Orland Bishop and Global Oneness | Real Change News

Orland Bishop of the ShadeTree Multicultural Foundation spoke at the Global Oneness event in Portland yesterday. This excerpt is from a report in Real Change News.

“We often view the wound as setting us apart from each other and the world,” Bishop explains, “as if the wound says, ‘I am separate from and misunderstood.’ The purpose of the wound is to awaken us to meaning. We cannot have a wound and not also have a gift. Wholeness is where the gift and the wound are understood as the same thing, when we realize that one cannot exist without the other.”

When we acknowledge this gift within ourselves and within each other, we begin what Bishop calls “cultivating empathy.”

“Empathy,” he says, “enables one human being to experience shared meaning with another human being. Shared meaning allows for different perceptions — or realities — to exist together.” According to Bishop, when we come into a place of empathy, we ask ourselves ‘How do I relate to another?’, and we ask each other ‘How do I have to be for you to be free?’ “In empathy,” Bishop emphasizes, “there is mutual benefit.”