Imagine a glove with the fingertips cut off. From the perspective of the finger, it is alone. Each finger moves independently. It believes itself to be distinct from the others, unaware that beneath the glove, all the fingers are connected to the same hand.
This is how we experience consciousness. We move through life as separate selves, bound by identity, beliefs, and experience, unaware that beneath the surface, we are all expressions of the same awareness. The hand is consciousness itself, but the glove—our individual ego, our sense of self—creates the illusion of separateness.
Alan Watts put it simply: “You are something the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is something the whole ocean is doing.” When we begin to see through the glove, we recognize that we are not just individual waves, rising and falling in isolation, but the entire ocean moving as one. The realization that you and I are the same being, peering at each other through different eyes, is what allows true compassion to emerge.
A good practice is imagining yourself as any other person; your partner, a family member, or a friend. Sitting, breathing, and using your imagination to actually view the world through that person’s eyes. But this is no exercise… This is the truth. The single consciousness of humans is simultaneously conscious in all people. Meaning, me imagining myself living through the eyes of someone else is no imagination at all, it is reality as the consciousness doing the imagining is the same exact consciousness living in that other body.
But when you see with clear eyes, when you recognize that the same awareness flows through all things, the illusion crumbles. You are not just the finger—you are the hand. You are not just the wave—you are the ocean. And in this realization, compassion is no longer an effort; it becomes the only natural response.
Ram Dass spoke often about this connection with Hanuman, a Hindu deity.
He told us a parable in which Rama, another Hindu deity, asked Hanuman, “What are you, monkey?”
Hanuman replied,
“When I don’t know who I am, I serve you. When I know who I am, I am you.”
When you dissolve the illusion of separateness, every interaction becomes an opportunity to recognize yourself in another. The anger you hurl at someone else is anger you are hurling at yourself. The kindness you offer another is the kindness you extend to yourself. Love and hatred, connection and conflict—they all exist within the same unified field of being.
To live from this awareness is not to abandon individuality, but to see through it. It is to dance in the paradox of being both a wave and the ocean, both the finger and the hand. It is to recognize that in every face you meet, you are looking into a mirror. And once you see this—truly see it—you can never unsee it.
The only thing left to do is love.
