What's the difference?

What's the difference between you and me?

We may appear to have certain differences.

Appearance. Likes/dislikes. Predispositions. Relative intelligence. Age. Etc.

But beyond the apparent differences—which do have a certain degree of validity—there is essential sameness.

For a world mired in the physical, what is seen, heard, felt and so on, we give these differences undue weight—they are taken for absolute reality and then judged good or bad.

When laid as a philosophical foundation for communities and societies, the understanding can cause alienation, separation, oppression, scarcity, poverty, competition, wars—basically every human issue presenting in the world today as a crisis.

"We're not the same. I'm better than you." This is the base level thinking, which sounds like what mean kids say.

The truth is, as untold amounts of rishis, sages, men and women of wisdom, and texts of truth have said repeatedly through the ages: there is no difference between you and me.

At the core.

In absolute reality.

In truth.

We are both the exact same consciousness, the exact same awareness having a remarkably similar human experience.

Yes, there are differences.

But would you call the waves of an ocean something different from the ocean itself? Would you say that one wave is better than another? Maybe, if you're a surfer.

A true surfer though is a lover of the ocean and all her waves.

Communities and societies would do well to operate from this understanding of essential sameness.

If there is no difference between you and me in truth.

Then now I know why there is a Golden Rule of 'do unto others...'

Am I anything but loving towards others?

If not, why am I not anything but loving towards myself?

That is a potentially liberating question for many of us to sit with.