What is Separateness and how is it causing many of the world's current dramas?

From mass hysteria over the pandemic of COVID19 to the outcry of the Black community with the Black Lives Matter movement there’s a lot of feelings and disruption in the world. And this is just the stuff that the mainstream media are reporting! There’s a huge humanitarian crisis going on in Yemen that we seem to care very little about!

Why? Why is it we only care about a few selected topics? How can we just pick and choose which humans to care about? Why do we often choose wilful ignorance over acknowledging the struggles of our fellow humans, of our brothers and sisters across the globe?

I want to address what’s going on in the world in an attempt to open up people’s hearts and minds to see the bigger picture and think more from a perspective they may not have done before. This blog post I guess is more of an indulgence into my philosophical and spiritual ideas (which is, of course, the beauty of having my own blog! I can do what I want!)

What is separateness?

Separateness is the idea that we are all individuals on this planet. It’s the idea that what happens to another is independent of what happens to yourself. It’s the idea that there is a divide between us and them, you and I.

Separateness is what causes this division between humans and the planet. The very same planet that gives us air to breathe, food to eat and that has the power to give or take life. The same planet that we are destroying by stripping it of its natural resources, suffocating it with pollution and generally treating it like sh*t!

Separateness is what gives space for us to judge one another on how we look and cast judgment on what we think people should or shouldn’t do.

It is what allows us to walk past homelessness and pretend that it does not exist.

It is what allows us to ignore the great suffering of animals for our food.

It is what allows us to say Racism doesn’t exist while ignoring the voices of tens of thousands of people saying that it does!

It is separateness that causes war, economic unbalance, global warming, bias and racism.

Pretty shit ey!?

Society and Separateness

Separateness is a lie that we have been taught, that is taught by the powers that be which we continue to reinforce. It is taught by those in charge to keep us polarised and divided. To divide and conquer is the aim of the game and it is done very effectively.

The government will have you believe that there are only two choices: left or right. The media is used as a tool to help portray this message to the public. This is all in the interest of the government to keep us divided. To keep us focused on arguing over who is ‘right’ and who is ‘wrong’.

This means we don’t look at the bigger picture and realise that whoever is in charge does not hold the answers.

We are taught Nationality, race, gender, the class system, religion, language, professions. These are all labels that we choose to stick behind and in doing so form our identity. We are taught that these labels are important and that we should protect these identities. We are taught that certain identities are better than others.

For example;

What’s one of the first questions you ask someone new? It’s normally “what do you do?”

I hate this question.

I don’t feel a career truly defines you as a person. If you are lucky to be in a career that is your passion and purpose, then fantastic, good for you. However, for many of us it is a means to earn money so that we may live.

Your career or your job does not and should not define you. It can be just as fluid and transient as anything else in life. But society generally frowns upon people who transition from job to job or care very little for material things and thus do not put great emphasis on careers. We are taught to get in a role and stay in our lane and be good little worker bees.

A much more appropriate question would be; “What do you enjoy doing? What’s your passion?”

Labels do not serve our true nature

Any of the identities we’ve been taught are not who we are. They are merely societal constructs used as tools to label and divide us, they are not real. They are designed to draw lines in the sand and maps to divide “you over there” from “me over here”.

They are no more real than saying you are your name. For example my name is Daniel but Daniel is not me, it is not who I am. I am more than my name, I can change my name, but the person I am does not change. What is more accurate to say is “I am”.

If we are all just “I am” then are we not all the same? In fact in the book of Exodus, God speaks his name and that name is “I am”. So if you, I and god are all “I am” then are we all not one and the same?

Does the talk of God make you cringe? Fine, flip it to science. We are all constructed of all the exact same atoms and within those atoms is energy. That energy is what unites us all and the planet that we live in. What makes you whole is what makes me whole and is what makes our surroundings whole. Like they would say in Thailand “Same Same” (but different).

Hiding behind labels is very fashionable now. All it is really is the attempt of Ego trying to establish itself. Otherwise, we have to admit we don’t really know what or who we are, as it becomes very hard to describe without labels!

Ego and Separateness

We ourselves reinforce this separateness, All to protect our sense of identity. Our ego.

Ego is the translation for the Latin letter “I”. It is the sense of self. What one thinks of themselves. To operate from ego is to focus on what “I want”, what is in it for me. This of course is natural to an extent as we all operate from an egocentric viewpoint. We only have experience viewing the world through our own eyes.

In order to unveil the delusion of separateness, we must first understand that the ego is a construct of the conscious mind. We are not born with ego. As a little baby, we may be egocentric in the respect that we only think about I. “I want food” “I want my mother”. However, we do not have a sense of identity (Ego). We believe we are one with our mother until around the age of 6 months.

This Identity is something we learn and create as we grow. We learn from our experiences, from our environment, from our parents.

We form this idea of I. Who I am. What I do. What my worth is.

Of course we need a sense of identity to protect ourselves and become separate from our mothers and family. Often this identity becomes very rigid when combined with a fixed mindset. This means the sense of ego is strong and is often defended fervently and irrationally.

When Ego, the sense of self, is strong it doesn’t allow any challenges for growth. A challenge to the sense of self could shatter the illusion of who we are and the construct that we have built up over years of living.

The Ego is very much part of having a Fixed Mindset as it does not like not knowing or being wrong as this creates a feeling of failure. The opposite is a Growth Mindset, where challenges are seen as learning opportunities. Having a strong sense of ego means that we are closed off to learning and growing.