Human achievement is like a mountain range with cliffs, peaks, slopes and valleys. To aim for excellence in collective achievement is to aspire (aim) to climb to the crowning point. The effort requires each climber to be equipped with essential skills and knowledge and good amounts of determination and Will power. However, no climb should ever be undertaken without the most important piece of equipment: the safety rope of cooperation.
Cooperation ensures calmness, empowerment, easiness and enthusiasm. Cooperation provides the means for each climber to take a step, no matter how small, and for those steps collectively to reach the peak.
Today we fail to see the one unifying principle in the diversity of personalities. Our focus is always upon the differences. When we meet a person, our attention goes to the differences he has from you. At the physical level, we focus on what he is wearing or his physical structure. At the emotional level, you focus on his kindness or unkindness, his positive or negative tendencies. At the intellectual level, you focus on his ideas and ideologies. These things differ from person to person.
If you try to focus your attention upon some common factor in an individual, instantly affection springs forth. If you were to meet one of your countrymen in a strange and remotest town of a different country, what would be your feeling towards him? You feel a great sense of identification with that person. This is because of the common factor that both are from the same country & you identify with the common factors.
Focus on something that you can appreciate in the other person. Instantly you will feel the bond and affection. You have to find a common chord in everybody, even if he is your enemy. Since you are clouded with distinctions and differences at all the time, you are not able to focus on the common factors or something that you can appreciate in the other person.
When you shift your focus of attention upon the common factors, there is identification instantly and that brings unity.
What unites two sons of a father is that they have a common factor, their father. What binds students in a college is the fact that they are from the same institution. What unites the people of a country is that they have the country as the common factor. So, if you can overlook the differences and identify with some common factor, there is manifestation of affection instantly.
Imagine you are stranded alone in the deep rain forests of Amazon and you can only see wild animals around you. In that predicament, suppose you happen to meet your arch enemy, what would your attitude be towards that person? Do you maintain the same animosity there? You are able to forget all the negativity, all the enmity towards him and come together. What is it that removes the negativity in that terrible situation? It is the common denominator that both are in identical situation. Therefore, when you are able to locate the common denominator, there is affection, oneness and cooperation.
Suppose you are an Indian and you locate an Indian in the wilderness by chance. There is even more bondage because you are both Indians. After a few minutes of conversation, if you find that he is also from the same state and talks in the same language, there is even more affection. If he happens to hail from the same town or village as you are, there is more and more affection. Therefore, you have to learn to locate, even in your enemy, something that unites you both.
The ultimate common factor that we have been discussing all along is our own Self, spirit within which is the same in every being. Divinity is the core of all human beings. If we can attune to that inner awareness, that Self, that will be the ultimate harmony. If you cannot find that, find the other common factors. Where there is oneness, there is affection. Without that, the ego in you creeps up and there arises conflict. To develop this common oneness, you have to gain the knowledge of your own Self. Thus, make your mind equanimous in all circumstances.
Make one word upside down and see the difference yourself i.e. “ME” to “WE” – delete the word “I” from your dictionary and replace it with WE, the results will be enormous.
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