God said: “…And so We come to the crux of it. Opinions are limiting. And now seek togo beyond limits.
You know you are an unlimited being, and that applies to
your thoughts as well. There is an unlimited supply of them. You will now be open and less attached to previous ones.
This is the same as telling you to open your heart, forthe mind has signaled the heart to close in certain instances, to draw back.
When you believe in inequality, you close your heart. When you believe in equality, your heart opens of itself. Diversity does not mean inequality.
Opinions most often say that only so much diversity is allowed.
Opinions separate. Truth does not.” Heavenletter #881***
“Ego perceives itself at war and therefore in need of allies. You who are not at war must look for brothers and recognize all whom you see as brothers, because only equals are at Peace.” ACIM VII-3.
***
The topic of equality is likely to raise many controversial questions and answers. Yet in this blog, I don’t intend to treat the subject from a socio-political, biological, psychological, or any of the current or standard approaches. I will rather try to look at it through the lens of Oneness.
Inequality and Competition
It is quite easy to observe that everything we see in the relative world seems unequal. Inequality seems real. One corollary of inequality in this world is competition. When we believe in fundamental inequality between beings (the survival of the fittest according to Darwin) and particularly between human beings, how can we possibly treat them, with a democratic eye, as perfectly equal? If we are unequal in this world, is not competition justified? Hence we believe that conflicts of interest are inevitable. And we accept that as true.
But if at the same time, we believe in Oneness, we have to recognize that Oneness cannot be partial. It is whole and does not have any parts. So it must be perfectly equal. Then we must ask if there is a bridge between the Equality that prevails in Oneness (Heaven) and the inequality that prevails on Earth?
Equality is timeless. Inequality is relative to time
Equality and inequality cannot coexist. If one is true, the other one must be false. The only way to bridge them is to consider that perfect equality does not mean perfect equality in time. On Earth, we believe that we are lacking, that we don’t have everything so we feel needy and we have an incapacity to share completely what we have because we forgot how to share what we are. On Earth, we have forgotten who we are so we have created a separation between what we have and what we are.
We then project that we or others are deprived of anything, which creates a distortion in our perception. Perception of inequality rests on judgments. Any kind of judgment always contains an implicit acceptance of inequality as a rule. Without judgment, perception would be impossible.
Therefore perception involves partial awareness while Knowledge of Oneness, being whole, cannot be partial.
It is obvious that our belief in inequality is a direct consequence of our belief in separation. The belief in separation generates the need for comparisons. Equality is beyond the grasp of ego and that is why authentic sharing is impossible for the ego. Sharing seems losing by giving unless it is to get in return. Ego needs to keep inequality going because it is a way to feel different and separated from the other brothers and sisters. Ego wants to make us seem better or worse than the others are, but never equal. How could ego accept equality without denying its own (virtual) existence?
We are a perfect Creation
That is what Oneness (God) tells us. Only One is. This is the Truth. Anything else is not. Anything that is not One, that is not shared, is only a perception, an illusion. This means that in Truth we have everything because we are everything. If we really believed that we have everything because we are everything, where would inequality be, where would competition be? This means that what is already acquired in Oneness (Heaven) is in a potential state on Earth.
We don’t yet perceive the equality of having and being since we forgot who we really are. So we can’t escape from perceiving with a distortion that having is opposed to being and, consequently, we see inequality, injustice, and competition everywhere. Ego wants us to see inequality in order to justify its own fictive existence and survival. As long as human beings feel they are unequal there is no way for them to achieve Peace.
Equality is possible only through sharing. In fact, equality IS sharing. The essence of Oneness is total sharing. It is a sharing of the Whole which comprises all that we have because it is all that we are. On Earth, even if we are not “equal” in time, we still are equals as learners. This does not mean that we all have to have the same or equal experiences. But we can learn from each other. We don’t share inequality between humans, But we share our perfection because we were created equally perfect.
Inequality has a positive, learning value. It may be used to bridge the gap between the perception of inequality and Knowledge of Equality. Since we forgot who we are, we certainly forgot the fundamental Perfect Equality of each other. Understanding the real underlying basis of the perception of inequality is a way to restore our Knowledge of Equality, which we have to remember.
Ultimately, perception of inequality is most likely a variation of the perception of our own inadequacy or incompleteness. This perceived incompleteness is a consequence of our perceived separation from Oneness.
Couldn’t love to be that bridge? Where does inequality stands when there is love? Separated from our own Oneness, everything appears to us as >1 or <1, not as 1+1=1
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Brilliant! What can I say? Only brilliant! Brilliant every time. You are writing an auspicious blog, Normand, remarkable in its brilliance. I don’t speak lightly.
“Diversity does not mean inequality”
Though a sentence cannot say it all, I agree with this. There is diversity in creation. To see that someone is taller than another is to witness a fact, to say that taller is better is opinion. There are weeds and roses, both deserve to be there as they express two different qualities of the same beingness (just with this meaning we can use the word in-equal, manifesting not the same quality).
But, but: “Opinions most often say that only so much diversity is allowed”.
This is often the case when we speak of equality as better than inequality (“Whatever you consider better or worse, more or less, is your opinion” from the same source). Often with the idea or ideal of equality, we are just creating limits, boundaries, lines to delimit the space where people are supposed to move and to express their being, allowing only that much differentiation that doesn’t bother us. And equality becomes conformity and in that confomity we think we can rest in peace.
Equality and inequality are both opinions and Love doesn’t need the crutch of equality to shine on Itself.
I am quite content with differentiation and oneness.