By Lissa Rankin, MD

My world has been swirling around Marla Maples's world for some time now. We share mutual friends like Mojo Mentor Tara Sutphen and kickin’ artist Kandy Lozano from my book Encaustic Art: The Complete Guide to Creating Fine Art With Wax. Once upon a time, Marla and Tara interviewed me for Tara’s radio show. But recently we had the chance to connect more intimately, and today I'll be a guest on Marla's Awakening With Marla Maples radio show, so please listen!  I’m so excited to share with all of you where Marla’s vision and mine overlap.

We’re All Connected

Inspired by a moment of awakening when she was working with a group of challenged teenagers and gang members with the organization Spirituality for Kids, Marla wrote the song One World of Love when she envisioned a world in which we are all linked via the vehicle of love. Not separate beings, destined to wander the planet alone, but co-mingled spirits, energetically overlapping.  As Marla and I spoke, I found my heart leaping, as I nodded, feeling my heart connect to hers and all the other beings out there.  What if we could all shed our masks and connect on this heart level? What if, instead of individual beings, caught up in ego, competition, and drama, we could all tap into Source and allow the Divine to channel through us?

While we spoke, both of us excited by the possibility of promoting this spiritual unity, I flashed back to a dream I had a few months ago, in which I envisioned hundreds of thousands of beings, all in colorful international garb, lined up on mountain after mountain, everyone facing due north.  In my dream, I was walking down a dirt path, heading south to the market, when this dream inspired me to stop dead in my tracks, turn around, and join the masses facing north. It was my Sign from the Universe that I was supposed to quit my current job and take another path. But it was also a reminder that we are all one, facing North, receiving guidance, here to serve and listen to the wisdom of the One who knows all. Each of us is unique but walking side by side next to millions of others whose hearts connect directly to ours.

Wearing Masks

As Marla and I spoke, I realized that, although we may know- intellectually- that we are all interconnected, many of us fail to feel it. We walk around in our daily lives, wearing masks, hiding the spirit that lies within us, pretending to be something that we’re not. These masks protect us on one level. They guard against pain and loss, but they also guard against the joy that comes from realizing we are all One, that we are not alone in this world, but connected to a deep current that runs through us all.

Since I began shedding my mask a few years back, I have tapped into this current, which I have come to call “the lavender scented river.” The more I surrender into its flow, the more joy I feel, the less I feel alone, the more magical my life becomes, the more mojo I have.

Mara feels the same. We spoke about the beauty of being on a subway, of seeing others with Magical Eyes of love, looking beyond the masks we wear to see the spirit that lies within each individual.  We see that some are not ready to be seen so deeply, but those who are find healing in those gazes, the ones that connect our hearts to yours.

The Pink Effect

I realized when we spoke that this is what the Pink Effect is all about. By looking past the masks people wear and calling upon our compassion for all that makes this person whole, we tap into this deep current that connects us all in love. We launched the Pink Effect initiative, which Lovemuffin Extraordinaire Megan Monique Harner is promoting on her Magical Eyes Tour, to help heal the disconnectedness, loneliness, soul sickness, and sadness that plague the modern world. By inviting each person in the world to choose one person who they find hard to love, who they commit to seeing with Magical Eyes, we hope to allow people to feel SEEN, and in feeling SEEN, to be inspired to SEE others. In doing so, we aim to shine a bright Pink light on the connectedness that unites us all, just as Marla hopes to do with One World Of Love.

What I’ve Learned About How We Are Connected

1. You’re special, but you’re not special. Yes, you’re precious and individual, and there’s no one out there quite like you. But rest assured, you’re not alone. You may think you’re the only person on Earth who has ever felt the way you feel/ made the mistakes you’ve made/ suffer the way you do/ rejoice like you do, but it’s just not true. Anything you’ve experienced, hundreds of thousands of others have experienced too. Isn’t that comforting? Phew…I’m so glad to know I’m not alone.
2. When you hurt another, you hurt yourself. Because we are so interconnected, causing pain and suffering to another human hurts you, in addition to affecting others in a cascade that causes ripples in the flow of the current that runs through us all.
3. When you love another, you heal the world. In a similar fashion, seeing the soul in another human and approaching them spirit-to-spirit from a place of love heals the wounds in both parties and raises the vibration of us all. The more we do this, the closer we get to bringing Divinity to Earth.
4. We are all beautiful (and Pink) on the inside. As a doctor who is more gynechiatrist than gynecologist, and as the artist who was blessed to cast twenty breast cancer survivors for the Woman Inside Project, I am privileged to have people let me unpeel the layers to see the heart inside. And what I’ve discovered is that each person is beautiful inside.
5. Every person is more than what they seem. What do we really know about the Marla Maples, the Britney Spears, the Julia Roberts, the Oprahs of the world? Sure, as celebrities living in the limelight, they are under extra scrutiny, so it’s no wonder they’re tempted to wear masks. But I’ll bet that deep inside each of them lies a spark just like yours. And right next to that spark lies a shadow, just like yours.  Don’t judge a book by its cover, whether its cover is beautiful or repulsive. Instead, know that we’re not so different in our hearts.
6. Connection=Bliss. As long as we believe we are separate, as long as we buy into the illusion that it’s all about us as individuals, we will fail to revel in the bliss that comes with discovering our connection to all beings. This is why so many have found healing and mojo in the Owning Pink community.
7. Authenticity is the answer. By revealing our truths in community, shedding our masks, being real and exposing our vulnerabilities, we see more clearly the thread that connects us all.

What about you? Have you had experiences with the interconnectedness between us all? Do you envision One World of Love like we do? Tell us your dreams. Share your stories.

Linking arm in arm with each of you,

Lissa

Click here or below to listen to a sample of One World Of Love