Imagine yourself. Only, it isn't "you" but instead someone else inhabitating your body.

Try if you will, to remove yourself from you, and instead insert someone else in your place.

Try to imagine that what you know to be "You", doesn't exists, so that you remove yourself from the picture entirely.

Having done that, you may look at your body and your life as "another person". An identical twin, perhaps.

This other person was born by your parents, went to the same kindergarden and the same schools, had the same friends, the same girlfriends, the same children. Everything this "other you" experience is exactly the same things you have experienced. Every touch, every challenge, every struggle - identical.

This "other you" would be in every aspect, identical to you.

The question is, is this "other you" not in fact.. you? They feel themselves to be you, they have the same worries and joys, the thoughts in their head feels to them, like you feel your thoughts. They would believe themselves to be you.

But "you" aren't there. So how can they be you?

Just as you aren’t there, in the body of your girlfriend. Your parents. Your children. In the bodies of the children of Gaza, or in the bodies of Ukranian soldiers. Or in the body of Donald Trump, or Putin. You're not there, so how can they be you?

But they are.

Everyone, everywhere is you. Every life ever lived, you lived. Every life that ever will be, is your life.

So does it make sense to treat others cruelly? Does it make sense to exploit others when you know that their suffering is your own? What sense is there in wars? Inequality? Racism? Ecological destruction?

Everything you ever do to another, you do to yourself. Or as Jesus Christ put it "What you do to the least of these, you do to me".

The "I" in me is the "I" in you. Each of us can say as Jesus did. Whatever you do to another, you do to me.

We are all "The One Who Watches", the nameless formless God who sees all, knows all and is all. As Meister Eckhart said: "The eye through which I see God, is the same eye through which God sees me". The watcher, who cannot be removed, is the Great "I am". The watcher is you. Every blade of grass, every tree, every little bird. You know it all, as you know yourself.

You are everywhere. You are everything. But when you go looking for the watcher, he cannot be found. And so you come upon the paradox of "you". You are nowhere to be found, yet you are everywhere. Very strange.

So we should take great care, not because there is an external rule demanding it, but because to harm another is to harm oneself. In the end, kindness, compassion, and love are not just virtues - they are the only response that makes sense.