The Law of Oneness and Individuation
“Two eyes, one vision. Two nostrils, one sense.”
The Law of Oneness is such a large, all-encompassing truth, that it is difficult to fit into a perfectly linear presentation. A line by line offering, a comprehensive view—that may take a lifetime, or lifetimes, to fully grasp, and even then, maybe you’d only catch a glimpse of what it really means. But maybe that’s the point. It’s not about explaining it perfectly; it’s about feeling it, noticing it in the small ways it shows up, and letting it sink in little by little.
The Law of Oneness says to us:
You are one part of a grand whole.
And the expansive whole exists, and can be felt, within you.
The micro and macro of The Law of Polarity is now one.
Just a Bunch of Rocks
Think of a cliff by the ocean. Over time, the waves wear it down to boulders, chiseled into rocks, then becoming tiny grains of sand. The sand gets carried by the tides to some other shore. It piles up, hardens, and maybe one day becomes stone again—maybe even another cliff. It’s not really “gone” or “changed”; it’s just moving through the cycle, taking on new forms.
On that cliff, a home. People occupy these homes, then they leave or decompose, and their bodies become soil and nutrients for the plants and fungi to spread and infiltrate the cracks of their stone walls, once lived in as solid beings with names—now microbes. Then the stone walls fall…
“We'll fade away, we'll slip away
We'll go away, we'll be away
We'll stay away
We'll go down the longest stream
Reflected in a sunbeam
Just a speck of dust in the milky way” —Alice Phoebe Lou
That’s us. In the sand, waves, and stone. We break down, rebuild, and return to the flow of things. Reflecting off of one another, creating new sources of vision and light, someplace, somewhere else…
Even when we feel like our lives are these isolated little bubbles,
we’re all together in one big web. The breath you just took? Someone else took that same air a thousand years ago. Maybe a tree. Or a whale. Or a stranger halfway around the world yesterday. Everything is touching everything else, whether we see it or not.
We are what we’ve always been.
Light the Way
Here’s another way to think about it.
For you to see color, there has to be light. The light bounces off an object and into your eyes, where it turns into something your brain understands as blue or green or red.
But the light doesn’t care what color the thing is. It’s just moving, reflecting.
That’s how the Law of Oneness works. You’re a reflection from that same light, bouncing off a different surface. The differences are real—the textures, the colors—personality, preferences, and temperament.
What’s underneath is the same light, the same source.
“For color to be sensed, a property called illumination should be present. Illumination is defined as a property that involves the supplication of light. An illuminant is a source of light…When the illuminant falls on an object, it causes reflection to the eye. Color signal is the term used to refer to the light that is reflected to the eye. When a color signal is reflected to the eye, the sensory information about the object is collected.”
The Whole Picture
So what does all this mean for us right now? Why does it matter?
Understanding The Law of Oneness can shift how we move through the world. It’s not about suddenly becoming enlightened or seeing the whole from the astrals or some heightened perspective—it’s about noticing the connections that already exist. The tangible evidence before you— in your very cells.
Some Notes on Practices & Philosophies
1. “Looking in the Mirror” (Seeing Yourself in All)
…There was a saying in a self-development course I took:
“If you spot it, you got it.”
You can’t see the beauty, when you’re holding onto the darkness, the space that is yours, for you and you only, to grief, rest, heal… to release the shame, to nurture the pain.
To reject the darkness, the necessary soil of US that serves our growth and who we are, we begin to see “dirt” everywhere. We see everyone else as the problem, flawed, in lack. We remove ourselves, or we ostracize others.
When you notice beauty in someone else, it’s a reflection of the beauty within you. And when someone frustrates you or brings up discomfort, it’s also a mirror—a chance to ask yourself why.
2. Loving the Inanimate
Not just people, not just you, me, lover, friend, family member. Honoring it all.
The table and chair you sit in at the cafe. The ground you walk on, the air you breathe, the soft grass at the park, the sweet sandy cushion of the shore…
It’s easy to feel connected to people or nature, but what about the inanimate—seemingly “lifeless” things? The chair you’re sitting on, the table you write at, the cup you hold your tea in—they’re all part of the same web. That chair was once a tree, growing toward the sky. The sand beneath your feet was once a mountain, weathered down by time and tide.
When we honor every manifestation of our environment as part of the whole, we soften. The world feels less separate, less like a collection of objects, and more like one breathing, evolving organism that we’re an inseparable part of.
3. Dissolving into One —A practice
Sit outside and pay attention to how the wind moves through the trees and across your skin. Notice your breath. Let go of the labels—the “tree,” the “wind,” the “me.” It’s all just movement. Feel the borders and mental separation dissolve.
Here’s a good method to sit with: hear all the sounds, the clanking of pens or utensils, the car horns, the bird caws or swoosh of the wind. Release the identifiers.
It’s all sound. It’s only sound.
…it’s only sound…
Let them all dissolve into one big pot of colored noise. Many instruments and sources, into one chamber orchestra—you the conductor. Bring them together. Let them dissolve.
Notice how you dissolve the border between you, your body, your space and everything else. Notice… now. How it feels to sit in this non-beingness, and how it feels… suddenly to not be separated/against your surrounding elements.
Keep going… until you feel it… you’ll know when you do.
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4. Boundless
We spend so much time building walls between ourselves and others—between “us” and “them.”
The Law of Oneness asks us to acknowledge its truth now.
The walls we build around ourselves—between “us” and “them,” “right” and “wrong,” “me” and “you”—start to crumble. It’s not about tearing down every boundary overnight.
Start small.
Think about someone you’ve been avoiding or judging lately. What’s one step you could take to reconnect? Maybe it’s reaching out with a kind word. Maybe it’s just silently offering them your understanding.
And here’s the thing about the walls we build: they don’t just keep others out—they keep us in. When we give ourselves the time to break down walls, old boundaries from fearful times, and let ourselves dissolve the stiffness we carry juuust a tad, we free ourselves to see the truth free from our murky vision.
We get to breathe in clean air.
Who cares?
The Law of Oneness sounds like a lofty idea, an airy-fairy way of seeing the world that can presumably bring “peace.”
Why should it matter at all? Well, if we embrace this lofty idea, we may find:
There’s nothing to fear. If we’re all connected, there’s no “other” to compete with or fight against.
Change is natural. Just like the cliffs turn into sand and the sand turns into stone, we’re always evolving. And that’s okay.
Everything counts. The small ways we show up—the kindness, the love, the care—they’re part of the big picture. They matter.
So next time you feel alone or overwhelmed, remember: You’re part of something so much bigger.
Everything you do, feel, say, the way you move, the way you emanate YOU—matters… and? It doesn’t.
Let go.
Let go, and find how easy it is, to be:
Everything you ever wanted; wished for.
Feel the protective blanket of tension you’ve held tight—dissolve.
The layers you’ve worn to hide from the world, the walls you’ve built to feel safe, clear away— and see how the world opens up in ways you never imagined.
