I wear my iPod when I go for a walk. Today, when I heard Springsteen’s “Lost in the Flood” off his first album from way back in the 70’s, a new meaning occurred to me: Lost in the flood of thoughts.

All of us, unless we take great pains to step outside them, are lost in a flood of conscious thoughts that prevent us from connecting with our true selves. We’re focused on the things that are right in front of us, right off the front bumper of our awareness, instead of looking down the road and getting a more comprehensive view of what’s actually affecting all of us.

We get absorbed with our own self identities instead of the fact that we are all human beings on planet earth. We are all the same.

All of the hate and separation we feel from others is based on a belief that we are all different and that those differences are dangerous. They are dangerous because the others may want to hurt us, or because the others have ideas that if correct, would make us wrong, or cause us to question what we believe. And no humans are really in love with being wrong or having to change.

And that’s the point, under the superficial differences of appearance, culture, religion, class, gender and politics; we are a single species that is way more the same than different. We are all here together on this planet, an infinitesimal oasis in a cold and empty universe (so far as we know). After billions of years, we are the highest example of life-based, matter-connected consciousness that exists (so far as we know). And we’re in danger of destroying ourselves because we see our own personal survival and that of our group as being in competition with other humans who are exactly the same as us.

I believe the highest calling we have as humans, is to recognize that all of us are responsible for getting our species through to the next stage of evolution. This can be a world in which we cooperate together by acting from a set of beliefs based on we are all the same, we are all valuable, and we are all deserving.

The alternative is a set of beliefs based on I’ve got mine, good luck to you. That belief is not going to move humans forward. That belief will keep us divided and invested in fighting with each other, because it is based on a fundamental untruth—that I, my family and my group are better and more deserving than all the others. It is based on denying the truth that we humans are all the same underneath.