Transcending the Separate Self
By Charles Eisenstein
A recognition of alliance is growing among people in diverse
arenas of activism, whether political, social, or spiritual. The holistic
acupuncturist and the sea turtle rescuer may not be able to explain the
feeling, “We are serving the same thing,” but they are. Both are in service to
an emerging Story of the People that is the defining mythology of a new kind of
civilization.
I will call it the Story of Interbeing, the Age of Reunion,
the ecological age, the world of the gift. It offers an entirely different set
of answers to the defining questions of life. Here are some of the principles
of the new story:
That my being
partakes of your being and that of all beings. This goes beyond
interdependency—our very existence is relational.
That, therefore,
what we do to another, we do to ourselves.
That each of us
has a unique and necessary gift to give the world.
That the purpose
of life is to express our gifts.
That every act is
significant and has an effect on the cosmos.
That we are
fundamentally unseparate from each other, from all beings, and from the
universe.
That every person
we encounter and every experience we have mirrors something in ourselves.
That humanity is
meant to join fully the tribe of all life on Earth, offering our uniquely human
gifts toward the well-being and development of the whole.
That purpose,
consciousness, and intelligence are innate properties of matter and the
universe.
The more we share with each other this kind of knowledge,
the stronger we are in it, the less alone. It needn’t depend on the denial of
science, because science is undergoing parallel paradigm shifts. It needn’t
endure the denial of livelihood, because from a trust in gift we find
unexpected sources of sustenance.
It needn’t withstand the denial of everyone around us,
because more and more people are living from the new story, each in his or her
own way, inducing a growing feeling of camaraderie. Nor is it a turning away
from the world that is still mired in Separation, because from the new story we
access new and powerful ways to effect change.
The fundamental precept of the new story is that we are
inseparate from the universe, and our being partakes in the being of everyone
and everything else. Why should we believe this? Let’s start with the obvious:
This interbeing is something we can feel. Why does it hurt when we hear of
another person coming to harm? Why, when we read of mass die-offs of the coral
reefs and see their bleached skeletons, do we feel like we’ve sustained a blow?
It is because it is literally happening to our selves, our extended selves.
The separate self wonders, “How could this affect me?” The
pain is irrational, to be explained away, perhaps, as the misfiring of some
genetically coded empathy circuit meant to protect those who share our DNA. But
why does it extend so easily to strangers, even to other species? Why do we
desire so strongly to serve the good of all? Why, when we achieve a maximum of
personal security and comfort, are we still dissatisfied?
The science of Separation offers another explanation of what
it calls “altruistic behavior.” Maybe it is a kind of mating display, which
demonstrates one’s “phenotypic quality” to prospective mates (i.e., it shows
that one is so “fit” that he can afford to squander resources on others). But
this explanation takes as an unexamined premise another assumption of the worldview
of Separation: a scarcity of mating opportunities and a competition for mates.
As anthropology, reviewed in books like Sex at Dawn, has
discovered though, this view of primitive life is more a projection of our own
social experience onto the past than it is an accurate description of
hunter-gatherer life, which was communal. A more sophisticated explanation
draws on game theoretic calculations of the relative advantages of being a
strong reciprocator, weak reciprocator, etc., in situations of mutual
dependency. Such theories are actually a step closer to an evolutionary biology
of interbeing, as they break down the idea that “self-interest” can ever exist
independently of the interest of others.
The desire to serve something transcending the separate self
and the pain we feel from the suffering of others are two sides of the same
coin. Both bespeak our interbeingness. The emerging science that seeks to
explain them, whether it invokes mirror neurons, horizontal gene transfer,
group evolution, morphic fields, or something further out, doesn’t explain them
away, but merely illustrates a general principle of connection or, dare I say
it, oneness. The science is beginning to confirm what we have intuitively known
all along: we are greater than what we have been told. We are not just a
skin-encapsulated ego, a soul encased in flesh. We are each other and we are
the world.
Our society runs in large part on the denial of that truth.
Only by interposing ideological and systemic blinders between ourselves and the
victims of industrial civilization can we bear to carry on. Few of us would
personally rob a hungry three-year-old of his last crust or abduct his mother
at gunpoint to work in a textile factory, but simply through our consumption
habits and our participation in the economy, we do the equivalent every day.
And everything that is happening to the world is happening to ourselves.
Distanced from the dying forests, the destitute workers, the hungry children,
we do not know the source of our pain, but make no mistake—just because we
don’t know the source doesn’t mean we don’t feel the pain.
One who commits a direct act of violence will, if and when
she realizes what she has done, feel remorse, a word that literally means
“biting back.” Even to witness such an act is painful. But most of us cannot
feel remorse for, say, the ecological harm that the mining of rare earth
minerals for our cell phones does in Brazil. The pain from that, and from all
the invisible violence of the Machine of industrial civilization, is more
diffuse. It pervades our lives so completely that we barely know what it is
like to feel good. Occasionally, we get a brief respite from it, maybe by
grace, or through drugs, or being in love, and we believe in those moments that
this is what it is supposed to feel like to be alive. Rarely, though, do we
stay there for very long, immersed as we are in a sea of pain.
Our situation is much like that of a little girl who was
taken by her mother to visit a chiropractor friend of mine. Her mother said, “I
think something is wrong with my daughter. She is a very quiet little girl and
always well behaved, but never once have I heard her laugh. In fact, she rarely
even smiles.”
My friend examined her and discovered a spinal misalignment
that, she judged, would give the girl a terrific headache all the time.
Fortunately, it was one of those misalignments that a chiropractor can correct
easily and permanently. She made the adjustment—and the girl broke into a big
laugh, the first her mother had ever heard. The omnipresent pain in her head,
which she had come to accept as normal, was miraculously gone.
Many of you might doubt that we live in a “sea of pain.” I
feel pretty good right now myself. But I also carry a memory of a far more
profound state of well-being, connectedness, and intensity of awareness that
felt, at the time, like my birthright. Which state is normal? Could it be that
we are bravely making the best of things?
How much of our dysfunctional, consumptive behavior is
simply a futile attempt to run away from a pain that is in fact everywhere?
Of course, any behavior that alleviates pain without healing
its source can become addictive. We should therefore hesitate to cast judgment
on anyone exhibiting addictive behavior (a category that probably includes
nearly all of us). What we see as greed or weakness might merely be fumbling
attempts to meet a need, when the true object of that need is unavailable. In
that case the usual prescriptions for more discipline, self-control, or
responsibility are counterproductive.
Notice whether, when I described people “running from one
purchase to another,” you felt any contempt or smugness. That too is a kind of
separation. The transition we are entering is a transition to a story in which
contempt and smugness no longer have a home. It is a story in which we cannot
see ourselves as better than any other human being. It is a story in which we
no longer use fear of self-contempt to drive our ethics. And we will inhabit
this story not in aspiration to an ideal of virtuous nonjudgment, forgiveness,
etc., but in sober recognition of the truth of nonseparation.
In Sacred Economics I made the point that what we perceive
as greed might be an attempt to expand the separate self in compensation for
the lost connections that compose the self of interbeing; that the objects of
our selfish desires are but substitutes for what we really want. Advertisers
play on this all the time, selling sports cars as a substitute for freedom,
junk food and soda as a substitute for excitement, “brands” as a substitute for
social identity, and pretty much everything as a substitute for sex, itself a
proxy for the intimacy that is so lacking in modern life. We might also see
sports hero worship as a substitute for the expression of one’s own greatness,
amusement parks as a substitute for the transcending of boundaries, pornography
as a substitute for self-love, and overeating as a substitute for connection or
the feeling of being present.
What we really need is nearly unavailable in the lives that
society offers us. You see, even the behaviors that seem to exemplify
selfishness may also be interpreted as our striving to regain our
interbeingness.
Another nonscientific indication of our true nature is
visible in yet another apparent manifestation of greed: the endless pursuit of
wealth and power. What are we to make of the fact that for many of the very
rich, no amount of money is enough? Nor can any amount of power satisfy the
ambitious. Perhaps what is happening is that the desire to serve the common
good is being channeled toward a substitute, and of course, no amount of the
substitute can equal the authentic article.
Upon each of us, the wound of Separation, the pain of the
world, lands in a different way. We seek our medicine according to the
configuration of that wound. To judge someone for doing that would be like to
condemn a baby for crying. To condemn what we see as selfish, greedy, egoic, or
evil behavior and to seek to suppress it by force without addressing the
underlying wound is futile: the pain will always find another expression.
Herein lies a key realization of interbeing. It says, “I would do as you do, if
I were you.” We are one.
The new Story of the People, then, is a Story of Interbeing,
of reunion. In its personal expression, it proclaims our deep interdependency
on other beings, not only for the sake of surviving but also even to exist. It
knows that my being is more for your being. In its collective expression, the
new story says the same thing about humanity’s role on Earth and relationship
to the rest of nature. It is this story that unites us across so many areas of
activism and healing. The more we act from it, the better able we are to create
a world that reflects it. The more we act from Separation, the more we
helplessly create more of that, too.
Source: “Interbeing”, from The More Beautiful World Our
Hearts Know is Possible, by Charles Eisenstein
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