or what bodies do or don't do. It is not describable using language, nor is it something I could teach you. If you don't see the benefit, then your time to experience oneness is not now.

If you don't see the benefit, really, don't worry about it. Belle,

[Maguru]

Originally Posted by Eric Revelin

I've come to a stage where I believe every individual consciousness is interconnected but currently I'm unsatisfied with the conclusions this often leads to.

It feels like there's still a tendency, within others and within myself, to adopt a perspective as if it were the absolute reality even when we lack true understanding of the new paradigm.

I believe we are interconnected because it is what my intuition and my experience dictates. If consciousness were incapable of communicating via the ether then many insights I've gotten into other people would be impossible. I'm very empathetic, often to the extent that it's difficult to discern whether an emotion originates within myself or within someone that's around me.

But does this mean that I'm literally the same entity, projecting myself and every other person simultaneously? I'd use the internet as an example. When connected, every computer on the network is able to share information freely. If you disconnect a computer from the internet that capability is lost but the computer continues to exist apart from this connection. All computers are built with the same basic parts and they run on similar code but none of them are reliant on the others for their continued existence.(Although a solitary computer would eventually break down, never to be repaired, if it were the only one of its kind. Repairs would be difficult and expensive if parts weren't mass-produced, plus you'd have to be an absolute expert in maintenancing and improving the operating system since you'd be among the few, if not the only one, in the world that understood it.)

The reason I'm sharing my thoughts on this is because the only information I've found that builds upon the idea of interconnectedness leads to the conclusion that everything is one. I don't have a problem with the conclusion itself but I feel, both intellectually and intuitively, that there's a little more to it than that. I don't want to say that it's more or less complicated because honestly, I don't know. How could I? To understand trancendental truth is to trancend this realm of existence, or so I feel.

See, I'm open minded but I'm very careful about declaring more than what I know. When I feel I've stumbled across an astounding truth I've consciously formed the habit of adopting it as a path I should follow instead of a perspective I should get attached to. I've adjusted my beliefs so rapidly over the past few years that I've reached an understanding that what I call truth is, at best, transient truth, and while it contains the fuel for growth and a touch of the divine none of it is an accurate representation of the absolute. (At least in the literal sense. IE, it may be accurate to depict god as a human inasmuch as the god spark, as I call it, dwells in us, ergo we are gods and we're free to depict a god in our image. However, it would be madness to assume that creator God literally exists as a man or a woman. From where we stand the best bet is that God totally defies our comprehension. It may be equally true that we defy our own comprehension.)

I think of group entities, like Abraham or Ra. Usually they'll say something like, "we are you when you are further evolved and we are reaching back to you to ease your evolution." But what if this is a being that resides in an alternate dimension and merely represents one path (among many) that we could follow? Will all paths lead to this end, or will individual consciousness eventually evolve to the extent that there are multiple god-entities birthed from this universe? Or is the universe itself a womb wherein massive amounts of energy is poured so that it may eventually develop into a brand-new god entity? And what of the possibilities I have never thought to consider? Perhaps they are so far beyond human imagination that it would be folly to reach for them now, before the mind, heart and spirit become more expansive.

Language is insufficient to deal with these subjects, and each of our thought constructs is intimately related to our language. If the language is insufficient, so too are the constructs based on it. Oneness, separateness, godhood, etc. are all just thought constructs. They may be based on contact with higher entities, but I would think such entities would be more concerned with our overall progress rather than the specifics (which we will probably have to uncover on our own).

If I'm trying to communicate a complicated issue like morality to a child I'm probably going to start with a black-and-white foundation because it is easiest for the child to understand. Then as the child grows and becomes capable of more complex thought, I'll reveal the intricacies and the subtleties behind morality and then I will let that child discover the rest on his own, granting guidance whenever he would risk straying too far off a healthy path.

But even then, in my advanced understanding, I don't know everything. Perhaps it is less apt when it is an imperfect human being communicating with another imperfect human being, but it seems like something we should keep in mind. Many have begun to abandon the old religious framework upon which many of us were encouraged to build our lives, yet we haven't abandoned all the baggage that went along with it. We want somebody to tell us how to think, to tell us what to do, to tell us what is right and wrong.We undervalue the truth that lies within our own hearts and we overvalue the constructs our imagination builds upon those truths. These constructs are made solely so we can make sense of what we've uncovered and put it to use. That's how we grow. Like a child that has to move on from educational toys to formal schooling, so too must we be flexible with the concepts we adopt.

By no means do I wish to say the all-is-one model of the universe is totally wrong and should be abandoned. As I've said, I believe we are interconnected, that at the very least we're made of the same basic stuff and that yields an ability to meld and communicate in a greater capacity than we dared to dream. Oneness is, at the very least, a plausible explanation/outcome of this way of thinking. Indeed, interconnectedness in any capacity could be said to be a form of oneness. But even these are concepts built in a world of concepts, where we are but babes learning to say our first words. Many of us alive today are interacting with the larger universe for the first time.

This is an admonition, to me and to anyone reading this, to take a cue from our earthly development as children and adolescents (and in some cases full grown adults), when we learned to question what we were taught to believe unconditionally. We need to apply the same spirit to the thoughts we ourselves would think, to things any entities would tell us, as we stand upon our wobbly legs and take that first steps forward.

To me there is no mystery of oneness or connectedness. We are ONE human race. We have one world. One sun. One universe. One body. These are not concepts. We are all in this boat together. What more is there?

When we speak of mass consciousness, where is that? Is it in a big balloon on the other side of the moon? I believe we each contain a portion of the whole consciousness and in forums like this we join our consciousnesses.

I think before we can move on up the evolutionary scale of existence, we need to come down to earth. regards

[Gukkor]

Originally Posted by Maguru

To me there is no mystery of oneness or connectedness. We are ONE human race. We have one world. One sun. One universe. One body. These are not concepts. We are all in this boat together. What more is there?

When we speak of mass consciousness, where is that? Is it in a big balloon on the other side of the moon? I believe we each contain a portion of the whole consciousness and in forums like this we join our consciousnesses.

I think before we can move on up the evolutionary scale of existence, we need to come down to earth. regards

This is the sort of oneness I believe in. An interconnectedness that does not make a person any less of an individual, but simply an individual who is also part of a larger whole. I don't know if I'll ever understand the desire some people have to extinguish their individuality.