Separation?

A friend of mine, one who lives in a city, told me about a conversation he had the other day with some of his friends, and their comments on what they labeled a tendency of human beings for seclusion. Seclusion is separation with intention. This got me thinking, and I ended up having to disagree. The sense of seclusion is only possible by wearing blinders: you know, like the cart horses used to wear in the olden days to keep them from spooking at whatever was going on nearby.

However, in humanity’s case, the ‘blinders’ are fastened to us in three quite different ways.

First, they appear like whales, leviathans seeming to rise with uncanny silence. These are the walls of our houses, stout members of cut and dried fir, filled with insulation and coated by a half inch or more of sheetrock. There is more: take our cities, with walls spreading beneath our feet and above our head, pavement and towering concrete. A devolvement that – with brave stubbornness – we call 'civilization.' Suburban homes may look swell, but are as lonely and separated as that of inner city apartments whose windows and doors are shuttered with iron grates. One needs to go down the driveway and around the fence to spend a moment with the person next door. Its an extra huff to the neighbor down the street. What is that: two? Suburbia is not known as a ‘community,’ but rather for its façade of pleasant safety: the lonely emptiness of appearances.

Living alone or even with others, whether in a city flat or a sprawling mansion on the outskirts of town, these are a far cry from the natural human community of a tribe, which depended for survival on everyone stepping forward and contributing to each other.

There is however, a second way, and one that may be less obviously detectible, and for this reason far more dangerous. This is a gestalt of separation passed to us in the quietly pervasive transference by one or another culture that has simply forgot. The grand refrain of individuality rings through countries like America with an almost anthem quality. Its economy was developed along with this in harmony, finding competition to actually be a virtue! “Let the strong and able survive,” they say. That’s business. Children grow up in such a world, believing that separation is natural. Thus, to such a very normal person these days, it is perplexing to them why their loneliness is still there, despite their new car, high definition TV and wealth.

However, the third reason for this unfortunate error of seeming separation, is I think, truly the heart of it. We have simply forgotten that we are inescapably connected to everything. It was so simple to the ancients. As straightforward as breathing and as immediate as the soil and trees around us. There was a time when humanity was less an observer, and more a participant. An observer watches, a participant is. Where is the difference between my in-breath of oxygen descending from the tree above me, and its movement through my bloodstream? Does the tree’s ‘out-breath’ of enriched air suddenly cease to be 'the tree' when it exudes half-way from the leaf? When its oxygen enters my bloodstream, when does it then become ‘me’? When the water I drink awaits in its glass, is it ‘me’ yet? Or, do I have to wait until it touches my lips, or perhaps reach my stomach before 'it' becomes 'I'… Yes, we do have a tendency, I fully agree with this, to think of ourselves as separated from the world around us. However, such a disconnection is actually, an impossibility.

The truth is, there is no disconnection. It is the ‘disconnection’ that is the illusion. However, don’t let me suggest that simply because it is an illusion that it is benign. It is enough to cause us to halt, become defensive, withdraw and act is if we were separate. It provides us with the rationale to squeeze the earnings of less powerful employees in our businesses. It lends credence to a felt righteousness for war. Dumping sewage in the sea or manufacturing plumes into the air are consequences of the illusion of separateness.

It is an illusion, however, that will always come back to haunt us, because what we put out, always comes back.

There is a reason why Enlightenment is often cited as an experience of oneness. Enlightenment is not something for humanity to reach forward to, as if it were some grand stage in the magnificent unfolding of human development. Far from it. It is going back. Going home. Returning to the whole.

There is no tendency to separation. There is only a tendency to its illusion.

Much love,
Steve