“Just like a sunbeam can’t separate itself from the sun, and a wave can’t separate itself from the ocean,  we can’t separate ourselves from one another. We are all part of a vast sea of love, one indivisible divine mind.”
~ Marianne Williamson

We’ve probably all had those brief moments when boundaries blur and it feels we’ve entered into another person’s experience. Maybe you’re furious at someone and, mid-rant, you sense the tension in the other person’s body and see flickers of conflicting emotion pass across the other face. Just like that, you feel what it is like to receive your anger. Or maybe you’re standing on a crowded bus and know, in a way that seems past knowing, that the person in front of you is in despair. You somehow draw the depth of their anguish into your own self, just for a second.

I suspect this is a relatively common experience because compassion is basic to humanity. We thrive on generosity, understanding, and mutual concern. In contrast, our own physical and mental health is imperiled by selfishness and materialism. Even a momentary act of kindness to a stranger tends to diminish previously self-centered behavior, leading people to pay it forward.

Our very biology tunes us to one another. Our hearts communicate with others at a level below our conscious awareness. According to research by the HeartMath Institute, the electrical field emitted by a human heart is 60 times greater in amplitude than brain activity. Its electromagnetic field is 5,000 greater. The heart’s field radiates through every cell in the body, extending well beyond the skin. In other words, we broadcast the electromagnetic signal of our own hearts. This can be measured several feet away from our bodies. Energy activity in the heart of one individual effects and can be measured in the brain waves of another person (or pet) in close proximity.  Whether we recognize it or not, we aren’t isolated individual lifeforms but are connected with one another in deep, interwoven ways.

Faith traditions around the world have long taught that we are one people. These moral admonitions are similar to what’s commonly known as the Golden Rule.

For more esoteric evidence of our oneness, we can listen to people who have been revived after a medical crisis and awaken with near-death experience (NDE) insights to share. I recently read Lessons From the Light by Kenneth Ring, a researcher who has devoted himself to the study of NDEs for decades. Dr. Ring writes about the phenomenon called “life review.” In it, newly (and in a NDE, temporarily) dead souls re-experience life in review, rapidly, and in a way that allows them to fully and compassionately understand themselves while simultaneously understanding their impact on every being in their lives. The illusion of isolation falls away and the essential interconnectedness of everything is revealed as a basic principle of life. Although NDErs tend to agree their experiences are too ineffable to fit into words, they try. One wrote,

One big thing I learned when I died was that we are all part of one big, living universe. If we think we can hurt another person or another living thing without hurting ourselves, we are sadly mistaken. I look at a forest or a flower or a bird now, and say, “That is me, part of me.”

We get so many hints of this from our bodies, our daily interactions, from the culture around us. We get hints from world’s spiritual and religious traditions. They tell us what a worthy, lifetime challenge it is to work toward living the Golden Rule. But oh, imagine what we bring into being as we try!