Being one means?

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

On Face Book yesterday I posted a bit of whimsy, "A universe of one means we are all related." Last night I caught the last half or so of Julia Sweeney's "Letting Go of God", her one woman autobiographical play on her conversion from Catholicism to atheism. I set my DVR to record the next offering of this show (Sho3, 12/10 @ 5:55 AM MT) as it was a marvelous presentation. So these two points are rolling around in my heart/mind this morning.

Too often when atheists talk about religion, they are addressing a religion with a God framed in dualistic terms. Its a straw man thing. And when we talk about "oneness" we too often talk from with a human centered point of view.

Trouble is, God is no thing we can name. If our argument is with God it must rather be, with our understanding and conceptualization of God. Likewise, if we talk about Oneness we must include everything in that oneness and know that there is no rank order in the One. Just one.

There are profound and extensive implications of this point of view. Regards God, we cannot say anything. Regards oneness, we must consider everything we do as a doing to ourselves and others: Evil and good are one; killing and protecting are one; loving and hating are one.

Why not kill? Why not hate? Why not chose evil? We could and clearly do, but because we are one and our oneness makes us depend on each other, to do so is suicide on all levels. It is this interdependence that is my moral and ethical foundation. The extent that we realize this is the extent of our fullness as a being. Step outside of that realization and we harm ourselves and all other beings. Its an existential thing.

Be well.