Connectedness: Humanizing Others to Remember our Oneness

This Living Out Love Podcast episode explores how to create a sense of oneness by humanizing people. Amy dives into why our brains want to "other" others and how understanding that connection is vital in helping us be more loving, impactful people in the world. We also discuss how emotions are contagious and can jump out of one's body and touch another person's energy field- reminding us that we're all connected even when it may not seem so. Join us as we dive deep into unraveling the mystery of oneness with real-life examples!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• We are all connected, and it is essential to remember this to influence people's lives positively.

• Our emotional state can affect those around us, even if we cannot see that connection at first glance.

• It is possible to recognize when our brains want other people by paying attention to our thoughts and feelings before reacting negatively.

• Humanizing others helps build meaningful connections with them and make interactions more impactful and pleasant experiences for both parties involved.

• Taking the time and effort to recognize our shared humanity with those around us allows us to create lasting change on an individual level, which, combined with collective action, can significantly affect society overall.
  
  

Episode Transcript

00:14

Hello love's Welcome back to the Living Out Love podcast. I want to talk to you today about the idea of oneness.

And I want to talk about why it's hard, and then what we can do about it. So when I say oneness, there's this spiritual idea. And there's sort of science to back it up. But there's a spiritual idea that we're all connected that we're all one. Like a shaman view of this would be that everything has soul. Everything has life-force energy, the grass, the trees, the rocks, and they have life energy, we have life energy, and we're all connected. And so we're all one.

The oneness idea is important spiritually, because it helps us to feel like a tribe in a way, that's very hard for us to feel in this day and age. Perhaps historically, before we had modern agriculture, when we lived in tribes of 100 250, people, we could all understand somebody else's pain as being real. But now we live in much bigger societies, we have access to the internet, our brain can't really understand that there could be millions of people and that their pain could be real. Our brain really has a hard time with that. We can understand people as objects at that size, but not as living, breathing complex, story filled souls.

The spiritual truth of oneness

01:56

So the idea of oneness is a reminder to us that everything is connected. And it's a way of understanding, accountability, like spiritual accountability. It's a way of realizing, if somebody else is in pain, I'm in pain. If somebody else is not free, I am not free. And that has a way of playing out in real life that has real life repercussions.

But spiritually, the idea of oneness is saying that this is energetically true. Because we're all connected, if not, if we are not all free, then I am not free. If we are not all loved, then I am not loved. And I mean that in the human sense, we are all loved. But in the human sense, if we don't get to experience love, then I don't get to experience love. So this idea of oneness..it's a wonderful, and it's not a it's not even an idea. It's a spiritual truth, this paradigm, a truth, state of being of oneness. It's powerful. And it's really hard for us to wrap our brains around the brain is I just feel like it hasn't evolved that much since the caveman days. We feel quite threatened, a lot of the times when our lives are not actually in danger. And then there's times in our lives are very much in danger that we don't understand that we're threatened. Because our brain doesn't really fully keep up with the world the way that it is, and the way that we have technology and etc.

So I want to talk about why that oneness is hard, and what we can do about it. And my point really is going to revolve around one one idea. And that idea is de-humanization. I know that's not a word that you're going to hear on a woo-woo podcast very often. But it's so important. And I say this is not to make anybody feel bad. This is what human brains do. We categorize, our brains categorize and they try to predict and they try to keep us safe. And in so doing, we separate ourselves from others, and we other-ize them.

And this could be anything, this could be - I'm driving through the parking lot at Home Depot per se. And I see usually a man at Home Depot. I live in Houston, Texas, so quite often it's a person of color. And maybe English is a second language maybe they are an immigrant, maybe they're not.  There's so many ways that I could see somebody in a Home Depot parking lot that does not look like me. And my brain is going to naturally categorize them some how. And it could put them in the category of they're pushing a big cart with lots of heavy things hanging out of the cart, and I'm going to be careful driving near them, could categorize them as they're walking slow, I wish they would walk faster.

Our brains categorize to predict our world and keep us safe

05:24

But there's lots of different categories that our brain comes up with, to help us very quickly know how to behave in a certain situation. If we didn't categorize so quickly, we would have to sit and think, Is this person like me? Are they not like me? Should I go up to them and talk to them? Would they like that? Should I blah, blah, blah, we don't have time to evaluate that for every person that we meet. And so our brain is very quickly taking in all sorts of stimulation and putting people into boxes so that we know how to behave. It's great. That's a great thing. And we spend most of our time just identifying people in those categories, that we're not actually seeing them as human.

And hear me out on this because I know you're thinking, well, that's a man, you said that was a man pushing a cart, that's obviously a human. Yes, my brain has not categorized a human as something other than human. But it's categorized as something other than me. And that is problematic. Why is that problematic? Because it allows me to separate from their humanity.

So when it comes to our ability to love others to be loved in the world, we are quite hampered in that ability, when we're not seeing everybody as human. And if we see something, if we see somebody as other than me, then we're not really fully seeing them as human. So my trick, my tip on this is, if I'm driving through the Home Depot parking lot, and I see the man and my brain goes to - that is a large man, he's pushing a large cart, he's walking slowly, I'm going to move this way. I'm going to drive that way. I'm annoyed because I'm in a hurry. Like, my brain has that whole story figured out in less than two seconds. And I take a breath. And I go, okay, brain, what are we not seeing here? And then I think this man probably has a family probably has friends. I wonder what he's building with all that stuff. Like, I start to get curious. And even if I don't feel as though I'm relating to this human, as though we would have anything in common. The curiosity allows me to be open to that person's experience in a way that allows my brain to realize we're not so different. That person is not just a slow moving person in the parking lot. There's so much more to them than that.

Use language in conversation and in your own mind to re-humanize

08:35

Here's another way that we can be better about not using dehumanizing tendencies, and that is our language. This is a tricky one, you guys. So hang in with me. It's not fun some of the time and I'm still working on it. But we have to be really careful about calling other people names. And I don't just mean negative names like calling a person a jerk. That's, that's a negative connotation. I mean, if you say, my housekeeper that is, in a way it's dehumanizing them. If you say oh, the woman that I paid to clean my house, it takes her out of the box of housekeeper. That's one of her roles, but she's not other than me. She's a human and I pay her to clean my house. It's more words, it's more laborious. But it's also more true.

When we call somebody a name, we are defining them to just one thing and nobody is just one thing and if you are defining them as one thing than you are other-ing them. And when you can recognize everybody as a human and you take the time.. both to communicate that way and to think that way, and you take the time to say the person that so and so. Not the criminal, the person that broke the law. Not my teacher, the person that teaches me. And I know that sounds silly, I know, I hear it, I feel some of you just cringing right now. But when we take the time to identify everybody, as people, we are humanizing them in our minds.

Is that alone, gonna get us to feeling completely connected with all of life? Heck, no, I wish that it would. But it's a big leap, it is a big, big leap. So be mindful of how you are responding to other humans in the world. Whether it's with your mouth or not, whether it's with your body or not, it could all just be in your mind, it could be just in your emotions. But be mindful of that. If we can humanize each other more, we will have a much more loving experience of life, of each other. And there's a lot of us out there who are really good at loving the people around us, we're really good at our friends, our family, we're good at that. We're not so good at loving people down the street, in that other state, in that other country. We're not so good at that. And that's okay. But if we could get better at that, we could humanize other people if we could actually understand that they are humans with their stories, their trials and tribulations, their triumphs, their victories, their goals. Ah, it's gonna make us a lot more loving in the world.

Our spiritual teachers understood oneness

12:26

Think about some of the people that have gone before us that have that we have a lot of cultural story around. And I'm thinking specific about religious and spiritual leaders. So this could be Jesus. This could be Gandhi or the Dalai Lama, like there's lots of people out there that we have a lot of stories around the miracles that are they created or the way people felt when they were around them, etc. And often, I look at those people, and I think they took the time to see everybody as human, or as a soul incarnate, they took the time to understand ONENESS consciousness.

There are some of us that are emotionally sensitive, and we experience oneness in other ways. If somebody else cries, we want to cry, not because we are sad, but because we understand their sadness. That's oneness. I can honor the pain that somebody else is going through because I can understand that we're connected. That's a beautiful example of oneness.

So this idea of humanizing people is obviously just a drop in the bucket, because we're one with all of life, and there's a lot more to life than just human beings. But for me, this has been a very profound exercise in recognizing how quick my brain wants to 'other' people, it wants to 'other' people. And that's okay. It's trying to keep me safe and efficient. And that's great. But I am going to be mindful about it.

Focusing on everyone’s humanity allows me to be more loving

14:36

If I want to be a loving person in the world, and I do - if I want to have an impact on the people around me, that is healing and positive or at least not negative, then it behooves me to remember that everybody is human. And that that person ahead of me in line that is making things goe slow that can't figure out how to work the credit card machine, whatever it is. That's not all that they are. They are so much more than the fact that I'm inconvenienced by them. Or that they smell bad, or whatever it is, there's so much more than whatever it is that my brain wants to block, categorize them in. And by me taking the time to humanize them, I can feel more connected.

Sometimes we don’t want to feel connected

15:30

And I know that sometimes we don't want to feel connected. Like why would I want to feel connected to somebody else's pain, I'm having a great day, I don't want to be brought down, I get that. But the thing is, we're connected, whether we feel it or not. We are connected, whether we feel it or not. So I would rather have the awareness. So I can be a part of the change. I'd rather know what's going on. So I can have a positive impact. That person's mood, that person's day, whether they haven't, their body hurts and they're limping. And that's causing them to walk slow in the parking lot. That affects me whether I'm aware of it or not. Whether I understand that person as a human, they're human life experiences affecting me. So I'd rather know, I'd rather have the consciousness.

So when it comes to oneness, this idea that we're all connected, I find focusing on re-humanizing people as being a key place to start. And if you don't like that idea, then just think about the idea that emotions are contagious. I talked about this last week, how you can walk into a room, and you'll just feel like, Oh, they're arguing or something awkward. just happened. You'll just feel it. Emotions are contagious, we are connected. You walked into the room and you felt something nobody said anything. You didn't read it, you don't know per se what happened, but you felt it. That's because we're connected. Our energetic fields are touching each other. The emotion, it's jumping out of my body and heading over to you.

We are all one. We are all connected.

17:21

We're connected, whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not, we already are. So we may as well do the work to recognize it. So that we can be better agents of love. We can be more effective with our energy. So I hope that was helpful. I know it's a much shorter episode than last week, which I think is okay. I'm excited to hear how you guys are doing with the RE humanizing aspect in your life and we will talk soon, bye loves!