OneLife Institute

Click HERE to download a full-color 6 page PDF of this issue of the newsletter.

Notes from the Director

The moment we choose to love
we begin to move against domination,
against oppression. The moment
we choose to love we begin to move
towards freedom, to act in ways that
liberate ourselves and others.
That action is the testimony of love
as the practice of freedom.

~ bell hooks

Both the extended articles in this issue of the newsletter deal with Oneness, and both were originally presented in spoken form: my remarks in honor of Gandhi's birthday last year, and a sermon excerpt from our featured guest author, Minister Mahsea Evans. I have known Mahsea for a number of years through my association with Inner Light Ministries in Soquel. He is a deep thinker, a skillful preacher, a gifted spoken word artist, and a dedicated family man, now in his third year of seminary. Last spring he engaged in an intensive study of Howard Thurman under my mentorship, and the richness of our conversations was an inspiration to me. I am pleased to introduce him to our readers here.

SEEKING NEW BOARD MEMBERS

As we reported the last newsletter (see "A Time of Transition"), OneLife is expanding our board leadership group as we engage an exciting time of growth and transformation. Experienced, dynamic, compassionate individuals with skills in fundraising, organizational development, operations / management, and community networking are especially welcome.

Board members will: (1) Provide strategic thinking that helps guide OneLife through the current transition to the next phase of our work; (2) Provide support and oversight to the Executive Director in service of our mission; (3) Provide leadership in creating and sustaining relationships that support OneLife financially, organizationally, and spiritually.

We have prepared a two-page overview of OneLife - including who we are, what we believe, who we serve, what we do, and how you can get involved. You can click here to download the PDF. Please contact us for more information, or to refer candidates who may be a good match for OneLife.

NEW! MEDITATION CD

We are delighted to announce the debut of "Inner Oasis," an audio CD of guided meditations and musical inspiration for healing and renewal. This collaboration between myself and harpist Sis. Destiny Muhammad, features meditations of varied lengths, a solo harp instrumental, and two of Destiny's original songs. If you have ever wished for a way to take our Spirit, Sound & Silence retreats home with you - this is it! Watch for for details on the What's New page of our website, or purchase your copy at our Oct. 29 retreat!

SPIRIT, SOUND & SILENCE

Our final retreat of 2011 will be held on Saturday, October 29th at Holy Redeemer Center. Replenish your soul in the gentle power of intentional silence. Open to inner wisdom through a guided visioning process. Walk the meditation labyrinth. Share in sacred community. Enjoy the beauty of a wooded oasis. Savor the healing properties of sound and music. Please click here for retreat details.

TRANSFORMATIVE VISIONS 2012

Transformative Visions is coming! The call for submissions will go out via email and Facebook in November for visual and spoken word artists interested in participating in our March 2012 event. Last year 23 visual artists working in a wide range of styles and media joined six powerful poets, and the fabulous Richard Howell Quintet for a true community celebration. You can find photos, video, and more on the Transformative Visions pages of our website and our YouTube channel. Click here for a three-minute video montage. It takes a village to make this event a success, and there are many ways to get involved. Please contact us if you would like to be part of the volunteer team.

THANK YOU VALERIE!

After seven years of dedicated service, OneLife co-founding board member Valerie Brown is stepping down to pursue other dreams and commitments. As vice chair, Valerie has been integral to our development and played a special role in Transformative Visions. She will continue as a member of the OneLife family, volunteering when she can to support retreats and other events. Please join us in offering love and deep appreciation for her generous service over many years. Thank you, Valerie!

In peace and gratitude,

Liza

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The ability to identify with each other at this level makes me think of my favorite Bible story, found in the gospel of Luke (10:25-37). During a brief exchange with a lawyer, Jesus affirmed the preeminence of the commandment to love God with all your heart, soul, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. He responded to the lawyer's follow-up question, "And who is my neighbor?" by telling a story.

Jesus begins by speaking of a certain man - and this is important: the Greek word used here for man is anthropos, which is a generic way of including all human beings - a universal designation. A certain man on the way from Jerusalem to Jericho was attacked, stripped, robbed, and left to die. A temple helper or Levite came, saw the man, then passed him by on the other side. A priest then came, saw the man, and passed him by. Finally, a Samaritan came along, saw the man - truly saw the man - was moved by compassion, went to him, dressed his wounds, cared for him, carefully brought him to the nearest inn and did the equivalent of leaving his credit card to take care of any unforeseen expenses to aid his recovery.

Now, there are many ways to interpret this story and one way does not necessarily trump another. I could talk about the complex cultural, historical, and even ethnic dimensions in this passage. However, today I want to raise one particular aspect that I would describe as the quality of the Samaritan's seeing. The Levite and the Priest both saw the man and for reasons unknown, justified or not, chose not to help. But there was something in the Samaritan's seeing that led him down another avenue of action.

How we see or how we perceive is a process that starts internally. When we begin to truly touch Oneness, it affects not only how we perceive ourselves or how we perceive others, but also how we perceive ourselves in relation to others. That’s why it is significant to me that the man left for dead on that roadside was described generically as human.

I believe that the Samaritan was able to see and relate to the genuineness or essence of the stricken man's humanity by being in touch with the genuineness or essence of his own humanity. Oneness gave the Samaritan a qualitative spiritual lens that allowed him to see the other as a human like himself, and was then moved to help him. Unlike the Levite and Priest who, though observing the gravely injured man, did not feel compelled in the same way. This is not a judgment on the other two, for I cannot divine their reasons. It is to say that duality allows for different outcomes and justifications that do not stand in the presence of the demands of Oneness. Oneness makes us see differently.

Thurman writes about the spiritual disposition that allows one to enter into and view life from the perspective of others, to "establish a beachhead in another man's spirit, and from that vantage point so to blend with the other's landscape that what he sees and feels is authentic..." (p.100) - meaning we don't just superficially claim Oneness and say, "I see everybody as spiritual beings," using this to avoid dealing with the lived reality of our brothers and sisters who are struggling or in need. No! Oneness leads to a quality of seeing that aligns our sight with the sight of others and takes seriously the conditions and influences that inform and buffet their humanity. This level of seeing allows the asking of critical questions from a place of deepened understanding and empathy.

Martin Luther King Jr., in the sermon delivered the night before his assassination, looked at the story of the Good Samaritan and pointed out that the first question the Priest and the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But the Good Samaritan reversed the question saying, "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"

Oneness leads us to walk in the sandals of the Samaritan. But this walk, or this way of life, only occurs if we attend, with conviction, to getting more deeply in touch with our personal sense of the Divine within. Because if Oneness is not our compass, we are doomed to default to duality. If true Oneness is not our compass, we will not see right. If Oneness is not our compass, we won’t ask the right questions. And duality is seductive, perverting even the well intentioned.

Oneness is not some abstract idea that we hope to achieve or a bit of rhetoric bounced off our lips. It is an approach to living that, as my mentor Rev. Deborah Johnson says, "requires that you see yourself in everybody else and you see everybody else within yourself." This is not always easy. Oneness, if truly followed, could lead us down a path of broken-heartedness. Why? Because we begin to really see the individual caught in conditions of pain on a deeper level -

... the out of work father grasping at strings of hope / The struggling single mother just trying to cope / The bullied gay teenager with a looped rope / tied too close / Or the family picking up strewn pieces of their life again  / That was tossed and turned in a  tornado in Joplin / Or the remnants of Vermont houses washed away / By rising streams on the winds of a hurricane / Or a Congolese woman who pray  / that some soldier’s midnight assault on her body would stop / Or a young boy in Pakistan hoping that another blind bomb from an unseen drone won’t drop / At least not tonight / Or the child prodigy in Chicago who doesn’t go to school because he can’t stand to fight / Or the pop-pop sounds  / Of gunshots found / In the middle of the afternoon in East Oakland where no longer stands / a young boy named Carlos only age three / killed right in front of his family...

Oneness will take you there: it will make you see, taste, hear, smell, and touch those left on the Jericho roadsides of today. But we can't afford to be afraid of our hearts breaking. Because as Rev. Liza once told me, "Sometimes our hearts are broken so that they may be broken open." And the soil of a broken-open heart is made fertile by the willingness to devote time, energy, passion, and focus on the personal practice to experience the Oneness of God. And from within the rich soil of a broken-open heartspace sprouts the new shoots of possibilities for creative answers to today's challenges. These answers will not lead us into the victim-villain-hero triangle, but to the God-and-neighbor-as-self circle. This is the shape of Oneness where everyone, the ignorant and the enlightened, the fearful and the hopeful, the oppressed and the oppressor alike, are all redeemed in Gods healing grace.

So as a community, we are called to see with eyes of Oneness, and love with a Samaritan type love. Dr. King said that love is understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all, and that it brings about miracles in the hearts of men. We stand in witness to an unbroken line of great spiritual revolutionaries encouraging us to heed the call to truly love our neighbor as ourselves - through the quality of our seeing, the sharing of our resources, and the greatness of our service. We are called to love by our ability to truly perceive each other's humanity from a profound sense of identity and connection, and respond with a willingness to be used as an instrument of grace, reconciliation, justice, and healing.

~*~

Mahsea Evans serves at Inner Light Ministries in Soquel, CA and is completing his Masters of Divinity at Pacific School of Religion. Originally from Hartford, CT, he presently resides in Sacramento with his wife and daughter. His ministry combines his passion for poetry and theology with a commitment to social change. This article is excerpted from a sermon presented at Inner Light on 9/4/11.

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This is the lens through which much of our contemporary world operates, through which our country conducts its national policy, and through which our institutions of finance, "criminal justice," the military, and so forth, function.

A paradigm of dualism and separation is what permits genocide, rape, war, and other acts of violence - whether in neighborhood turfs, corporate boardrooms, or international battlefields. This way of looking at the world has become so common, so normative, that it goes largely unquestioned and even unrecognized by those who hold it. Even those of us who may believe in something different are still influenced by it.

Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum (in her book, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?) uses the analogy of smog to describe the pervasiveness of racism as a climate that affects everybody. Dualism is like that.

Yet if we are talking about Gandhi, we cannot  understand  him - and  certainly not predict his responses - from the perspective of dualism. Gandhi operated from a different paradigm, a different way of looking at the world - that of absolute Oneness. As a Hindu, this was part of his creed. But more than that, this was his experience. Gandhiji's primary, personal, spiritual experience confirmed for him the Oneness of all life and being. He said:

"I believe in the absolute oneness of God and, therefore, of humanity. What though we have many bodies? We have but one soul. The rays of the sun are many, through refraction. But they have the same source. I cannot, therefore, detach myself from the wickedest soul, nor may I be denied identity with the most virtuous."

We don't get to choose who we're one with; it's not just the people we like or admire. It's everybody! And by the same token, there's not anybody so highly esteemed that we are not one with them as well. Gandhi says:  "God is present in all of us. For my part, every moment I experience the truth that through the many, we are all one."

And I want us to be clear: "Oneness" does not equal sameness. And "unity" is not uniformity. Gandhi again: "God does not reveal [God]self in the same form in all of us, or rather the heart of all of us not being alike, we do not see God in the same form - just as in mirrors of different colors and shapes a thing is reflected in different colors and shapes."

So the infinite diversity of expression emerges from an infinitely inclusive whole. A divine whole.  In a theistic frame (which was Gandhi's languaging), one with God, and through that oneness with God (or oneness with Divine Essence if God-language doesn’t resonate with you), everything and everyone - every expression of life - is one with every other expression of Life.

Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh uses the term "interbeing" to describe this. Even in science, quantum physicists and quantum biologists speak in terms of a common energetic matrix, and even a unifying intelligence within all that is.

But this unitive worldview - this worldview of Oneness - holds profound ethical implications. If all life is One, then there is no other, no "them" separate from some constructed exclusive "us." If all life is One, then I can't exploit or abuse or drop bombs on some "other" people - because there is no "other!" I can't exploit or commodify the earth if the earth is the body of the Divine, part of the Oneness. There is no "race" or "class" or "nation," no river or blade of grass, that is not part of this sacred whole - one with God, and ultimately, therefore, also one with "myself." Within this paradigm, any act of violence, hostility, oppression, or exploitation is perpetrated against God, against the Divine, against the Whole. In a cosmology of Oneness, nothing is inconsequential; everything (from the smallest to the largest) touches every other thing.

As an example, Gandhi was notorious for using a pencil down to the last nub, because it had cost something in terms of human labor, environmental resources, and so forth, and that, he believed, should be respected and never wasted or taken for granted. And on the large scale of national liberation to end British colonial rule in India, he refused to demonize, to "other-ize," the British, referring to them not as "the enemy" but as "our Brothers."

So what would Gandhi do today? The question is less compelling to me than the one I imagine he would ask us: What will WE do today? And if we seek to follow in the direction of the Mahatma, we must at least consider his worldview. Oneness demands that we treat each other, the earth, all of life, with respect ... even reverence. With Ahimsa.

I invite you to consider: What might that look like in your own life? ... In your commitment to justice and social change ... In your spiritual practice ... In your work ... In how you eat or shop ... In how you vote...? And what might a commitment to Oneness mean collectively? ... In how we greet one another on the street ... In our federal budget ... In the national policies we endorse ... or tolerate...?

Rather than an intellectual exercise, asking the question "What would Gandhi do?" can become a compass for our own choices and actions, pointing us individually and collectively toward a more just and compassionate world.

And I want to leave you with one more quote from Gandhiji. He said: "Almost anything you do will seem insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."

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