Just before I began to meditate this morning, I heard a report on NPR about new violence that has emerged in the Middle East.  The reports led me to feel sad for people on both sides of the conflict, as all are someone’s sons, daughters, husbands, wives, friends and acquaintances.  All have people they care about and all have people who care about them.

I’ve written about this before, but I’d like to revisit the idea of oneness.  Thinking about the ways in which we do violence to each other in the name of difference reminded me of how many more things we actually share in common.  Genetically, the differences between us are relatively minor, even as they create different skin colors, physical characteristics, and tendencies toward personality types and preferences.  Under these seemingly powerful differences, it’s important to remember that we all share the capacity to feel pain, we all bleed when we’re hurt, we all need food, shelter, and love.

For this week’s experiment, I invite you to pay attention to what’s similar between you and people you encounter along the way.  Most of the physical differences between you will be obvious.  Many of the deeper differences between you won’t be as obvious – particular preferences, beliefs, and ways of living.  It’s these basic physical and psychological differences in how we think about and live our lives that often lead us to overlook the similarities we share.  What this experiment asks you to do is to acknowledge the differences but, instead of focusing on those, to become more accustomed to noticing the similarities you share with others. 

For example, notice – when you’re stuck in traffic or jammed into a subway car – what happens when you remember that everyone is trying to get somewhere, just as you are.  Most of the people caught in the same situation as you have similar feelings to your own.  They have people and places that matter to them.  They have plans they don’t want to miss.  They’re tired after a long day’s work.  What happens when you remember that, in moments like these, there’s much more you share with all these people than the obvious differences between you? 

There’s no need to limit this experiment to human-to-human experiences.  It’s easy to see similarities between ourselves and many life forms.  You can play with this experiment by taking the time to notice the similarities between you and other life forms you may encounter along the way.

For example, I have a plant in my office named Amelia.  She’s rather tall and quite beautiful.  Recently, she again began to grow toward the ceiling.  Usually, I “top her”, cutting off the top branches that reach to the ceiling.  Recently, I decided not to cut her branches and, instead, to see what she did as she continued to grow upward.  In the past month or so, I’ve noticed that she has begun to fill out, putting out new shoots and branches from many places along her trunk and at its base, and she hasn’t grown any taller.  For me, this is her basic intelligence operating to adapt to the environment, and I know that she and I share this particular trait.  Humans adapt.  Plants adapt.  We have that in common.

If you share your life with an animal companion, you have many examples of the ways in which you and your companion are similar, even though you aren’t covered in fur or feathers or fins in the same way.  As you notice the behaviors of your animal companions, pay even more attention to what’s similar and familiar to your ways of being in, and responding to, your world.

As with all the experiments, give yourself permission to leave judgment behind.  For this particular experiment, that asks for a double dose of tracking judgment.  Track the judgments you have about yourself as you do the experiment and the judgments that arise about the differences you perceive in others.  As you let judgments drop away, notice your experience when you replace them with an awareness of the ways in which you are the same as the people you’ve been judging.  Offer both yourself and others your compassion.

Be sure to bring along curiosity as your companion.  And, have fun with this one.  It’s an important point of view to cultivate and takes practice to notice differences, acknowledge them, and move into an awareness of what connects, rather than separates, us.