session 10: Unity
Positive Affirmation: The spirit in you enlivens the spirit in me.
Seamus: To start off this chapter, I think we need to ask, what is unity?
Ned: Unity is the singularity of two or more things coming together as one. We experience unity when we align with each other. We can also experience unity with God and nature. Our connection with others and God points us to a greater truth hidden in our soul. Knowing our soul changes our experience. Unity is not a concept; rather, it is an experience that opens when we come together as one. That experience deepens as we develop a deeper relationship with our soul.
Seamus: In your book it’s also mentioned that “we unconsciously seek to find our own likeness in others.” Can you expand on that?
Ned: I think that we unconsciously seek to find like-minded people. When you first meet somebody, we start to assess our similarities. Once we find common ground, we think that they understand us more if we have gone through similar life experiences or if we have similar interests. This is often the grounds for initiating a friendship with another.
Seamus: Why do you think it’s so important for people to feel understood?
Ned: I think the reason why people need to feel understood is to feel acceptance, to claim your position amongst the ocean of people around us.
Seamus: You say that we unconsciously seek to find our own likeness in others. I do agree with that. I think when we connect with another we feel, “Oh, I really enjoyed hanging out with them.” Maybe there were similar hobbies or something like that, but I think it goes a little bit deeper than that. We sometimes feel a connection with people we don’t even know; it’s difficult to define. There are people we tend to gravitate towards even before anything is said.
Ned: We are unconsciously seeking ourselves through other people because we are looking for the unity that lies between us. There is a unity that exists between my soul and yours. I don’t think we are unconsciously searching to find similarities of personality, likes, dislikes. That may be the initial draw to another; however, there is a deeper driving force that is pulling us to connect with others. At the depths of who we are, we are all one soul. There is no distance between us. This is only a concept until we go into our soul deep enough for the spirit of unity to rise up in us.
“The very nature of the spark we carry in our soul seeks to be in unity with others. When we experience solidarity with
one another, it evokes memories of our origin. It causes us
to remember that we all come from the flame of God.”
Seamus: What happens to a person when they see themselves in other people?
Ned: The things we like become a pull for us to move closer to another, and the things we don’t like about others are usually the things that we don’t like about ourselves. If I have had a problem with anger in the past, I may have no tolerance to be around angry people. When something that we don’t like in another person causes us to react, I think it is grounds to investigate what we need to heal in ourselves. The things in me that I have truly gotten over no longer bother me when they arise in somebody else because they’re no longer my issue.
Unity is a divine truth. There is a rapid discovery of that truth when we love one another, for love itself lives in the heart of unity.
Seamus: You had said earlier that unity is something that you need to experience. It’s hard to describe, and it’s only a concept until it is experienced. Can you break that down a little bit? How we can begin experiencing unity? How do we start moving in that direction?
Ned: How we begin to experience unity is by learning to drop the commentary in our mind that creates difference between ourselves and another. I have spent time with people that were very different than me and been able to see myself in them. The commentary our mind has when we meet someone may not always be nice or accepting. I don’t know how many times I have met someone and my mind begins to drop thoughts like “Odd duck.” If we can drop our positions and search for the common ground that ties us together, we start to eradicate the ideas in our mind that create distance between us and other people.
Finding unity with others starts with ourselves. We must be willing to get into a relationship with our heart. Loving interactions with ourselves and others help us see the unity that lies between us.
Seamus: It’s better to focus on the similarities rather than the differences. It is easy to make judgments about people. I don’t know how we come up with these things. Maybe it’s our past experiences clouding us. It’s easy to become segregated. This is something that is huge in the world. We often segregate others over insignificant things.
Ned: This is where we can grow as people. We must become more tolerant. When we insert tolerance and look for understanding and compassion, all the things we find that separate us dissolve, especially if we find it in ourselves to love others.
We learn how to love by looking at the qualities of love. 1 Corinthians
13:4-7 says,
Love is patient; love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
When we look at all those qualities, there is a formula to experience unity between you and another. How do we create unity? Through tolerance, patience, keeping a loving air in your mind with people.
It is okay not to like everyone. I don’t think we are supposed to like everybody. I’ve said many times, “I don’t have to like everyone but, it is my job to love them regardless of our differences.” I feel it is our duty to give our best effort to maintain love for each other.
Seamus: To offer a quality friendship, I can only do a handful of friendships at any given time. I would rather have a handful of good friends versus a volume of friends. On social media you appear to be more important if you have tons of friends. Which feeds our ego. I find that, personally, I’m more unified with people the more time I spend with them. You get to know them. Understanding ourselves can help us understand others, too, which makes for better friendships and relationships. What are your thoughts about that?
Ned: Absolutely. The more I discover the depths of my heart, the more I find myself in yours. Which is something to really think about.
Seamus: I understand that. I’ve felt that as well, but that takes time to get to. I love being around people that are on a similar path or have something to share that I would love to listen to. I also like people who aspire to things and really go after their dreams.
Getting involved in different communities of people, especially through my podcast, I have found individuals who have a tremendous drive for their passions. These people inspire me. I’m more likely to do more with myself. If I spent my time with people who had no aspirations, it would lessen my own.
Ned: Here is something that you said to me one day: “Every time we meet, I move the needle for you.” It is important to have people in your life who move the needle for you. People who inspire you, motivate you to dig deeper and discover who you are under the surface. By doing so, you find understanding of others.
I’ve done well over ten thousand tattoos. In the thousands of interactions I’ve had during my career and through my charitable work, I’ve been able to meet a lot of inspiring people. This has allowed me to get into the depths of what people are all about.
Seamus: What I’d like to know is, how is unity the premise of creating a sacred relationship?
Ned: Unity happens naturally in sacred relationships. Unity arises in the act of surrendering to love. When you surrender yourself to love with another person, there is an automatic unity that comes between you. A sacred relationship is built on supporting each other’s personal growth and relationship with God. Unity happens between each other more readily because you are both pointed in the same direction, toward the same thing. That kind of focus invites unity to come and gift us with its presence.
Seamus: If we go back to the very beginning of the series, we talked a lot about the checklists, checking off big things that we want. Vacation, property, a home, getting a Harley, a vehicle, et cetera, et cetera—and money, of course, to fund all of that. What’s interesting is how unity helps decrease the need for temporary, external possessions and experiences. I’d like for you to educate us on that.
Ned: All things in form are temporary. Our thoughts and feelings are temporary also. Everything is in motion and is passing through. The only thing that is solid and stable about it is the energy that holds it all together. The experience of unity takes away the focus and importance of temporary mindsets and material objects.
Unity fills you up with the presence of God, which is eternal and allencompassing. One of my quotes comes to mind, “Only a fool would ask for more when he has everything.” My experience of unity with God fills me with a sense of completeness. Things like new cars are just gadgets to me now. My house is a sleeping device. My phone is a communication device. It’s not my life, nor do I derive any sense of self from any of these objects or the status of having them. By removing desire from our mind, we are left wanting nothing. At best, external objects provide us with temporary comfort that only leaves us wanting more. What truly fills the void in us is to get into a relationship with our unity with others and God.
Unity is not a future reward that’s inaccessible. I’m talking about a solid and stable reality that is here right now. It’s not something that we have to strive to become or to be. By surrendering into the source of who we are, we fall into the silence.
When we just keep falling back into that more and more, unity comes in and visits. It is an experience that can be had by the serious seeker. Until I experienced unity with God, I couldn’t relate. If you have never eaten an apple pie, how would you know how good it tastes—or how good it doesn’t taste, for that matter?
Seamus: Yes, right. But the way you explained unity with God in the book makes it seem like an unattainable experience. How does one experience unity?
Ned: I present it in such a way that it’s the enlightened masters who experience the deeper states of unity. However, our consciousness is in flux all the time. It’s not that enlightenment is the end of our experience; rather, enlightenment touches down in our experience many times. You could have a great deal of enlightening moments, moments when total surrender and peace wash over you.
Maybe it sounds far away, but that’s only your mind tracking progress. Unity is closer than you think and so is our enlightenment.
A lot of people put masters on pedestals, but the true master lives inside you. The idea is that you return to the master in you, and then you let go of what your mind deems impossible.
“When the consciousness of unity permeates you, a deep sense of completeness washes over you. It leaves you
desireless for anything other than this moment.”
Seamus: Could you explain the different layers of unity?
Ned: We experience unity in different ways. One layer of unity is when the spirit of unity joins us when two or more gather. We have all been to a concert or a sporting event of some sort. In that moment, when two or more people are gathered, there is a unity that opens to us. The Christians reference this in the Bible: “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” Matthew 18:20 KJV That is one sense of unity.
I think it is relatable because we have all gathered together for one singular cause and had a great experience from being unified together. We can do that any time. If you want to experience unity, get a friend and do something together. There is a unity that can open up between you. When you get involved in something where love is the purpose of the event, there is a greater amplification of the power to co-create. The power of unity gets increasingly stronger.
I have experienced this with charity events. I put on a charity event in 2017 called “Pause for Love.” We did B-Love and semicolon tattoos for the day. The event was framed around love and supporting people who are struggling with mental illness or who are struggling in life. We did tattoos that had the letter B and a heart: “B-Love.”
The unity that was in that arena. It was incredible. I’ve put on many charity events, but that one was very special. I think because love was part of the reason to gather, it amplified the event. No matter where our consciousness lies, we can experience that. That first layer of unity is more about the external.
The next layer goes deeper into unity. What happened on the first layer—even though it was an external thing, it caused something internally. If you take your attention and you turn it inwards, there is an internal space within us. It is commonly referred to as “the silence.” Learning to rest your attention into that space within ourselves brings up a deeper sense of unity. It brings up the singularity of our soul and the understanding of what it is.
That layer of unity is a type of unity that is experienced by devoted spiritual seekers. You don’t require a religious background or even need to call yourself spiritual. Someone who is devoted to going into the presence of silence or love inside themselves can experience unity. This can also come to us while we are gardening, playing music, building a deck, et cetera. We can go even deeper with this experience if we are devoted to the unfoldment of our awakening.
The last step of unity is when you dissolve what you think is you into God. That is where we keep surrendering repeatedly. We keep surrendering. Surrendering our mind, our emotions, and the desires that arise in us. There is a great deal of ourselves that we can let go and dissolve. I don’t see it as a process or as a daunting task. I go into much more depth about this in my book Be Love: A Book about Awakening.
Seamus: How does unity leave you desireless for anything other than this moment?
Ned: When we enter this moment by getting out of our mind, we start to rest in the silence found inside ourselves. The deeper we rest in the silence, the more anchored we get to the moment, helping us release our mind. For desires come from our mind. If we no longer pay attention to our mind, we can let go of the idea that we want for the desires within it. If there are voices in your mind, you are no longer paying attention to them. They are no longer the objects of your affection.
Seamus: Why does unity eradicate the need for change or welcome it if it comes?
Ned: It is the mind that wants. It wants things to be different than what they are. Your soul can accept whatever is happening. Even in horrific situations, the soul is an unbiased witness to life. If my leg were to catch on fire, my soul would not be in objection to that. It would be my mind that would be screaming while I ran towards water.
When we get into a place where we experience unity, it eradicates the importance of the chatter in our mind. It eradicates our need to change and control, to manipulate what is happening. The mind can’t experience unity. It’s our mind that believes that we are separate. However, we are unified with other people. It believes there is a “me” and a “you,” whereas the soul only sees itself as “we.”
Seamus: Are there people who are not good for us to unify with? Should I be cautious?
Ned: Absolutely. I think that is where discernment comes into play. As we become more and more awake, we need to understand who and what we’re unifying with. We need to be conscious of who and what we’re giving ourselves over to. I don’t want to be involved in anything that supports suffering and greed or cruelty towards people or animals and nature. I must live in clear conscience that I’m making positive choices that are aligned with my purpose. There are many things out there that seem harmless on the surface but are not good for us. There are groups of people that have limited beliefs that subtract from our growth, groups that hold a negative agenda, like getting you hooked on drugs.
Our moral meter must be in place. I went into to a Subway sandwich shop one time and the owner was yelling at his employee in front of the customers. I asked the owner, “Do you think that’s appropriate?” I wasn’t trying to challenge him, to engage in an argument, but I wanted to know if he felt his actions were appropriate. He really didn’t have any response to me, so I said, “I’m going to have to leave now because I’m not supporting your business today.” My moral meter said “This is somebody I can’t align with.” In clear conscience, I could not give that man my business.
I think this where we need to come together. If we throw up our hands and say “There is nothing I can do,” we become part of the problem. There is something we can do: we can stop supporting things that are not ethical.
Seamus: Well, that is an interesting subject we’re getting onto here. What you are describing is complacency, how a lot of people don’t get involved.
In addition to that, do you think in our heart, we know what’s right and wrong, that deep down we must take inventory of what we are morally aligning with?
Ned: Our soul knows exactly what is right and wrong. An interesting thing about our brain is that when somebody lies or engages in something we know to be wrong for the first time, it creates a fair amount of stress. The second time somebody lies or goes against their morals, their stress response is greatly diminished. If you don’t allow what you know to be true and right to prevail, you will find yourself believing your lies over time. Your mind can rewire and accept things that you know are wrong. I’m asking people that, in the pursuit of unity, we look at the things that don’t seem right.
Why can I pay a dollar for something that’s worth ten dollars? Is that right to you? I don’t want to attack the dollar stores, but I want to just bring some awareness. What is wrong here? I think it is so important to really look at what we are aligning with.
Seamus: How are virtual interactions a detriment to human connectivity?
Ned: I think we both could answer this question. How do you think that virtual interactions become a detriment? I’d love to hear your ideas on this.
Seamus: In virtual interactions, some find it easier to say what’s boiling in them, because there is this filter. It’s a lot harder to approach a person face to face, especially if you make eye contact, and say the same thing. That poses a level of discomfort.
They are less likely to be objectional, to say what’s really on their mind. I think we are losing the ability to communicate. That’s my thought.
Another thing is, why is it that social media gives people the liberty to be rude or to have “no filter”? People are creating personas of themselves on social media. I feel like that’s a really big thing. They are creating an image of their self in perfection on social media, without their flaws.
They have a highlight reel for a life, and they are only showing people five to ten percent of what’s really going on. It’s a false representation of ourselves. Some people display an overly positive side of their life, because they want to be associated with positivity, because they think that is a great quality to have as a person. It doesn’t mean they are even a positive person or were even feeling positive when they made the post. We don’t know the intent.
The positive side of social media is that we can touch a lot of people with very little input. It’s much easier to make one post on social media and have 100 or 200 people like it and comment rather than calling 100 or 200 people and saying the same thing.
Ned: That’s right.
Seamus: It’s efficient, but my plea to everyone is to get in front of people.
Have conversations with people. Share your opinions with people. Have debates. This is healthy for people. Don’t just leave all your challenging interactions for online where it’s easier. Put yourself in difficult situations; you will grow as a person.
Ned: One of the last questions that we had in this first part of our discussion about unity is, how do we unify with God? Instead of just coming up with a bunch of points, I wanted to answer that through something I’ve written in my book “Be Love.” I’d like to share this with you.
“Unifying with God calls you to set yourself down. When you do this, you give God the opportunity to arise in you with all God’s glory. Be alone with God; come to the divine empty of yourself. In your aloneness with God there is great comfort in unity with God. The many guests in your mind can be very distracting. When you give yourself over to God without distraction, God reveals itself to you. The depths to which you will discover your aliveness in God are endless. Dissolve any sense of you in the presence of God. You do this with practice. The idea is to keep practicing until there is no longer a you that is trying. The barrier to unifying with God is your mind. When your attention is placed on thinking and thoughts or anything outside of you, you give yourself to whatever has your attention. By making God your only focus, you amplify God’s presence in you.”
Part Two: How to Create Unity in Your Community
Positive Affirmation: The greatness in me is needed by others. When I share myself, the world becomes a better place.
Seamus: Now, we are going to talk about how to create unity within your community. To start things off, I’d like to ask, what is the importance of creating unity in the community?
Ned: This is a topic that has been on my mind for a while. I think it is because of the charitable work that I do. My charity events have created a wave of unity. I see how positive it is for my community to come together and love each other. I think that when the community comes together on something, it brings out the goodness in each person. It brings out the spirit of community that enlivens our soul. There is something about getting together as a community that is soulful.
Seamus: People might be wondering to themselves, “Well, how can I gain a greater sense of purpose?” This is a good step in that direction. You can start doing things in your community to make it a better place. Are there other examples that come to mind where people can start getting involved in the community, in creating a sense of unity?
Ned: That’s a great example you just shared, Seamus. Give what you can in accordance with your circumstances. If you are able to give, whether it’s something as small as a smile or a handshake or a hug, it’s more than you realize. Sometimes, these small gestures create a greater sense of community than the bigger ones.
When we connect with others, it helps build community. Find ways to connect with people. If you are on social media, use it as a positive platform. If somebody pops into your mind, send them a message saying, “You’ve crossed my mind.” If somebody crosses my mind, I send them a message. I don’t know why they came to my mind. My job is to just let them know that they were in my heart today. Now, something that is just a whim passing through me can become a connection with another. Look strangers in the eyes. Make it a practice to look at people and engage the world. Look for ways that you can surrender yourself to another; for example, if somebody drops something, pick it up.
Find a way to praise people. Praise opens a dialogue like no other. Praise is a doorway into gratitude. For example, “Seamus, that’s a very nice wolf shirt you are wearing today.”
Seamus: (laughs) I know; I love my wolf shirt. I have two of them, but this shirt gets a lot of praise.
Ned: If I say “Seamus, I like your wolf shirt today,” what comes next?
Seamus: Well, I really like your laid-back t-shirt. (I was wearing a shirt covered in paint.) Thank you so much for complimenting my wolf shirt.
Ned: Yes, you see. Once there is praise, next we experience gratitude. And what is between us? There is a sense of love, because I love your shirt and I love you in it.
Seamus: (laughs)That’s awesome.
Ned: But all jokes aside, greet the world with your heart engaged. Greet the world with a smile. Be friendly to your family and fellows. Bring up kindness. Bring up your ability to love, and your community will grow as a result.
How we purposefully build community is through heart-centered interactions. The quality of interaction that happens when you are engaged in your mind pales in comparison to a heart-centered interaction.
Seamus: Along with being more involved with our community, we should also respect our elders. How do you feel we should be with our older generation?
Ned: Our elders in the community should be looked at as precious gems. I was taught at a young age to respect my elders. We should respect them because they can teach us a great deal. I’ve always wanted to draw on the wisdom of elders. That’s something that has been a constant thing in my life. Even as a little boy, I would sit in the kitchen with my parents, just watching and listening.
I wanted the wisdom the older people had. There was a little glimmer in me … I just knew that I was going to be an elder someday and it was going to be my turn to be wise. Our elders carry forward the wisdom that has been gathered up from their age and era. We need to preserve their wisdom and all the things that they have captured in their lifetime. Without elders in our lives, we are weak. We are weak because we forget what is behind us. It’s not that we want to dwell on our past, but rather that we want to celebrate the past and learn from the triumphs and failures as well.
Part of building a better community is being connected to all the levels of community. We don’t celebrate our elders as much as we should. During a native course I attended, the teacher drew a chart and the elders were connected to the child, to the teens and to the adults. Everything goes back to the elders. In their culture they believe that the child needs to be connected to the elders, the teen needs to be connected to the elders and the adults. I remember that teaching so clearly. I remember feeling it is something we need to embrace. We need to share ourselves with elders, and elders need to be willing to engage with the youth. We need to come together.
I have met some elders who are not sharing their wisdom. I challenge people who have reached the elder stage in their lives to stand up and have a voice. I’ve met elders who said that they don’t feel like their voice is meaningful or being heard or recognized. My advice back to them was to speak louder and clearer.
Seamus: In this chapter you have a diagram explaining the gravity between making the easy choice or making the hard choice. I would love for you to break this down, because this is a very eye-opening chart.
Ned: I was at work one day and I was struggling with one of my coworkers. Instead of submitting to my anger, I gave myself a timeout. While I was giving myself a break from the situation, I suddenly saw this image in my mind’s eye. I saw a circle with a dot in the centre. The dot in the centre of the circle represented choice. I was sitting in the middle of a choice. Above the circle on top was a dot, which represented making a positive choice. Below the circle was another dot that represented making negative choice.
If I made the positive choice, I had to make an uphill climb to get to that choice. But if I made a negative choice, it was an easy downhill slide. On the other side of the positive choice, it was an easy downhill slide to get back to a neutral position because all the hard work was done before I made that choice. However, if I made the easy choice, all the hard work would come after I made that choice. That’s illustrative of life. It’s easy to make a wrong choice and submit to our anger.
It’s much harder to make a positive choice; it is an uphill climb. But then on the other side of the positive choice, we find more peace and understanding.
That diagram has come to mind many times when somebody gets in front of me and I want to lash out at them, or when I feel frustrated and angry. I know I’m faced with a choice. By making positive choices, we learn how to love each other and ourselves. It’s easy to make the negative choice, but that only takes away from our growth and our opportunities.
The last thing I could follow that up with is that I feel like we need
to give to the world. We also need to give everyone a reason to remember us. When you leave an interaction with somebody, give them a reason to think of you later, whether it’s in your engagement with that person or your ability to invoke a connection between you and that person. Your willingness to listen to what they have to say or your ability to share in their joys or to support them in their sorrows—all of these will make a lasting impression on them.
Give the world a reason to think about you later. In doing so you will help build community.
Can you imagine a community in which all the people deeply loved and cared for each other? If you were in trouble or things were not going well for you, how amazing would it be if your community reached out and held you in your difficult time? Can you imagine how special that would be? That is the kind of world that I imagine. This can happen if we all get together and learn who we are and love ourselves and each other.
My book isn’t about programming people or convincing anyone into my beliefs. My book is about self-empowerment. It is about people finding the truth of who they really are inside. When you find that truth, your capacity and willingness to love grows. I believe that we can become unified once we deeply learn how to love.