We are all connected
The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected, like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected.
John Hollow Horn Bear
We have all heard this saying many times. Quoted here from John Hollow Horn Bear of the Lakota Sioux, it is a sentiment echoed across the tribes of Native America to this day. It refers to our connection with each other, the Earth and all of creation.
Not only is this a percept of the indigenous peoples of the Americas but can be found in wisdom teachings around the world.
So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.
Romans 12:5
That immortal Brahman alone is before,
Mundaka Upanishad
that Brahman is behind,
that Brahman is to the right and left.
Brahman alone pervades everything above and below;
this universe is that supreme Brahman alone.
Humankind was one single Ummah*.
Quran 2:213
The Tao gives birth to The One;
Tao Te Ching Verse 42
The One gives birth to the two;
The Two give birth to the three –
The Three give birth to every living thing.
All things are held in yin, and carry yang:
And they are held together in the ch’i of teeming energy.
The trouble with empirical understanding of Oneness
But Oneness can be an elusive feeling to those of us raised in cultures admiring independence over interdependence and logic over spirit life. On an intellectual level, in pondering this percept, we may have even worked it through, especially as it is proven now through the scientific pathway of quantum physics. We know that particles are entangled responding synchronously nonlocally, outside of space-time, such that a particle instantly changes another, even on the other side of the galaxy. Einstein discovered this in his equations in 1935 and called it “spooky action at a distance.” He didn’t actually believe it, because he felt nothing could travel faster than the speed of light. Ronald Hanson, disproved Einstein doubts about the latter. And, quantum entanglement was proven true by Nicolas Gisin at the University of Geneva in 2011, who observed the phenomenon using photon particles. Spooky action, non-locality, oneness has been proven multiple times over by quantum mechanics since then.
But even though we may understand and even accept the findings of quantum mechanics, we still live in a mirage of separate forms. We still feel separate. Our sensory experience has come to define our reality or seeing is believing. This, however, is a pretty recent problem in western society.
Rudolf Steiner in a series of lectures at Oxford University in 1922 that became the book, The Spiritual Ground of Education, while acknowledging the great achievements of the discoveries in science, medicine, psychology and the physical world, spoke of the general loss of spiritual connectedness in society due to the increased focus on natural science and the search for understanding of the human body strictly as perceived in the physical world. He lectured that learning solely through the physical senses created a chasm in knowing suprasensory reality and a deficiency in the inherent human spiritual capabilities.
It is a great challenge, but not impossible with unwavering dedication and the guidance of an enlightened master to find Oneness in widely accepted practices from non-native cultures, such as vision quest, Eastern yogic practices, clairsentience (used in animal tracking), shapeshifting, shamanic trance states and so on. These practices often require fundamental shifts in the understanding of the nature of the Universe, the spirit realm and possibilities of reality laid down in early childhood that our entrained adult mental constructs do not willingly accept. Thus, these paths require a master teacher, a guru or shaman, who chooses to grant you rebirth through divine transference of energy. Without this, it can be almost insurmountable for our ego-based intellect to know Oneness outside of our native understanding of reality.
To this, Steiner, in his book How to Know the Higher Worlds, assures us that the path of empirical knowledge, of scientific inquiry, knowledge acquired by the senses, can also be a path to feeling Oneness. He then outlines the 2 conditions or attitudes required to gain this experience. In doing so, the spirit world begins to reveal to us incredible wonders indeed. Then we begin to deeply know and feel more than yearn, and this then, catalyzes our shift in the foundational nature of our being.
We are more closely connected to the invisible than to the visible.
Novalis, Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (1772 – 1801), poet, author, mystic, and philosopher of Early German Romanticism whose works influenced Rudolf Steiner.
The first condition- the path of reverence
The first condition to understanding higher knowledge and the experience of Oneness is to live in devotion to gratitude and to withdraw all thoughts of criticism.
Modern science, industry, transportation, commerce, law– all these would never have developed without the universal exercise of our critical faculty and standards of judgment. But the price of this gain in outer culture has been a corresponding loss in higher knowledge and spiritual life…. If I meet other people and criticize their weaknesses, I rob myself of higher cognitive power. But if I try to enter deeply and lovingly into another person’s good qualities, I gather in that forces….Each moment that we spend becoming aware of whatever derogatory, judgmental, and critical opinions still remain in our consciousness brings us closer to higher knowledge. We advance even more quickly if, in such moments, we full our consciousness with admiration, respect, and reverence for the world and life. Anyone experienced in these things knows that such moments awaken forces in us that otherwise remain dormant. Filling our consciousness in these ways opens our spiritual eyes. We begin to see things around us that we could not see before. We begin to realize that previously we saw only a part of the world surrounding us. We begin to see our fellow human beings in a different way than we did before. …At first glance, it is not easy to believe that feelings of reverence and respect are in any way connected with knowledge. This is because we tend to see cognition as an isolated faculty that has no connection whatsoever with anything else going on in our souls. Thus we forget that it is the soul that cognizes. What food is to the body, feelings are to the soul… We nourish it with reverence, respect, and devotion. These make the soul healthy and strong, particularly for the activity of knowing. Disrespect, antipathy, and disparaging admirable things, on the other hand, paralyze and slay our cognitive abilities.
Rudolf Steiner, How to know the Higher Worlds
The second condition- the development of an inner life
The second condition is to develop a rich and active inner life, allowing pleasure to unfold without seeking it. This then enhances the first condition. To do this silently withdraw from the thoughts and impressions of the outer worldly concerns and impressions. This action of stillness of thought then allows for new sense impressions to emerge, to “open the I to the world.” Further, in these spaces of stillness and quiet reflection, we develop the higher self in that we view the activity in our own lives as if perceiving them from outside, “as if they belonged to another person.”
As students of the spirit, we must set aside a brief period of time in daily life in which to focus on things that are quite different from the objects of our daily activity…. We need not fear that following this rule will actually take time away from our duties. If someone really cannot spare any more time, five minutes a day are sufficient. What matters is how those five minutes are used…. In these moments we should tear ourselves completely out of our everyday life. We should allow our joys, sorrows, worries, experiences, and actions to pass before our soul. But our attitude toward these should be one of looking at everything we have experienced from a higher point of view.
Rudolf Steiner, How to know the Higher Worlds
Oneness as a core concept of Science of Mind
Science of Mind is well-suited for the empirical mind. Oneness is a core concept. God is all. With that simple statement, we profoundly understand immersion in Oneness, that there is nothing outside of God: no person, no thought, no action, no word. In the first two steps of treatment when you identify and unify with Divinity, you really feel Oneness, the Christ mind, the supreme higher self. This is a perfect way to realign in the five minutes that Steiner recommends. It is an awesome feeling, a perfect reset.
As rivers, flowing down, become indistinguishable on reaching the sea by giving up their names and forms, so also the illumined soul, having become freed from name and form, reaches the self-effulgent supreme self .
Mundaka Upanishad
Teaching Oneness to children means a life of satisfaction
Results reveal a significantly positive effect of oneness beliefs on life satisfaction, even rendering the effect of some religious affiliations insignificant or negative.
Laura Marie Edinger-Schons, (2019, April 11). Oneness Beliefs and Their Effect on Life Satisfaction. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/rel0000259
What is wonderful about teaching this percept to children is that we set up for them the ability to approach Oneness via limitless paths, including those non-native to their cultural constructs and also for a life of satisfaction. Luckily also, children do not learn using their logical and critical mind. This type of thinking is a trained one and not inherent. Children under the age of 7 learn by imitation; while from 7 to the teen years, learn by following an authority figure – a guide or mentor. That means children mimic, copy, mirror, and embody the attitudes of the adults around them. Teaching children Oneness then must begin with the attitude of the adult, in the heart of the adult, in how the adult responds and relates to all things. To teach children Oneness, you must embody it first.
When you follow in the path of your father, you learn to walk like him.
Ashanti proverb
Affirmation: God and I are One
Chakra: Heart
Activity 1: Teach and parent in reverence
Receive the children in reverence; educate them in love, let them go forth in freedom.
Rudolf Steiner
One of the most profound personal lessons for me as a parent and teacher was the concept of approaching teaching and parenting in all its aspects with the attitude of reverence. As the youth teacher at Center for Spiritual Awakening (CSA), this came quite naturally in my class. Before class, during preparation, I routinely pray and chant, even smudge and energetically clean the classroom and lay out the alter with great intention. During class, I invite teaching to flow though me and the students using the Aad Guray Nameh mantra and affirmative prayer. I continually opened myself to the natural dynamics and the unique personality of each class and the participants while laying aside my rigidity to follow my planned lesson. This was and continues to be a constant balancing act. It feels like surfing- like I am riding a wave. Often, I have walked away from class feeling like I got tumbled in the waves.
This approach to teaching started to wash over into my other classes as well- in my outdoor, play-based class for kids, in my public school class and in my homeschool. Yet it wasn’t until I read about approaching teaching in reverence from Rudolf Steiner, that I really consciously and intentionally began a more consistent attitude and let it work magic on my parenting. The truth is, I really am two people. I am the reverent, gentle teacher expressing wonder and delight and allowing but I can also be the parent who my children and I recognize as quite a different person than their teacher at homeschool and CSA. This person can be tired, impatient, cranky put upon, peevish, controlling and judgmental. In her preschool years, my daughter would sometimes request that her teacher come back (even though during our class she missed her mom). In reality, of course, both were me. The shift between these selves is only in my attitude of reverence.
I invite you to approach teaching and parenting with reverence. It is most helpful to set aside just a few quiet, solitary moments when you awake and set your intention for the day. This can be in the form of a prayer or written exercise, whichever feels best to you. I speak my daily intention to the rising sun. I use the language of affirmation where what I want to see has already happened or is happening now. This practice is usually in the form of affirmative prayer. When I take time for this, it deeply and positively impresses upon my day and on my attitude with my family.
You will not be good teachers if you focus only on what you do and not who you are.
Rudolf Steiner
Activity 2: Tell a story of interconnectedness
Quantum entanglement has been known to humans for a long time and is depicted in the Spider woman (or Grandmother Spider/ Spider Goddess) creation stories from all across Native America. Grandmother Spider’s web perfectly describes the behavior of particles. I love this story because it places humans within the web and not as a separate master, as many of us have learned in the western world. It honors our true connection and interdependence as well as our quantum entanglement. There are many versions of this story, and this one I have woven from the Osage story of a warrior searching for his tribal totem, and also included tidbits of stories with her other names Asibikaashi (Ojibway), Iktomi (Lakota), Kokyangwuti (Hopi) and Na’ashje’li Asdzaa (Navajo) along with a meditation I created for children.
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.
Chief Seattle, 1855
Activity 3: Be Grandmother Spider
Variation 1
This activity has two variations. In the first sit in a circle. This works best with larger groups, but can also work with as few as 3 people. Using a skein of yarn, take turns tossing the skein from one person to another in a random fashion. The first person will keep hold of their string from the skein and every one else will also wrap the yarn around a body part before tossing it. Sing a creation song or chant as you play and continue until the ball runs out or until the energy wanes.
When you have finished entangling everyone, explore the sensation.
- one at a time have players pluck or pull at the strings and see how many other players can feel the string. Try variations on this by seeing if there is a difference when players close their eyes or open their eyes.
- Have players, one a time, lean their whole body away from the circle. Then one at a time try to stand. How does it feel?
- Have the players try to untangle themselves. (The secret is to not fight against the web, but to just stand and let it fall)
Variation 2
Become a spider by making a web outside. Using a skein of yarn wrap string around trees, bushes and branches, buildings, cars, or anything else in your play area. Criss-cross and overlap. Use mulitiple skeins and multiple colors. When you have finished admire your work and the explore it in new ways:
- Use the web as an obstacle course by attempting to walk through without touching any string.
- Wrap string around a forked branch or stick to make an art piece or sculpture
- Drive your fingers along the string and see where it leads
- Count how many times the strings cross recalling Grandmother Spider’s story.
When play is finished leave no trace. Clean up is easy with scissors and many helpful hands.
Activity 4: Make a dreamcatcher
Dreamcatchers originated with the Ojibway and their use spread through the Great Lakes onto the territories of the Sioux and up into Canada. They were carried and gifted as offerings of protection. In Native America ideology, dreams and thoughts are the same, both emanating from the actions of the spirit- or inner life. The dreamcatcher, at each cross point, like our story of Grandmother spider, captures, holds and maintains good thoughts and dreams, while the hole at the center allows for bad thoughts and dreams to pass through. The opposite rendition is also an accepted definition- where good dreams pass through and bad ones are captured like spiders capture insects. To match our story, I prefer that at each cross point captures a creative and sustaining thought.
The dreamcatcher my also capture and maintain in our psyche all of the moments that we practice the path of reverence: words or gratitude, experiences of wonder and awe, times when we speak and acknowledge another’s good qualities over judgment, disrespect and criticism. We then allow the critical comments and judgments to pass through the center and are not retained as mental habits.
To make a dreamcatcher gather the following materials:
- small hoop, such as used for needlepoint or macrame or a supple branch that will easily bend to form a loop. Alternatively (method 1 below), you can use a paper plate with hole punches.
- yarn, strong string, floss, or sinew
- beads and feathers for decoration
Dreamcatcher Method 1: a simple quick project for kids under 8
I use this easy dreamcatcher in my class at CSA. For this method, prepare a paper plate by cutting out the center and hole punching around the border. Give the child yarn to weave through the holes in a random and free-form style. They may add beads to their string while weaving to decorate.
Dreamcatcher Method 2: for a macrame piece using simple knots (older children)
If using a branch, begin by tying the ends together to make a loop. You may choose to wrap the hoop or branch with yarn or sinew or leave it bare. Next, moving around the circle in a clockwise direction, make a knot by wrapping the string (yarn, sinew, etc) around the hoop then bringing the yarn back through itself one time about an inch from the beginning knot. Continue around the hoop at regular intervals, wrapping around and going back through the center of the string loop until you have completed the first outside row of webbing. Now continue to make more knots with the string in the middle of each of the yarn loops until you reach the center of the dreamcatcher. Decoration may be added while you weave by putting beads on your string between knots. It is ok if you run out of string while you are weaving, simply add more string by tying it on to the end of your strand. Tie feathers on beaded string to hang down from the bottom and make a loop of string at the top if hanging.
Thirty spokes on a cartwheel
Tao Te Ching, verse 11
Go towards the hub that is the center
– but look, there is nothing at the center
and that is precisely why it works!
If you mold a cup you have to make a hollow:
it is the emptiness within it that makes it useful.
In a house or room it is the empty spaces
– the doors, the windows — that make them usable.
They all use what they are made of
to do what they do,
but without their nothingness they would be nothing.
Activity 5: Learn and recite the words that come before all else
If you were born into the Onondaga, Haudenosaunee Confederacy (also known as the Iroquois Confederacy, Longhouse People, or Six Nations — Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora) you may have attended a First Nation school. Instead of learning the Pledge of Allegiance and reciting it every morning, hand on heart, facing the flag, you would learn and recite the Thanksgiving Address. This, which in the Onondaga language means the “Words That Come Before All Else” is recited before school and before any and every gathering (to learn more, see Whatweni⋅neh – Frieda Jacques of the Turtle Clan explain the origin and purpose of the Thanksgiving Address). The Onondaga have not only kept alive gratitude in their youth, they have also nurtured nonviolence and peaceful resolution. For after reciting the address and affirming your agreement with all, it is more difficult to find meaning in petty disagreements.
Share this practice with your own children so that they too may feel the satiating happiness in gratitude and sense Oneness. Just imagine, if this was what we had memorized and recited daily!
A full printed version of the Thanksgiving address can be found in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s powerful book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants or download it here.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Buddha
Activity 6: Personify nature
By re-learning and re-claiming our enmeshed identity as nature through personification of all its forms, we can teach from a place of joyful reverence and gratitude for all things and for the abundance that surrounds us. As teachers if we embody this reverence, through non-objectifying language and demonstrations of gratitude and wonder, we are teaching and living sustainability.
Robin Wall Kimmerer coined the term the “grammar of animacy” in her landmark book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. This means when we talk about plants, animals and even minerals and soils, we personify and enliven rather than objectify. This means “the deer”,” is really “sister deer; and “that rock” is “Grandfather Rock.” In storytelling, Native Americans refer to all elements of creation as “people.” Stories are full of fish people, tree people, wind people, and so on, equal and even above the status of two-legged human people, who depend upon them for survival.
Rudolf Steiner envisioned the whole earth a single organism, with the surface comparable to the human diaphragm and that which grows above the ground within the intestines.
If from this point of view we now compare the earth’s surface with the human diaphragm, then we must say: in the entity with which we are here concerned, the head is beneath the surface of the earth, while we, with all the animals, are living in the creature’s belly. Whatever is above the earth belongs in truth to the intestines of the ‘agricultural individuality’, to coin the phrase. We, in our farm, are going about in the belly of the farm, and the plants themselves grow upwards in the belly of the farm. Indeed, we are dealing with an entity standing on its head. We only regard it rightly if we imagine it as standing on its head in comparison to the human being .
Rudolf Steiner, Agriculture
The plants he wrote, are the Earth’s sensory structures. If you imagine our own intestinal flora made up of billions upon billions of microbes, you may begin to envision for yourself his intuitive leap and perhaps, by imaging yourself as an intestinal microbe, can grasp your small role and also our absolute interconnectedness within the body of this great being, Mother Earth.
The body is a unit, though it is comprised of many parts. And although its parts are many, they all form one body. So it is with Christ.
1 Corinthians 12:12
Activity 7: Practice gratitude with your children
Gratitude practice takes on so many forms. Gratitude alone creates more reasons to be grateful and is a direct route to happiness, life satisfaction and Oneness. It is the ultimate healing balm in times of distress and disconnection. In our home, we practice gratitude daily. It is a regular practice of our evening meal and also of our family meeting. We use it in times of conflict resolution to remind each other of our love and use it in times of self-doubt or self-anger. To practice the latter two, invite those in conflict to take turns saying something they appreciate and love about the other for three rounds. Likewise, when angry words are used against the self, I invite my child to look into the mirror to say three things they appreciate and love about themselves. This brings immediate relief.
Giving thanks can became a part of your every day speech, not only in using your own personalized version of the Onondaga Thanksgiving address and the language of animacy but also, as is done in Arabic, in beginning and ending each sentence with a prayer. In Arabic, al-Ḥamdu lillāh, or “thanks be to God,” often accompanies speech. Likewise, you will hear the term, Inshallah, for “as God wills,” as a show of submission, humility and non-attachment. Many other languages incorporate thanks into every day speech and in this way, spiritual life becomes a large part of daily thought.
There are really hundreds of ways to practice gratitude. Find the method you love by searching your heart, and reading from numerous ideas on the internet.
Activity 8 – Nurture the inner life of your child
To the seer, all things have verily become the self:
Isa Upanishad
what delusion, what sorrow, can there be for him who beholds that oneness?
Allow and encourage children to have a private relationship with their inner self. This does not mean we leave them or force them to be alone before they are ready (typically before the elementary years), but we can encourage play with the natural elements through storytelling and the language of animacy. Very soon, you will see your child conversing with all sorts of animals and plants. It can be helpful to give this special and important time a name, like Earth time, or special play. Often your child will come up with their own name for it. This is their playtime with their imaginations- with friends of all kinds. It is not essential that this play happen outside. It can also be as wonderful in their own safe spot in the home, like their bedroom or bed.
I have written of Oneness in other articles and included in each of those more powerful practices to share with children. Practices like sit spots in nature, meditation, and prayer cultivate the inner life of children.
- Earth – finding unconditional love with the true mother
- Sitting with trees – Nurturing a relationship with a special tree
- God Is, I Am – Finding Oneness in treatment with children
Activity 9 – Bow to the Primal Wisdom and claim your Oneness with Divinity in chant
Aad Guray Nameh
I use this mantra at the beginning of my class to invite the knowledge of the Universe to move through me as teacher and through the students. Teaching and parenting for the large part come in unplanned moments. Yet, it is those very unplanned moments, if allowed to unfold, that provide the richest content, the deepest heartfelt conversations, and the greatest laughter.
Aad Guray Nameh
Jugaad Guray Nameh
Sat Guray Nameh
Siri Guru Dayvay Nameh
Translation:
I bow to the Primal Wisdom.
I bow to the Wisdom through the Ages.
I bow to the True Wisdom.
I bow to the great, unseen Wisdom
Now I see you
By Taddeuse Charrette-Nun, with added verses by Nancy Stewart (from the July 19, 2020 Sunday program at Center for Spiritual Awakening. Video begins with Nancy’s introduction of the mantra). Thank you Nancy and CSA!
Now I see you
Now I hear you
Now I feel you
Inside of me
Now I touch you
Now I know you
Now I trust you
Inside of me
How I love you
How I love you
How I love you
Inside of me
Activity 10: Affirmative Prayer for Oneness
There is only One.
This One is God.
God is everything I see, everything I know, everything I think, everything I feel, and everything I do.
God is both seen as the world around me and unseen as the thoughts, feelings, and imagination inside me.
All is God and God is All.
I am part of God.
This means that I am One with God and God and I are One being.
Just like a finger is part of the body, I am One with God.
Just like a wave is part of the Ocean I am One with God.
Just as a wing is part of a bird, I am One with God.
And just as all these parts are important and inseparable from the whole of God, I too am important to the whole Universe, to all that is visible and invisible.
God and I are One.
God loves me as I love myself, fully and completely without holding back.
God is my best friend, just as I am my own best friend.
Thank you, God, for this amazing friendship, and for the love, life and beauty all around me.
Now our minds are One!
Ho!
*Footnote
Allahumma Ummati, Allahumma Ummati
O Allah my Ummah, O Allah my Ummah
The common translation of Ummah as “nation” does not do justice to the layers of meaning and the nuances of Arabic grammar. The root of the Arabic word Ummah is amma, meaning “to go” or “to go and see.” The word Imama means to lead. The one who leads the prayer at a mosque is the Imam. Also derived from this root is the word Umm which means mother, source or origin. If taken literally, then, the word Ummah means “to lead to go and see [or witness] the origin [of all things].”
The Tawĥīd is a core belief of Islam. It states there is only one God, this God is Allah. From Islam also came the Sufi doctrine, Waĥdat al-wujūd (the oneness of being) born from the contemplation of the true meaning of divine oneness ( The Tawĥīd). Based on this text, true existence is for God alone. On this path, there is no sense of self and existence outside of God.
Related Post
Also see my post on Oneness- Working as One for more great play with kids.
My Sponsor
Thank you to my sponsor for supporting this week’s lesson.
Please contact me if you’d like to sponsor a post for Science of Mind child info *at* SOM-child.com. Find a the list of upcoming topics at Center for Spiritual Awakening children’s program.
Image Credits
Spider in web- cocoparisienne
John Hollow Horn Bear – Creative Commons, owned by J. Paul Getty Museum, Artists/Makers: Adolph F. Muhr (American, died 1913), Frank A. Rinehart (American, 1861 – 1928), 1898, Medium: Platinum print, Dimensions: 23.3 × 18.1 cm (9 1/8 × 7 1/8 in.)
Rudolf Steiner- Wikimedia
Hands at sunset – Radoan Tanvir
Swan at sunrise – TheOtherKev
Woman praying – BarbaraJackson
Sunrise prayer- Avi Chomotovski
Dreamcatcher with blue sky – Free-Photos
Earth – Alexander Antropov
Jesus – Robert Cheaib
Child on mushroom swing – DarkWorkX
We must guard against disrespectful, disparaging, and criticizing thoughts. We must try to practice reverence and devotion in our thinking at all times.
Rudolf Steiner
