How do you feel when you hear blokes urge their mates and colleagues on by calling them “a big girl’ when they fail to achieve a certain - usually physical - target. Or when someone who expresses their true feelings or opinions and it is met with a joshing “you’re so gay!”
We have all said something like this. We know no malice is intended. As my friend said, he says things like this because it is a sort of shorthand. We all know what is meant, without having to say more.
But why does it make us feel bad? We know it’s not meant to hurt. We know it’s just a joke. We know that people are not trying to demean women, girls, gays or whomever. But still it rankles. Why?
Or, why is it when we encounter someone with what we might call a “big ego” we feel alienated and somehow diminished?
I believe that at our very core we crave oneness. Because we all have our origin in the same Source we are in essence and in reality all one. Unconsciously and, for some of us, consciously, we long to feel the Oneness from which we all spring.
A sense of separation, separateness and difference cause much of the anxiety, discomfort and social and emotional stress we feel in our daily lives. That is why connection and unity with others leads us to feel the deepest peace and contentment.
Generalisations about certain people and their classification into simplistic categories highlights a sense of difference that none of us wants to feel. It has the effect of dividing people into “us” and ‘them” which causes us all to feel uneasy at some level.
A big ego is a way of saying “I am more important than you, my needs must be acknowledged and met before anyone else’s.” Alienation and separation are almost inevitable in this case.
These small jolts to our peace and well-being cause us to feel ‘other,’ to the other’s ‘self,’ as ‘object’ to their ‘subject.’ They make us feel separate, isolated, lonely and inadequate.
But we are none of these. In truth we are all one and as we realise this, and live according to our true nature in Oneness, we feel greater joy, peace and connection with others and with all life.
This human life is paradox. It seems we are separate entities with individual personalities, bodies, and even souls. We seem separate, yet we are not. If we look beneath the surface of things we can see, feel and sense that we are all One. The trick in life is to find this Oneness in a world of seeming separateness and individuation.
It is the trick of life, but we are always able and free not to be tricked.
