Sleep isn’t something I take for granted. Too many nights are interrupted by my inability to turn off the empathic part of me that is tuned in to the energetic pulse of humanity. Tonight, as I found my favorite deep sleep music on youtube, I read many of the comments people posted from all over the world and I felt such a rush of love and a sense of Oneness.

A person from Venezuela wrote how she can’t sleep because of anxiety about her country falling apart, not having food, and civil war. A person from Iran wrote of their long history of poetry…Rumi and Gibran and reminded us that Iran is more than the sum of recent years of political strangeness. A person wrote how anxious and sad they are most of the time and how helpful the music was to them as well as the comments people were writing. There were supportive comments of love and compassion to those suffering. A woman in Turkey shared about her anxiety disorder and her gratitude for the sleep music. A person from North Carolina expressed her gratitude for compassionate people commenting and coming together to support each other. Another person from England wrote how refreshing it was to read such lovely and kind messages.

Canada, Guatemala, Mexico, Algeria, Greece, Australia, Iran, Ireland, United States, England, France, South Africa, Philippines,  Egypt, Brazil, Holland….just some of the places people live that commented with such support and love. For the first time in a long time, I felt such connection to a world that seems to fragment more each day. I realized we have much more in common than we know. If we could remove politics from the equation we’d all be in such a better place….mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically. We allow the power-hungry few ruin it for the rest of us.

Many of us have various problems but what we have in common is each other. When we set aside the politics and power grabs and focus on the realm of the heart and soul, we really are the same. At that level it seems absolutely ridiculous not to…lend aid, share food and resources, shelter each other.

The ugliness of how we treat ‘others’ keeps me awake at night….the misunderstandings, the pain we think is unique to us but really is a common experience, the feelings of loneliness in a world where electronic ‘connection’ seems only to isolate us more, a world where destruction of the source of life seems rampant. Perhaps the greatest illusion of all is that there are ‘others.’ What if everyone, everything, was simply a reflection of us? What if everything ‘out there’ was simply a reflection of some common creative force….God, Great Spirit, the Universe, the Tao. What if everything we see as separate is simply another part of ourselves?

In the middle of the night these questions come. Perhaps my sleepless sisters and brothers all over the world are all facets in the same diamond light of Oneness and we’re simply all trying to find our way back Home….to each other….to Source…to greater understanding.

_____

All photographs copyright Simone Lipscomb.