Ep 132: Along the Spectrum: Unity and Oneness

Following the series on the spectrums of being, this episode is about unity and/or oneness. Adam Quiney defines the terms and gives examples of people of this spectrum represent and reflect onto others. He also discusses what these people are capable of and how they can be predictable. If you feel like you are in this spectrum or you know one who is, this episode is for you.

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Along the Spectrum: Unity and Oneness

We are covering Along the Spectrum. It’s another partner Along the Spectrum series and we’re going to be talking about the quality of unity/oneness. They’re two different words. This is not so much like presence and radiance where I use two different terms, one more related to by masculine men, one more related to by feminine women. You don’t have to be masculine or feminine but you get the idea. This is unity and/or oneness would be this particular term.

Before we go there, as I’ve promised you, I’m going to do a brief plug for The Client Creation Course. I’m sure of it would like to transform your relationship to sales. Even when we’re good at it, the relationship we often have is, “I have to do this thing over here but it lets me do this thing I love.” We spend our time doing this thing that we don’t love in order to do this thing that we do love. At best, we managed to get efficient at the first thing and then we get to spend more of our time doing what we love but we’re still spending 10% of our life doing something we don’t like and 90% of our life, we get to do awesome stuff but that’s still a compromise.

The whole purpose of this podcast of leadership, of all of this transformational work, is that you get to have a life that’s 10 out of 10. You don’t have to make the compromise that you’re making, especially that’s true for sales, creating prosperity for yourself, and enrolling people, whether they’re clients or people that you are leading, enrolling people, and what’s in it for them to say yes to what you’re putting in front of them. To be clear, creating a client is no different than bringing people along with you as a leader, essentially the exact same skill.

This course is a ten-week course designed to transform your relationship to the art and skill of enrollment. On the other side of it, we will be left is finding joy in all parts of what it means to bring someone on board, to bring someone along with you, to create a client, and a lot of the anxiety, stress, and uncertainty. All of that will fall away. I promise. Where you’re left is truly transformed in your relationship to this thing and not having to do something you’re willing to do in order to do the thing you really love. That is a magical experience and that’s the promise of this course.

Let’s talk about unity and/or oneness. Reminder that this series is about an ontological model called The Spectrums of Being, which is a model I’ve created over the decade or so that I’ve been training, trained, training others, lead, and develop leadership and coaching. Reminder that our essential nature, the light that we shine from within, is best described in a book by Tim Kelly. His metaphor that he uses is this idea that we have a beautiful light bulb that each of us is born with floating above and behind the back of our head. When someone enters the room, we noticed that the room gets a little more of the color of their light bulb. When they leave the room, we noticed that it gets a little less the color of their light bulb.

We get the benefit of seeing this because we get to be in the room when they are not. You never get to have this experience with your own light. Consequently, you don’t get the gift of being able to see or distinguish your own light. It’s like trying to see the thing you see the world through. If you recognize yourself in any of what we are describing, it’s possible this may be a reflection of one of the aspects of the light you shine into the world but it’s not something that we can readily be like, “Who I am is X, Y, and Z. I know that about myself.” Often we’re trained out of owning these parts about ourselves.

I was in a conversation one time with someone who was quite brilliant. I was listening to them speaking, the way they chose their words and the way they gave time to their answers. I was present to the brilliance that they were. I acknowledged them for that at the end of the conversation. They shared with me a little while later, “I found that uncomfortable. I don’t think of myself as brilliant. My job is not to push that on them but I’ve done enough work. I’m pretty reliable what I can see in people. This is what I do, see people’s light.” That was a beautiful example of someone not yet able to own part of who they are innately. This is where we get into trouble is where we get stuck as humans. We’re like, “I want to be that but I’m not that or I’m not enough that.” We fall all over ourselves trying to be something we’re not or trying to make an effort to be what we already are, which is always weird. If you can resonate with some of this stuff, perhaps we’re talking about you.

Unity and oneness, this is the quality of people like Mother Teresa. Gandhi could exhibit this a little bit. It’s this quality that we are all one. There is no divide. There is no racial segregation. There is no separation between me and you. These are the people that stand for world peace, for love amongst all of us. When these people come into a room, we feel this sense of all of us belonging. There is a greater experience of us being close of closeness, past, whatever lines we’ve learned to draw. These people represent the possibility of all of us getting along. They represent the possibility of letting go of our stories about who belong, who doesn’t, what’s acceptable, what’s not, or us and them. These people are a stand for transcending us versus them instead, all of us getting to partake to be with one another, to share the possibility of the human race, all of us being together rather than something different.

Unity And Oneness: Unity and oneness is the quality of people like Mother Teresa and Gandhi could exhibit. It’s this quality that we are all one, no divide, racial segregation, or no separation between me and you.

When these people bring into the room as much more than simple acceptance, their very being is an invitation for the uniqueness of each individual to be expressed, for the people around you to express that individuality, and in such a way that we all find a deeper love for that. There’s this cool thing where part of what they bring into a room is both our sameness but also our uniqueness. Seeing how, even in our uniqueness, we are all one. You can think of it like how harmony is made up of different notes being played together. That in unison, those notes together create a sound greater than the sum of its individual parts. That is the possibility of this quality. That is the gift that these people bring with them into every space they come into.

When they do their work, what unity and oneness provide is complete amnesty and acceptance for everyone on this planet no matter how they show up, even though, as we may relate to or have occurred to us as broken, depraved, or cruel. Their stories about a mother’s child being murdered by a gang member, that mother creating forgiveness of the gang member who murdered her child, and then touring with them to share about that forgiveness. That for a lot of us is like, “Holy crap, how could you do that?” That’s the quality of unity and oneness. That’s the possibility that these people represent for planet earth is our ability to overcome our differences, our ability to find our way back to forgiveness, and love people regardless of how they show up. There’s a great deal of acceptance, love, permission, and this particular quality. There’s also what’s predictable for these people.

Before we go down to what’s predictable, there’s a problem in the world. The problem in the world is that we are not all plugged into our divine higher natures. We’re petty. Have you noticed that? I have. We’re petty. I certainly noticed that I can be petty. If you say something that upsets me, I might want to say something back that might upset you or hurt you. There’s a very real petty part of me. That’s our humanity. All of us have that capacity. All of us, I promise. In that pettiness, we can be cruel, heartless, or shitty. We can be judgmental and nasty. To one who brings the way of being of unity and oneness with them, this can be an affront.

The promise is that we love one another. That we are all one, that we find a way to find love, peace, and harmony together and yet this person is being petty. For each quality of being, there tends to be a particular rub in the world. For example, for brilliance, the problem is that people are stupid. We’re also brilliant but sure enough, we can be dumb. For people that are wisdom, we can be foolish. People can be foolish. For people that are generosity, people can be selfish. Each of these vices, if you like, that humans have the capacity for pettiness, cruelty, nastiness, etc., they become real problems. They become problems because we cannot be with them in ourselves and we cannot be with them out there.

For someone who is unity and oneness, their distastes, disliked, disgust, and unwillingness to embrace someone is very hard. It’s almost existentially painful for them. Where this leads to is them becoming cold, mean, nasty. We’re going to talk about how that shadow forms, which is what leads to the predictable nature. For every way of being, there is a predictable result and predictable place we arrive at. I’ll use brilliance as an example before I come back to this so you can see what I’m talking about.

The problem in the world is that we are not all plugged in to our divine higher natures. Click To Tweet

For brilliant people, what they struggled to be with is stupidity, there are other people, and because we cannot be with it, we cannot see it when it shows up in ourselves. We have a vested interest in not seeing when we show up that way. We hate stupidity because stupidity is the opposite of who we are. We stop being able to see it in ourselves, which then leads to us judging everyone else harshly for it. What becomes predictable for brilliant people as they go down this path is that they narrow their world. They gain less and less ability to be with the times when humans show up dumb, ignorant, or lunkheaded. They become shorter and shorter. They become more and more vicious and condescending when they’re presented with us.

What’s predictable is if you imagine doubling down on this pattern. Doing more of this as time goes on because that’s what we tend to do. We think we’re growing when we’re actually contracting. It’s the cruel twist of fate that our ego plays on us because our ego’s job is to keep us safe. The best way to stay safe is to contract from the world rather than opening yourself up to more. The end result for brilliant people is they tend to be very isolated, surrounded by other brilliant people, constantly frustrated, experiencing a lot of low-grade disappointment and anger, a lot of resentment of people for not knowing better, and don’t have a lot of access to forgiveness.

Let’s come back to unity and oneness. You’ll see as we talk about the shadows, there’s a predictable nature to how things go. I want to be clear that what is predictable is not what has to happen. It’s simply what is predictable when we are left to our own devices and cannot see your blind spots. What’s possible is what is available. That is the opportunity. The way to create what is possible is to get supported by coaches and leaders that can stand outside of you and help you see this stuff that’s in your blind spot. When people try to veer towards what is possible on their own, it almost always leads them back into what’s predictable. No joke.

How does the shadow of unity and oneness form? First, unity and oneness sees the possibility in everyone that peace is available. Peace, love, total acceptance. “This is possible. Why do we have to fight? We are not that different.” This is what people with this quality are often present to. They conclude that this is either an ideal that must exist now and here. Meaning, why aren’t we already here? What happens is that they can see this possibility and they suffer a great deal of heartbreak and suffering because we are not yet there. “There’s possibility for us all to be accepting, loving, oneness, and peace and yet you fuckers are not doing that. You’re being shitty.”

They fall into this ideal that it must exist here in now. In doing so, they lose the compassion and ability to hold people in their heart, even if they don’t condone their actions. They become a Crusader. It’s wrong that you’re showing up spiteful and petty, as opposed to, “There’s a possibility for us to move beyond the spiteful pettiness that is in our nature.” You can hopefully see the difference between those two. One is standing in what’s possible and at the same time, loving people exactly as they are versus being attached to what’s possible and brow beating people to try to get them there.

Unity And Oneness: You can’t live your life and never have an impact. The only way you can do that is to continually shrink your life down smaller.

The other side to this is concluding that given that there’s this promise that peace, love, unity, and all of that is available, I need to make sure that I never do anything to disrupt that peace. I need to make sure that I don’t be the cause of that pettiness. It’s either try to eradicate the pettiness in yourself or vindictively destroy the pettiness in other people, the parts of ourselves that are not unity and oneness, the antipathy of unity and oneness. In that direction, when they try to eradicate in themselves, they often become paralyzed and frozen. “How do I make any decisions? How do I do anything?”

Overtime, as you start to do more and more, you’re confronted with more and more complexity in the world and places where you have to monitor every action you take to ensure that you don’t do something to disrupt the peace. I don’t want to be the cause of breaking down on this unity and oneness. These two become the shadow sides of unity and oneness. One is the overexpression of unity and oneness. That’s where you want to make sure you do nothing ever to disrupt the peace. The under expression of it is where you become the righteous Crusader.

What happens when you go down that path of that righteous Crusader is that these people who are unity and oneness become less and less able to see their pettiness and more and more judgmental of it in other people. When someone is racist, a bigot, or ignorant, when someone does something that’s hurtful or perhaps even cruel or spiteful, the person who is unity and oneness is that as an affront to their very soul. They see it as wrong and they lose access to their compassion for this person. They lose access to their empathy for this person. Ironically, they lose access to their unity and oneness that would allow that person to show up that way because they cannot see it in themselves.

They cannot see their own capacity for spitefulness, pettiness, lack of peace, warring, and being bigoted themselves. Consequently, they condemn other people. What you end up with is someone whose promise is the acceptance of all of us and seeing that we are all one, regardless of how we show up in the world. That’s their promise but instead of truly living into the embodiment of that promise, it becomes this weird clicky kind of thing. If you’re on my side, then unity and oneness, but if you’re over there, fuck you. You are wrong. You are to be condemned. It becomes a selective unity and oneness.

The irony in this particular shadow is that these people who are unity and oneness and condemn people for their hate, end up becoming the most hateful. They hate those people that are pro-choice or pro-life. They hate them with a rage. It’s commensurate with the possibility of unity of oneness in themselves. They cannot own their anger because they are so insistent that the problem is that person’s anger, they’re forever victim to it. They’re forever owned by it. That’s how you get a lot of these militant social justice warriors. I’m not saying that social justice, protests, and stuff like that is wrong. I’m using this shadow to help you understand and explain why people who are ostensibly for things like peace can do violence. It is through this shadow. That is how this gets created.

On the other side, that indecisive and frozen, there’s no ability to make decisions. They become perpetually stuck. It leaves them a little bit unsure of where to go. They’re, “I wish I could do stuff and I want to make a difference but every single path leads to people being hurt or upset.” The truth of this is that’s inevitable. You can’t live your life and never have an impact. The only way you can do that is to shrink your life down smaller and smaller continually. That’s where it tends to happen down this indecisive frozen path. In order to be able to keep making decisions, they have to remove more aspects of their life. The decision has a less far reaching impact so that less and less people get impacted by their pettiness, their human cruelty.

When we are left to our own devices and cannot see our blind spots, what's possible is what’s available. Click To Tweet

That made it sound like all humans are cruel. All humans have that capacity. That’s what this person cannot be with is the fact that no matter what you do, no matter what you choose, you are going to leave some people out. No matter how you show up in the world, some people are going to be left out and there’s no getting around that. These people are trying to get around that because they’ve made it mean something significant about who they are.

How do we work with this quality? The first path is to recognize the shadows, to see those people that are social justice warriors on your teams. I’m using social justice warrior as a metaphor. People that show up as crusaders and can become a little bit zealous. To look for those people that are absolutely frozen, indecisive, unable to make a decision for fear of the way it’s going to impact certain people. We want to support them to see the places where their insistence on unity and oneness has actually led to them closing and creating hatred for those that are not currently operating inside or consistent with their beliefs.

This requires a bit of courage on your part as a leader and it requires a willingness to love these people however, they are showing up. You have to work yourself out. You can’t like, “I’ll just go into the conversation over deal.” You got to check and see, “Where am I being judgmental? Where am I not holding them with love? Where am I judging them for the way they’re showing up? Can I get supported to really move past that?” We can get into a conversation with them where we say, “I noticed there’s an impact you’re having.” Whenever you’re going into a conversation like this, you want to begin by truly acknowledging the person for who they are. That doesn’t mean giving them a shit sandwich. Shit sandwich is complimenting someone. “I love the way that you make these reports look good and the effort you put in.”

Let me tell you the real thing. The way you would have a conversation like this say, “There’s an impact you’re having and I don’t think you’re aware of it. I noticed it’s getting in the way of your leadership. I’d love to support you with that. Would you be open to it?” If they say yes, “Great. The first thing I want you to know is I acknowledge you for how much you care. I acknowledge you for the possibility of all of us seeing each other as one, not being separate or segregated into different groups or any of that stuff but the possibility that all of us can coexist peacefully with love and with harmony.” That’s the first thing we want to say. We want to acknowledge them for this quality truly. We can start to reflect, “I notice that there’s a way you show up that condemn certain people that don’t follow along with your beliefs. What I notice is that’s actually getting in the way of your message.” That conversation can evolve from there. If you’d like to know how to do more of that, you got to email me because that’s a deeper conversation for us to have.

Here’s the trouble with empathy. In order to truly empathize with someone, which is the heart of unity, we have to be able to get over on their side and understand the world as it occurs to them. As soon as I’ve decided that the way you’re showing up is wrong, there can be no true empathy. As soon as I’ve made the conclusion that you’re wrong for the way you’re showing up, I can’t truly empathize with you because I’m not going to be willing to fully get over on your side and see how the world makes sense because all I’m going to be able to see is no wonder you feel that way, that is wrong because you must not have enough education.

This is a lot of like the dialogue that’s happening in two party countries, America, for example, with the Democrats and the Republicans. There’s this real unwillingness to let go of our position to get over on the other side. Instead, we’re right about what we’re right about, we make you wrong about what we make you wrong about, and we hold onto those positions. It can be no true empathy. When there is no true empathy, your capacity to love and hold space for someone has limited precisely to the extent that you are right about your own position and holding them as wrong with theirs.

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Before we go any further, this is why anti-bullying campaigns, social justice warriors, and other adamant zealous groups failed to have the impact they’re committed to having. By vilifying the other side, we lose the capacity to get them truly. Meaning, that we completely get how the world occurs to them and why it makes complete sense where they are. Instead, we leave them further entrenched in their own stance and us and ours. From this place, ironically, those are the quality of unity and oneness are often also harboring the most anger and hate precisely because they lose the ability to find their way back to love on the other side. That’s the real tragedy of this particular quality and it’s also predictable.

As you follow the line of predictability over time, what can happen is they can become very crusty, and jaded. What happens is then we meet these people at this place. They come into work at our business this way, we give up on them before we’ve even started because what were present, who is their shadow, that’s been entrenched and practiced for years and we can’t see the light underneath that. That’s our work is later. Get present to the light underneath that, draw that out, lead that light, and lead them back to their light.

That’s all we’ve got for you on this particular item. Every time we’re doing Along the Spectrum that’s part of our series, that’s from the book Spectrums of Being. That’s a book I’ve written. They are very limited, early edition copies available. If you send me an email at PR@AdamQuiney.com and ask for one, some of your address as well, I’ll mail you a copy. There’s a few more left. Probably in about 4 to 5 months, we’ll have a proper, much larger, more comprehensive copies that will be available on Amazon.

Also, worth mentioning actually is that the first book I wrote, Too Smart to Know Better, is finally ready to be purchased. You can buy that on Amazon. That’s taken forever to get published. If you’d like to see and read that book, that’s available. There’s some good stuff in there on leadership. That tends to be almost more of an experiential book. As you read through it, it’s a lot of mimicking the way a coaching conversation goes and the idea of being in one.

Coming up next, we have a conversation on What Is My Zone of Genius. We’re going to be talking about what even is that, why do so many people get it wrong, why do so many people get that backwards, and why do so many people seem unable to figure that out? It’s going to be a gooder. Look forward to seeing you, hearing you, or whatever kind of thing we got going on. Have a great week. Bye.

Important links:

• The Client Creation Course
• The Spectrums of Being
• PR@AdamQuiney.com
• Too Smart to Know Better

About Adam Quiney

I’m an obsessive perfectionist, high-performer, former lawyer, and now an Executive Mentor. I know what it’s like to succeed easily and quickly. To blindly put my happiness in the hands of achievement.

All the success, money and possessions in the world couldn’t cure my boredom. Couldn’t produce a loving, intimate relationship with my wife…and definitely couldn’t fulfill me.