Everyone sees the world through their own lens. In other words everyone sees the world around them from their own perspective that is based on their own culture and on their own upbringing at times but usually always according to their own personal experiences. Few of us are ever told, taught or asked to consider the 'bigger picture' that is life on planet earth and The Universe but are typically led into seeing everything around us through the lens that is 'I', meaning perhaps from a place of our own ego. Throughout human history it seems that for the most part we humans have become accustomed to unconsciously making ourselves the center of the universe and everything going on around us is considered on it's benefits and/or disadvantages to ourselves. Oddly enough a 'sense of self' is rarely a part of it even though so much of the teachings as we grow up being about us, what is best for us, what isn't good for us and what serves us the best. So we see the world only through the eyes of our experience and how everything we see in the world affects us.
Some may call it human nature and some may not agree that it's our nature but for most of us we grow up seeing only the small little world that surrounds us where everything that happens either involves us or affects us in some way. There are some however who choose to think beyond the small and by comparison insignificant little world that was created around us at birth and that we continue through life to live in and relate to. Some choose to view the world with a much wider lens and thank goodness for those humans who stretch beyond themselves, their own intimate circle and who yearn to experience the world around them as if it were their own little intimate world.
The value of looking at the world through a wider lens is beyond measure because when we choose to do so we learn very quickly that first of all nearly every other human being on earth shares the same dreams, the same aspirations to succeed in life and the same desires for themselves and their progeny. We all, whether we want to admit it or not, have the same exact 'needs' in life. 'Needs' meaning those basic things that no human being can survive without; things like shelter, water, food and relationships that nurture us and give us a soft place to fall when the rigors of life become too much for us. Therefore we are all of the same mind, cut from the same cloth and have the same basic needs no matter our gender, our ethnic origin, our national affiliation, our religious affiliation and our sexual orientation. When one chooses to only view life through that small, finely focused lens of 'self' and our own intimate small world we can't see how truly similar we are to every other human on earth and we may even grow to fear or be wary of those who are different than we are in skin color, in ethnic origin, in religious affiliation, in national affiliation and in sexual orientation.
Our inability to view the world around us through a wider lens can cause us not only to fear but to hate and to seek to destroy those who are no like us, who don't look like us and who don't have a culture like we do. But when we choose to widen that lens to encompass the human race regardless of our differences so much changes. In fact EVERYTHING changes because we are truly thinking, feeling, reacting and living as a human being among other human beings. With a wider lens we tend to see that the divisions that our ancestors have made and we continue to honor are only divisions created by ideas and are not real, honest and true divisions. With a wider lens we begin to see the beauty in others and begin to embrace all of those delicious and exciting differences that so many others have based their divisions on. As we widen our ideas about and vision of the world to encompass all of humanity we stop seeing divisions and start seeing the similarities that can bind us one to the other. All of a sudden those state lines and country borders don't seem to mean as much to as as they once did and we begin to realize that whatever divisions that have been created over time are creations of fear, of power over others and of pride and ego that may have served us at one time but no longer serve us.
There has got to be a point in the evolution of humankind where we are going to stop being patriots of our country and start being proud citizens of the planet earth. At some point we are going to evolve enough to understand that all of those divisions that so many have held so dear and have honored for so many millennia have brought us much more pain and suffering than they ever have of peace, harmony and prosperity. We must evolve and we will but not if some of us don't start right now. Sure many in the world aren't ready to think in these terms and most definitely are not ready to begin to live life as one world, a whole human specie, but we can't wait for them but must make our own way. So to that end those of us who are awake to this and aware of what needs to change in order to evolve to a new world order as one humanity must begin today and we must begin by living this every day in our own little worlds as if we are indeed in 'the world' in it's entirety. If we don't live it it will never happen and we all know we want it to happen so we must live it today.
Let us begin to see ourselves as the astronauts see us from the International Space Station and that is as ONE world and ONE people moving through The Universe throughout the infinite that IS...
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