I first came across this idea a few weeks ago on Benjamin Smythe’s youtube page. He was answering someone’s question about how they can feel better when they look in the mirror. Basically he said that thinking we are ugly is just another way to feel special. There is negative “special” just as much as there is positive “special.”
I was at a church meeting on Friday night and we went over our vision statement. There was one particular line that just smacked me in the face. I can’t remember the exact wording but it basically said “from the Christ within, we acknowledge the uniqueness and unity of all people.” In Unity the “Christ within” refers to our spiritual nature or divinity within. I felt this statement was contradictory. The way I see it, our ego acknowledges our uniqueness but the Christ within does not.
Uniqueness, which I’ll call “specialness”, separates us. If I put you on a pedestal, whether it’s to mock you or to celebrate you, I am setting you a part from myself. I can’t connect with you if all I can see is how you are different from me. It is a game the ego plays.
At a workshop yesterday, the leader (Jon Mundy PhD) told the prodigal son story. In that story the father let the son go out on his own and welcomed him back without ever making a remark about who he was or what he had done. When the son wanted to leave, the father never said “Oh you think you’re special? Better than us?” and when the son returned he didn’t say “see I knew you’d be back.” No he simply let him go and when the son returned all he said was “welcome home.”
The Christ within sees that we are the same. It sees that what we do to another we do to ourselves. It understands that there is something that connects us all. It is most alive and present in unity, not in focusing on uniqueness.
What I am realizing is the more I focus on my “specialness” the more it hinders my growth. One example is my writing. When I think of my writing ability as a talent that I am supposed to do something special with, I get lost in that idea and I’m no longer able to write. I worry about whether what I’m doing is good enough and if people will like it. I completely disconnect from the source of my inspiration in the first place and end up bogged down and blocked. If I take away the concept of talent or specialness, all I have left is words in my head that I transfer to a page. It’s not special, it’s just what I do and what I will continue to do as long as I am detached enough to just be the channel through which it comes.
There are countless ways, both negative and positive, in which we can be special. We are special because of our race, gender, sexual preference, religion, IQ, socioeconomic status, size, age, political party, education level, health and on and on and on. But the thing is every label we give ourselves is also a label that thousands of other people use too. We really aren’t all that special after all. And when we drop that story, that’s when we can see through the eyes of the Christ within and those eyes never knew the story to begin with.