This is part one of a two-part blog.
Here we are, several days after the most bruising Presidential election in my lifetime, and somehow, we’re all still here. And somehow, we have to find a way to live in the same country with people whose beliefs on almost every issue clash with our own.
It’s always been this way, we’ve always lived alongside people whose beliefs didn’t match ours. What’s different is how we’ve been actively encouraged to demonize those with different beliefs. The winning candidate used the expression, “the enemy within,” and based his entire election strategy on it. In an attempt to weaponize our apparent differences, he meant it as a description of everyone in the country who disagreed with him. Unfortunately, too many people are buying into this view.
This point of view can be summed up this way: if you don’t share my beliefs, you must be a bad person. Openly stated, it sounds pretty stark to me. It allows for no further examination. Instead of leaving a door open for a further look, it slams the door shut, locks it, bolts it, and piles heavy objects in front of it.
That’s not a description of a country I want to live in, and I don’t intend to do so. I’m not talking about moving to another country. I simply refuse to buy into a system that automatically puts me at odds with half of my fellow citizens.
I could list a dozen fallacies behind the, “if you don’t believe what I believe” statement, but one stands out in the highest possible relief. This is the fallacy that assumes we are what we appear to be; separate individuals with absolutely no connection to anyone who we don’t know, or who isn’t a family member.
As you read this, there’s a good chance you may be thinking, “Well, isn’t that the case? Aren’t we all separate from one another?”
This is a good time to remember we live in a world of appearances, and when we take those appearances too seriously, or too literally, we get ourselves in trouble. The trouble I’m referring to is failing to recognize this truth: you and I both share our being with everything and everyone. We are simply slightly different modulations of the same, single consciousness.
Each of us has an individuality, but in the strictest sense of the word, we’re not separate. My being is your being, is her being, is his being, is their being. One single beingness with countless different appearances. Another way to say that is, I’m just you in a different body with different thinking. And you’re just me, in a different body, with different thinking. But our essential aliveness, our beingness is one.
To be clear, there’s an enormous difference between believing we’re all the same, and understanding we all share the same being. We’re not just the same, we’re one. We always have been, we always will be. This can easily be misunderstood to be a diminishment of our individuality. It’s not. It’s the ultimate enhancement.
Human unhappiness can be caused by physical circumstances, but I’d guess far more of human unhappiness can be traced back to a feeling of separation that’s probably familiar to you. All through our lives, we long to reverse that feeling of separation and return to a feeling of connectedness. This may not be a surprise. I’m calling it out here because it’s these feelings of isolation and discontent that drive a good deal of human behavior.
When you think of yourself, it’s extremely likely that you’ll focus on your body, because that’s where your sensations come from. “That must be me” seems to be a logical conclusion. And from that assumption springs another, equally untrue assumption that suggests, “I end at the borders of my body. What’s inside those borders is me, what’s outside those borders is not me.”
Our physical perceptions seem to confirm this. After all, if my sensations end at my body, How can anything “outside” my body still be me?
This is a situation where the truth diverges from what seems to be logic. But if that “logic” is based on the assumption that we are our bodies and our perceptions, and nothing more than that, how sound can it be?
When we’re convinced we’re isolated individuals, the next stop down the slippery slope leads us to believe we have to protect ourselves from the world “outside” of us. With this belief in place, we have all the elements necessary for me to view you as a threat to my existence. What may be small differences of opinion between us take on the guise of major threats. It’s as though to say, “If your beliefs are different from mine, you’re a threat to me, and I have to protect myself from you.”
That’s where we stand right now. Just how long can we expect to thrive as a society when we’re weighed down with untrue nonsense like this that puts us at odds with one another?
(to be continued)
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