One.

“Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one.”-John Lennon

"I look forward confidently to the day when all … will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions."- Martin Luther King Jr.

One.

I caught a few minutes of “Driving Miss Daisy” recently; there’s a scene where two Southern cops call Hoke “boy” several times, in that superior, swaggering, dripping-with-honeyed-hatred manner some Southern whites of that time held. That accent toward anyone has always turned my stomach. I also just finished reading “Island Beneath the Sea” (Isabel Allende), a story of slavery in Sainte-Domingue (before it was Haiti) and then later in New Orleans. Brutality toward any other being is so difficult to read about or watch.

One.

When Fear rules and guides a person—instead of Love—anyone who is the “other” (not like “us”) is to be viewed with suspicion, instead of welcomed and embraced with kindness. Witness the separateness and segregation of early immigrants: Jews, Italians, Irish with their foreign languages and customs; the separateness of women, requiring new laws to break that separateness; the separateness of Cuban refugees; the separateness and segregation of blacks, of the hatred and brutality they endured; the separateness of gays; the separateness of Latinos, those with legal status and without.

One.

The elimination of separateness seems to move through four stages:

• Tolerance 
  No one really likes “them” in our schools and society, but the “other” is tolerated, allowed limited contact
• Acceptance 
  At some point, it’s accepted that the “other” is here, like it or not, so just make the best of it.
• Integration
  Beyond acceptance, there comes a measure of equality and the “other” becomes more integrated into society, less noticed as different.
• Ignorance 
  The most complete acceptance is when the “other” is so fully integrated into all facets of life (work, schools, business, politics) that one makes no distinction at all. There is no longer any difference that fosters fear as before.

Ignorance of any difference is the goal, of course, where there is no fear or suspicion, no separateness. It’s the place where we truly become One. We see a person as tall, short, black, white, one-armed, male, female, gay, straight, etc., of course, but we make no judgment or criticism. We make no assumptions based upon the physical make-up of a person.

One.

“… your essential nature is pure consciousness. Beyond the disguises of ego-mind and the physical body, you are pure awareness, pure joy and pure potentiality.” – Deepak Chopra

When we drop away the ego and the physical, we realize that our essence—all of us—is a Divine nature, and the Divine doesn’t have a physical body. We inhabit our physical vessel for such a brief period of time and yet, some people spend far too much time noting the differences between our bodies instead of the sameness of our souls. We are not our bodies. We are not our bodies. We are not our bodies. When our mortal vessels can no longer live and we are released from our body, we will no longer have gender. We will no longer have skin color. We will no longer have sexual differences. We will no longer have handicaps or illnesses.

All these require a physical body and without a body, we then fully and completely realize Truth: we are the same.

One.

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