Right now, as you read this, you know yourself to be living on a system called Earth in a seemingly physical incarnation that you share with about 8 billion other people and nearly 9 million other living species. The universal system in which we find ourselves contains a lot of diversity, and there is much that we have yet to learn about it, but it appears that there is one race of human beings who all share one world and one reality. But is this actually true?
When we examine this fact on a deeper level of awareness, we begin to realize that there are many more worlds within this one world that we envision ourselves to be living in. What is more so, is that there are numerous realities as well. And I am not referring here to the complex ideas of quantum physics, parallel Universes, or multiple dimensions. I am merely talking about the fact that each one of us, being a physical individuation of source energy, is its own world and reality. This means that we have about 8 billion worlds sharing one reality.
Although the idea may be simple for us to grasp and know conceptually, the depth of this idea has significant implications for understanding life here on Earth. It opens up a much broader potential when we move past the theoretical concept and take steps to apply it.
If we look at the state of the world today, ten years ago, one hundred years ago or even one thousand years ago, we see that although much has changed, one thing remains the same. We cannot seem to get on the same page of understanding when it comes to life on Earth. Why is this? Why is it so hard for us to apply concepts that should be so fundamental to increasing the quality of life for all living beings here, especially when we have the means to do so? Consider the idea of peace, for example. It comes as no surprise that it would improve everyone’s lives, yet we choose not to apply peace on Earth, both personally in our immediate lives and collectively in our human society. We can accomplish it in an instant if we really wanted to, but we don’t. You, yourself, may be thinking in this very moment of all the reasons why peace cannot be achieved so quickly, but this is only due to the deep attachments each human and organization has to the status quo. This is just one example of what happens when worlds collide, and everyone wants to assert their own desires.
We May Be One, But We Are Each Unique
In recent years use of the phrase “we are all one” has tremendously increased in popularity. It is used by many in spiritual and non-spiritual circles alike, often indiscriminately. I, too, was a big fan of this phrase until I chose to look at it from a more in-depth and conscious perspective. What I have noticed is that many who use this phrase often use it from a surface-level perspective and one that strips us of our unique individuation and diminishes the purpose of our individuality. All too often, we don’t understand what we are really saying.
In my experience thus far, “we are all one” means that we have all come from the same source of creation, but this does not make us all the same. And although this may seem obvious to you, I feel it all too often gets lost in many spiritually-oriented people who are trying to take on a conceptual “love & peace” view of the world, rather than an experiential one. We may all have the same general purpose of spiritual evolution, but our unique mission and how we see or experience reality is very different.
This is not meant to divide us or make us focus on our differences rather than our similarities. Instead, it is intended to acknowledge the gift of uniqueness that we each are and possess. In allowing myself to explore this idea, I have come to grasp why so much misunderstanding, chaos, confusion, and hatred exists in our world today. We are trying to merge everyone into the same reality. Too many of us think that others see, think, and understand things the way we do. People speak about love or peace or justice or compassion as if these were universally defined and understood static concepts. However, we are each able to understand these concepts through our lens of reality, through our personal state of awareness and evolution up until this point.
This message is not intended to depress us or make us feel hopeless about getting along and seeing eye-to-eye with everyone on Earth. The intention is to make us more aware and empower us to be more understanding of the different levels of existence, evolution, and processing of concepts on Earth by different people. The more we know, the better we can understand why things are the way they are. Take any subject, be it peace or health or sustainability. We may think that we are all talking about the same thing regarding any of these, but more often than not, we aren’t. Billions of different worlds are colliding, and the outcome is quite a disorganized state of affairs. This is most evident in our relationships, governments, and communities. It creates a lot of emotional stress and tension as we go through life, trying to figure out how to get things done effectively and get along with others.
You Are Your Own World and Reality
Most humans think that we all live in one world. The truth is we do, but it is not the world we are thinking of. The one world we live in is our mind’s world. Each of us comes into this life and physical incarnation at a different level of evolution, we are then conditioned by the various cultural, religious, and political influences depending on where each physical manifestation takes place. This builds various biases, beliefs, and perceptions about the world as we know it. Most of us continue life at this pace, possibly with some small bursts of various awakenings that may change some of these patterns. Others, may have significant awakenings and drastically shift the course of their lives, sometimes even multiple times. The most important thing to note here is that there are as many worlds co-existing on Earth, as there are human beings. Each one of us lives in our own world, with its own perceived reality. Embracing our unique qualities and individual paths is not a bad thing. It need not separate us, instead, it can help unify us, but only if we allow ourselves first to see and understand that we are each coming from our unique worldview.
To fully grasp the wholeness of who we are and accurately put the phrase “we are one” into action, rather than just a concept, we have to embrace our unique purpose and individuality first. You have to know who you are—one sacred part of the whole—before you can begin to grasp the wholeness of all that is.
When we embrace our unique individuation, purpose, and level of evolution, we can then begin to see how we fit into the whole. This seems to be a missing step in many spiritual dialogues and arenas. You must fully embrace yourself first before you can embrace the totality of all creation. You get to know the whole by first getting to know the parts that make it up. Therefore, to understand the external world, we need first to understand the internal components that make it up.
Spiritual Grades of Evolution
To best summarize what I mean by all of this, I’d like to use a simple analogy that all of us are familiar with based on the current model of education that spans from kindergarten through college. Through this analogy, I intend to help you see and understand why our Earth is in the state that it is. To reiterate, the state of existence that I am referring to is neither bad or good; it is merely a disorganized state, where we are not living from a state of high efficiency, compassion, or coherence.
To illustrate this, I want you to imagine the following scenario. You have just arrived in a brand new country that you know nothing about. As part of your tour of this new culture, you are taken to visit a local school. You walk into a classroom, and you notice something odd that you have never seen back in the schools of your own country. This classroom is full of kids of all ages, and they are all trying to learn together. You notice some kindergarteners, a high percentage of elementary school kids, some high school kids, and a handful of college kids. All of these beings are trying to learn and coexist together. The teacher is trying to do the best job they can by creating most of the curriculum to meet the needs of the high percentage of elementary school kids. This, in turn, leaves a lot of the kindergarten kids restless and getting into all sorts of trouble, while it leaves the college kids bored or frustrated. The older kids often try to help the younger ones understand the concepts presented. This sometimes works, while at other times, it is a useless endeavor as each being must grow into a certain level of comprehension. The older kids eventually realize that the younger kids can only grasp things when they mature enough and are ready for them. Thus, there is no point in trying to teach them the same things they are learning themselves or something they are not yet prepared for, as this only introduces unnecessary stress and animosity.
Let’s come back from the visualization. You have probably guessed by now the purpose of that scenario. It is perhaps the easiest way to envision very much what is happening here on Earth, which is like one giant classroom. It is fun, it is exciting, sometimes the lessons are simple, and sometimes they are hard. But the biggest challenge in this classroom is trying to be and learn together with kids of all ages who are each at different levels of comprehension. We may all be one, coming from the same source, but we are all at unique levels of our evolution, and this poses the most significant set of challenges on Earth.
When we begin to see our world from this perspective, we begin to understand why things are in the state that they are. There are those who, like the kindergarteners, are only capable of focusing on their immediate needs and captivated only by their own existence. Pre-planning for the future or understanding things from the perspective of another is not a skill that this group yet possesses. Then there are all sorts of elementary school kids who are each at very different levels themselves. Some just want to play, while others actually want to learn something. Some are forming cohesive relationships, while others choose to be the bullies on the playground. Most do not understand how this “school” works, but as kids often do, want to figure things out for themselves; they don’t want to hear from the older kids how things can be done differently—more efficiently, effectively, and coherently. Then, there are the high school kids who are coming into their autonomy and starting to see through the system, which causes them to rebel against it in all sorts of ways. They are often the “activists” who want to make a change and be heard and bring about all kinds of change. Finally, there are the college kids, who are also at different levels of their evolution, mastery, and specialization. They are connecting the dots between actions and consequences, and the ones who are starting to understand that the only way to change the world, is by changing yourself.
If we compare life on Earth to that of other dimensions with similar life forms, metaphysical studies of other realities suggest that one of the biggest reasons why our world is so unique and chaotic is because it breeds such extreme diversity. Beings in other realities are much more aligned around a common purpose and at a more harmonious level of evolution. Any improvement in coherence makes it much easier for such societies to coexist together in peace or work for the common good, for a common goal. In this Earth system, this is very difficult to do, given the wide variations in consciousness and energetic frequencies. As you can imagine, an eleventh grader wants very different things and is capable of very different things than a seventh-grader, and even more so than a third-grader. And so we have those on Earth who want to play with guns or toxic chemicals and who readily engage in destroying or killing humans, animals, or the environment, together with those who want to create effective architecture, nourishment, and societies that benefit the good of all, not just a select few. And since there is a higher predominance of “elementary school kids,” our society reflects an “elementary school” atmosphere via the systems put in place to keep the majority under control, be they political, religious, etc.
To make matters more complicated, yet fun, we are not all at the same level concerning every area of existence. For example, using the school analogy from above, a being may be at a college level when it comes to mastering personal relationships, but at an eighth-grader level when it comes to living in harmony with nature. To add to this, when we speak of people having “spiritual awakenings” or experiencing “enlightenment,” this does not mean they have conclusively experienced one awakening. We experience many “awakenings” when it comes to specific subjects or areas of life and can also experience more broad-spectrum awakenings, which we can equate to graduation from some particular grade level. This would happen when we equalize all areas of that specific level of evolution, which allows us to proceed to the next. However, even along each of these levels of spiritual development, we still have different interests and preferences and shortcomings that require work. This school of life does not end either when we reach the theoretical “college” or “post-secondary” level. We are on an eternal journey of spiritual evolution that propels us forward into self-mastery, self-actualization, and self-realization.
I am sharing all of this to help us begin to understand why sometimes something as simple as trying to have a conversation with others about topics that we may think we would all understand similarly proves difficult. Let’s use some more examples to further understand on a practical level. Think about the topic of abortion, for example. A third-grader will have a completely different understanding and take on this topic compared to a ninth-grader, compared to a college kid. (Remember, we are using complex human topic examples in the context of simple grade school analogies.) What peace means to a first grader is very different than what means peace to a tenth grader, and more importantly, what each is willing to do to have peace. We can take any topic: the economy, politics, ethics, extraterrestrials, health, or nutrition to understand why we have the misunderstandings and miscommunication we do on Earth that lead people into conflicts, arguments, or violence. We may be talking about the same things, but each of our unique abilities to comprehend the vastness of each topic totally depends on our personal level of evolution.
Ultimately, I am not sharing this so that you try to figure out what supposed grade you or anyone else is in, or feel put down or superior. That is not at all the point of this dialogue. The point is to realize that we are all at different levels of learning—our evolution and spiritual development, and not capable of understanding, seeing, sensing, experiencing, or expressing things in the same ways.
Concluding Thoughts
Although we are currently part of a collective reality in this living system, we each construct our reality based on our perspectives, past experiences, biases, and level of evolution. Our personally constructed reality is the most influential force in our lives.
We are all at different stages of spiritual evolution, or in different grades. A third-grader is no better or worse than a ninth-grader. “Better” and “worse” are simply constructs of an unconscious ego-mind that lives in a world of duality. Each is at the perfect place for them on their journey of personal evolution.
We need to be tolerant of the fact that we are sharing a system with many other beings who are at all kinds of levels of conscious awareness. This is akin to children of all ages in one classroom. The older kids need more patience with the younger kids, for we were all once there. The younger kids can save themselves a lot of suffering and turmoil, if they so desire, by taking advantage of the wisdom offered by the older kids.
To create most effectively, you must align yourself with those that share similar worlds to yours. This does not mean people of the same religion or same political party, but *beings who choose to perceive reality and vibrate at a similar frequency to you.
In the end, I do not have a solution for you because technically, there is no problem. This reality was created this way for a specific purpose, even if our Earth-based mind cannot currently understand it. We just have to recognize and understand the challenge before us so that we can improve our relations with each other and create better living conditions for all. We each came to this world, this time and many times before, knowing this challenge very well. I am quite sure that its challenging nature is one of the main reasons why we come here at all, as contrast can cause us to learn and evolve the fastest. It is why we tend to pick the families we do, religions, cultures, geographical areas, and such. We can, therefore, accept our lives here as a very positive, rather than a negative thing, despite the challenges that it presents. As long as we don’t get caught up in other people’s realities or try to force our way of seeing things upon others, there is perhaps no better virtual playground or classroom where we can have the chance to evolve spiritually at a faster rate than here.