When we dissolve the illusions of separation from one another, we get to the heart of the matter: We’re all really one, the human collective of life. Recognize that the other person is you, and you are them.
I haven’t always readily understood the meaning of this core Kundalini yoga teaching, but more and more I see the extraordinary wisdom in seemingly ordinary encounters.
During a flight to Chicago, I sat next to a 19-year-old young lady who barely spoke English. I struck up a conversation with my limited Spanish skills, enough to understand the gist of her incredible plight.
This courageous girl had walked to Austin from El Salvador in search of a better life. At first I thought my years of Spanish study were rustier than I’d anticipated; however, she confirmed my understanding when I flipped to a map in the airline magazine, and she traced her finger along the path she’d walked.
She’d set out on foot weeks earlier, full of hope to reach the United States. She’d made it all the way to Texas, her journey eventually interrupted by a broken wrist and jail time after being discovered by immigration authorities. She showed me papers authorizing her to travel to New York City, where cousins were to take her in and report to an immigration hearing.
The El Salvadoran’s story bore a striking resemblance to another young lady I’d met while flying home from Germany. This girl, in her early 20s, had just flown to Frankfurt from her home in the Ukraine, en route to Dodgeville, Wisconsin, to work on a farm for a year. That day was her first time ever on an airplane. She, too, had voluntarily left the only home she’d ever known for the hope of more and better.
Each of these young women were no different than me only a day earlier, when I’d been the one navigating my way through Deutschland neither speaking nor reading German. They just as well could have been my mother or father, who, in different space and time, had made their separate ways to this country, only by weeks by boat rather than hours on a plane.
A recent week in Costa Rica with sixteen soul sisters reaffirmed to me that we are far more alike than we are different.
My friends and I frolicked in the sun and sand, adventured in the jungle, laughed, cried and shared our deepest desires and fears. Although we vary in age, walks of life and where our individual journeys are taking us, there was an undeniable blending into one.
Any of one of us may have been or could be the other at some point in time: Excited about a new business launch, unsure whether to revive a stalling relationship, trying to escape the shadowy demons of self-image and self-doubt.
When we strip away the trappings of our lives, we truly are all one, similarly filled with hopes and dreams, vulnerability and fears.
Through this recognition, we can unlock the door to live with less judgment and attachment, an opportunity to elevate our coexistence to a higher level of mutual compassion and acceptance.
One love. I’m all in. How about you?
