The Illusory Divide

As a child, I remember feeling as though the planet was full of shadowy beings called other people. In some special cases, I cautiously ordained a few as being semi-shadow or semi-human. Notably, my parents were deemed 85% human.

By my teen years, I began understanding separateness as an illusion.  True to form, I had a literal rebellious phase where my mission was "getting people to realize we are all human." It was poorly received by my public.

Now, decades later, the question of separation still plagues me. On a planet of billions, under such strange cosmic circumstances, how can the human mind persist with this illusion? 

I've recently come to realize, that to understand separation is to understand how the mind manufactures connectivity. What was once impossible to comprehend then brings us to origins that are astonishingly familiar.  

Our first instances of shared humanity are of the mind's construction in early development. Our senses ignite around our caregivers because of how pivotal they are to our survival. We will never feel more emotional reactivity to another human for the rest of our lives. This is what brings our parental figures to life for us, what makes them human.

No one can ignite our senses to that degree again, because our brains then used our early caregivers as THE prototypes for  emotional connectivity. Those wildly nuanced human beings. They lay the groundwork for our capacity for ALL connection.   

(Our children come close because they reignite this survival cycle, but we are still capable of that connectivity to the degree we are primed by our development.)

So from these humble origins, where do we find the answer to our original question of separation?  

It is these emotional blueprints that elicit an experience of shared humanity on all scales. A person comes to life for us because they ignite emotional associations based on these unconscious maps. This includes physical appearance, language, mannerisms. Generally whatever our caregivers and other pivotal influences (including ourselves) brought to the table. 

The issue of alienation on a planet of billions is no one's developmental history could ever provide a framework from which to perceive all of humanity with emotion. Many of us fight to do so by drawing on the universality of pain and suffering, but that is quite painful and quite skewed.

I think any real resolution of this issue requires a much broader vision. One that recognizes s e p a r a t i o n as only believable if we continue to rely on our emotions as indicators of the truth of our experience. 

I, personally, can see no other path beyond separation than the one where we recognize it was all an illusion to begin with. 

Painfully simple, I know. It might not feel like a revelation, but what I find problematic about this human condition is that at its core it is a problem of using emotions as navigators. Emotions as believable. Unfortunately, that is our brain's default programming.

If we are to ever shift, on any scale, into the fullness of our human experience, we need to recognize we will not arrive at the truth of our existence if we continue moving with the tides of emotionality. 

- Samsara