ONENESS
This is a great word for hippies and being at Woodfolk Folk Festival or for elasticity in relationships. It’s great for the personality types who don’t demand and expect none to be given. But a folk festival cannot last forever! In retirement now – technically and officially, just ask Centerlink – I am glad to have minimal time with any other human, to live in my studio with ink and charcoal. But as Nick Cave says in his Red Hand Files today:
The creative urge is a gift not afforded to everyone, and those of us who possess it bear a responsibility to pursue that impulse wholeheartedly. However, there are other duties beyond those at the tip of your brush or nib of my pen – beautiful and sacrificial fidelities. You have committed to your wife and son to offer them more than just the crumbs of yourself, the dregs of what remains of you after a day with the devil in the shed. You are in service to your creative impulses – and by the same token to God – but you are also in service to the world as it presents itself, and to those entrusted to you. This is a point of honour. It is with a hard-earned understanding, and the most profound regret, that I can tell you that no artistic endeavour, no matter how sublime it may appear, is worth denying your family or sacrificing those in your care.
Cave has been ripped from his hard earned ego stroking entitled lifestyle by tragedy. His life, art, relationships, world view and mental health have been shocked into multiple new paths of living, being and understanding. Now there is a desperate generosity, kindess and disciplined listening at a staggering level of commitment.
Suffering, surprise and survival.
We are conditioned to hold celebrity, success and achievement as important marks of being human to the detriment of relationships and community, of oneness. A Cave catastrophe, illness, separation or just getting older with more time to seriously reflect can awaken awareness of others to where it should have been. I use “should” advisedly but it is a modal verb that indicates a failure in the past, questionable action or a narrow undeveloped world view. The path to being more at one with a world we are already one with is fraught by dint of the conditioned capitalist systemic sacred cow of individualism. It’s a mind control that velcroes us to our selves and so in the words of Bob Dylan from Rough and Rowdy Ways – “I contain multitudes.” Making the move to a new awareness of being one with humanity and all that is living is not for the faint hearted. But it is essential if for nothing else for the flourishing of life and beauty. There are multiple examples in the world out side of ourselves that demonstrate the ugliness of unrestrained ego.
I Contain#1, Multitudes #2 – Ink, charcoal, collage, graphite, guache, glue on paper. Artist: Peter Breen. 2025.
A strong word for me is intention. It is a word that opens a window on how to be in the demands my relationships and world bring to my lived experience and all part of the oneness I believe in. It does not necessarily determine how well I behave or respond to others or my environment but it tempers harsh judgement, slows panic and dilutes fear. I have found that I am more at one with myself if my intention is to respect and listen to others and to foster observation and understanding. The dark side of intention is burnout or exhaustion but that does not mean abandoning oneness or intention. Self-respect and self-care are disciplines that are necessary elements of a life lived as if oneness is in our DNA. And it is.
What is the hardest aspect of oneness with other people for you in your lived experience?
What is an example of one thing you have you overcome and how are you overcoming it to strengthen oneness?
Peter Breen, March 26, 2025.
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