click HERE for some context on this figure


For my young friend off to combat human trafficking (last post), seeing through the lens of oneness or twoness makes a big difference in how he will marshal his efforts; experience his world.
When we frame reality in the traditional “twoness” way, we join the majority through history and relate to our enemies as separate. We see ourselves distinct from them, not surprisingly better or right-er than them, and instinctively set about conquering them.
But if you, me, God, and everything, are part of a connected oneness, we approach the problem of evil very differently. If ours is a oneness reality, it changes how we navigate the world. God is one with me and I am one with God; God is one with the world and visa versa ; you are one with me and I am one with you.

With this as our starting point, we bring very different instincts to combating human trafficking. If I am intimately connected to both victim and perpetrator of evil, a “conquering” approach just will not do. On the other hand, if I am connected to both the enslaved and the enslaver, I take up a very different fight. If I derive my being from the same Divine presence that the slave trader does, and if he or she carries the same intrinsic preciousness that the victim and I do, “combating trafficking” becomes a very different affair.
In a oneness world, I am not free until both slave and trafficker are free. I do not thrive until both slave and trader thrive. And none of us thrive as long as this horribly debasing practice continues.

I found this on a blog by some “Anabaptist anarchists.” It made me smile.


A oneness reality changes everything. Sure it does.
To combat trafficking, we have to decide how to spend our time, energy, and funding. In a twoness world, our instinct is to conquer the trader. In a oneness world, it is to raise the consciousness of the whole system. In the latter, we marshal our efforts to help people see differently. Once traders, victims, and community see themselves as part of a connected whole, it changes everything. How many traffickers would enslave their own family members?
In a twoness reality, we spend our budgets fighting our enemy. In a oneness reality, we spend them raising the “connectedness” consciousness of the whole system – slave, trader, and community.
Pie-in-the-sky?  Maybe. But you have to admit…  it’s different.

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