Is the saying, “We are all One” a spiritual truth, or is it more of a sensationalist feel-good motivational platitude?
I have mixed feelings on this, and I’d like to explore some perspectives with you. While in the end, I’ll leave you with a definitive opinion, I encourage you to come to your own conclusion on this based on your life experience and viewpoint.
If you believe it to be true, what this means is that spiritually speaking, there’s no separation between you and another. In ultimate reality there’s only pure Oneness, and the reality we’re in now here on earth is a temporary illusion.
How I Became Enamored With the Spiritual Idea That We’re All One
I first came across the idea and concept that we are all One from my friend Harvey Bailey, who is an author, coach, and Ordained Reverend. Harvey introduced me to the Conversations With God series by the author Neale Donald Walsch in 2012. In this discussion with Larry King, you can hear Neale saying we’re all One from 8:27 to 8:40.
It’s a powerful video and when Neale says, “Life is eternal and we’re all One” it gives me goosebumps and resonates with me.
The late, great Dr. Wayne Dyer has a quote that I also enjoy:
We are all One. There is only…love…….
Also, Eckhart Tolle has some thoughts on this in his legendary book The Power of Now:
The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some super-human accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being. It is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable and indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name and form. The inability to feel this connectedness gives rise to the illusion of separation, from yourself and from the world around you. You then perceive yourself, consciously or unconsciously, as an isolated fragment. Fear arises, and conflict within and without become the norm.
From page 12 of the 2004 paperback edition
A few pages later in The Power of Now, Tolle adds more insights highly relevant to the purpose of this post:
It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate “other.” You then forget the essential fact that underneath the level of physical appearances, and separate forms, you are one with all that is. By “forget,” I mean that you can no longer feel this oneness as self-evident reality. You may believe it to be true, but you no longer know it to be true. A belief may be comforting. Only through your own experience, however, does it become liberating.
From pages 15 to 16 of the 2004 paperback edition
While I’ve had brief, fleeting moments of knowing this to be true, I’d like to be self-aware and vulnerable that a lot of the times I believe it to be true without knowing for sure if it’s actually true. The purpose of this post is to examine and shed light on why we are all One is so challenging – ultimately showing how it can become more of a practical practice instead of an abstract, theoretical concept.
On top of that, it’s worth noting I made a YouTube video about how we’re all One. Even when doubting if it’s really true or not, it can be a powerful and liberating idea to live by. In the video, I talk about how this concept can help you to live fearlessly (what I talk about in the video I’ve put into practice a number of times in my travels and other situations, so I’m living my message here):
Sometimes Loving the Idea, and Sometimes Frustrated With It
Depending on my mood and the circumstances of a given day, there are times when I’m completely in sync with the feeling of being One with everything. And there are other times where I’m completely sick of the idea and not feeling it at all. I’ll provide some examples as you think about this for yourself.
An example of feeling in the flow with this idea is this discussion between authors Lewis Howes and Ben Shapiro:
Lewis and Ben both talk about being bullied. A lot of people are bullied, but I resonated specifically with their experiences. Lewis talks about having had a very hard time in high school, which I can fully relate to having gone to a dysfunctional all-boys private high school where the priests who taught there often sexually abused students. I was an athlete like Lewis and encountered similar struggles in athletics as he did. Lewis is open with the world about being sexually abused and assaulted at a young age. While I was not sexually abused, I was physically abused often in my childhood and teen years.
This brings us to Ben’s experiences. Ben talks about being severely physically abused and assaulted by bullies, which I can relate to having been physically beaten up and assaulted by my college baseball teammate. Ben Shapiro also talks about how the haters and bullies are literal fuel for his success, the exact sentiment I shared in this YouTube video a few years back on using haters as motivation.
When I was listening to Lewis Howes and Ben Shapiro share these thoughts and experiences with one another, I didn’t just feel connected to them – I felt like I was them. And I don’t mean that in a cheesy or overly philosophical way; I’m referring here to literally feeling a spiritual connection and an energy flow through my body while listening to them. This might be what the author Eckart Tolle was talking about in those quotes I shared earlier.
With that said, I don’t have these moments too frequently. I often feel disconnected from others and not in the flow, which is why I do treasure these spiritually-connected moments so much. They remind me of the spiritual truth underneath our hectic day-to-day lives.
I once told a friend, “I only feel like we’re all One for the briefest, most temporary moments, sometimes only for a few seconds at a time.”
“Then those are a pretty awesome few seconds!” she said supportingly.
I also have frustrations with this idea, as I’ve mentioned. My life experience has brought me face-to-face with a lot of dysfunction, including extreme dysfunction in the workplace.
I live in The Netherlands, and I’ve found in my experience many of the bikers to be extremely rude. When I’m out for a walk, they frequently cut me off, nearly knocking me over. They have a reckless disregard for others around them and they feel like they own the roads. It’s quite challenging to deal with these ignorant, self-centered Netherlands bikers.
Rude bikers may seem like a relatively silly or inconsequential example, but it’s not. I’ll sometimes go for walks looking to get some peace of mind, and after encountering rude bikers I’ll come back to my apartment feeling uneasy, unsafe, and even upset. I’m not saying I encounter a rude biker every time I go outside, but it happens way more often than you may think. This leaves me questioning if we’re really all One, as I would never act in the way these foolish bikers act.
Some other thoughts regarding my frustration with the idea of all of us potentially being spiritually One (I’m sure you can add to this list, as this is only the tip of the iceberg as far as the dysfunction and disgusting atrocities in our world):
- Human trafficking
- Rape and sexual crimes (like we talked about earlier happening at my high school and to Lewis Howes)
- Racism, bigotry, and discrimination
- Money laundering, Ponzi schemes, and all sorts of theft
- Various other kinds of unacceptable violence
These unthinkable, inhumane acts are something I would never do or consider doing – yet there are many who choose to partake in these illegal and horrible activities. I have a challenging time feeling One with those lost souls.
Dysfunction: Shedding Some Light On It
The author Deepak Chopra helps us to understand how it may be possible for us to be connected to really bad, horrible people, even if we don’t want that to be the case.
I am paraphrasing the following from what I learned from author Deepak Chopra, and I paraphrase in full integrity:
“A lot of people say they could never be like Hitler. But we all have a little bit of his traits in us. Have you ever judged others? Have you ever felt yourself to be superior to another in any way, for any reason? That’s what Hitler did, at mass scale. The mindset may be much less extreme in you, but it’s still there.”
This doesn’t in any way excuse these horrible people from their unacceptable crimes, but it does show how there’s a wide spectrum of human experience, emotion, and mindsets – and that all of us can relate to one another in some way. We’re all interconnected and we all mirror each other, with some people embodying certain traits in the extreme (which can happen in really bad ways, like Hitler, and can also happen in really good ways, like Mother Teresa).
A friend of mine, James Lambert, has some really powerful insights to add to this discussion. Based in the UK, he’s a former undefeated boxer turned life coach and author. On a call with him, I shared openly about my frustrations with the rude bikers in The Netherlands (as well as rude people in general), and how that makes me question the spiritual idea that we’re all One. What James said to me was incredibly wise.
“It’s two sides of the same coin,” James said to me. “For kindness, compassion, love, and understanding to emerge, there needs to be disrespect, rudeness, anger, and dysfunction. When someone is rude, the possibility to act in a different way emerges.”
Wow! That’s jaw-dropping, Mountaintop-level content right there from James. It really helped me to reframe my perspective on all the rudeness and dysfunction I encounter, and reminded me to keep choosing kindness (within reason, as respectfully asserting yourself is healthy and needed in certain moments as well). This conversation with James helped me to hold onto the idea that we’re all One, after all.
For every one negative act in the world, there are millions of positive acts. The challenge is that the media talks about and focuses on the negativity because fear is what sells. That’s why it’s so easy to question that we’re all One – because the media promotes the idea of separateness.
In this award-winning speech, I talk about how the media and people in general often focus on the negative, even when the reality is more positive:
The key to remember is this: if you had the same upbringing as another given person, with the same parents, and experienced the same set of circumstances, there’s a good chance you’d be doing the same or similar things to what they’re doing. This is as much true with small offences as it is with big offences.
We begin to be able to show grace to others when we put ourselves in their shoes, even if only in our imaginations. This is an ongoing practice for everyone, no matter how enlightened they are.
The Spiritual Hierarchy
My friend Lindsay Flis Siegel, who sparked the idea for this blog post, mentioned to me the idea of the spiritual hierarchy. It’s a crucial concept and helps us to understand why so many people are not living in alignment with their true selves.
Let’s take a look at this spiritual hierarchy, courtesy of Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs:
“The pinnacle is all are one,” Lindsay said to me, “but you can’t feel connected to that if you’re missing some basic things like safety and acceptance.”
This is spot on and I agree. The reason there’s so much strife in our world is because there’s so much trauma. People haven’t gotten their more basic needs met and therefore aren’t able to act in loving ways. I highly recommend you read The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma, hands-down one of the best books I’ve ever read.
As I talked about in my award-winning book Reach Your Mountaintop, most people have good intentions and are doing the best they can. You can see the chapter here where I mentioned this, which I published as a blog post. People are not inherently evil. The challenge is that we live in a dysfunctional society where so many people are not able to sufficiently meet their emotional and/or mental needs. This leaves the we are all One spiritual ideal to seem more like a distant hypothetical concept, as opposed to seeming like the truth.
The solution, then, is to create a societal system that allows everyone to get their basic needs met, so they can then spend more time on self-actualizing and creative projects. People will then start acting in more loving and understanding ways. This is possible but is easier said than done and will take time, energy, and patience.
(Please note: each person’s spiritual hierarchy is going to be a little bit different and customized to their specific background and life circumstances. The above graph is a general rule of thumb and acts as a starting point.)
I Still Believe We Are All One
I took you through some of my doubts and challenges with the idea of all of us being One, as I wanted to be open and vulnerable with you. With that said, at the end of the day, I still believe (and know) we are all One.
I could be wrong and often am. I’m open to being wrong about this. This is a conclusion I came to based on my own life experiences. If you don’t agree with it, please feel free to kick it to the curb and create a belief system that works for you.
It’s always good to question things, stay inquisitive, and think critically. I like to question everything, including my own beliefs and “truths”. At the same time, there’s a part of me that will probably always believe we’re all One, even with some of the frustrations I frequently encounter.
This blog is all about authentic leadership – which, in turn, is all about living your values. We are all One can become a very real truth in our society if we all start acting in alignment with our values, truths, and true selves.
Yet so often we make mistakes and act in ways that don’t represent who we really are. I’m as guilty of this as anyone.
We need to meet our own basic needs while helping others to meet theirs. We need to keep growing and evolving. We need to become love and keep leading by example.
This won’t be solved in a single generation. But if we keep the conversation going, if we keep things moving in the right direction, and if we keep working on it even when life gets messy and imperfect, future generations will live in a better and more loving world than the one we live in now. Perhaps someday we are all One will be one of the first things taught in school – not as a grandiose, unrealistic ideal, but as a real, genuine, and practical daily practice.
Jeff Davis is an award-winning author, most recently publishing The Power of Authentic Leadership: Activating the 13 Keys to Achieving Prosperity Through Authenticity. He’s also an authentic leadership keynote speaker. Follow him on Twitter.
