Evan Renaerts

One Divided

March 31, 2008

Outside the window, in the early morning light, the Magnolia quietly unfurls exquisite pink flowers from within their green sheaths. This transformation is always all around us reminding us of what is possible or perhaps of what is certain.

From the perspective of the ego-mind each of us sees the self as a being that is distinctly separate. This is experienced as subject and object, one’s self is the subject and everything else falls into the category of object. For most of us other people are objects and only have meaning or value in as much as they impact or affect us; whether they are friend or foe, valued or despised, seen as equal or lesser-than depends on how they make this separate self feel.

It doesn’t take a great intellect to see how limited and dangerous this orientation to others is (the term “other” is already a huge statement of separation). Now multiply this profound and innate sense of disconnection several hundred times to account for the “otherness” we feel toward animals, plants, minerals, the air and the seas.

It is this ego-dream of separation that allows us to commit murder in the name of war, to treat the earth, air and oceans like a garbage dump, to see life forms as “resources,” and to ultimately destroy the very ecology we depend on for survival.

Since our beginning there has been some small number of us in every tribe or culture who intuited a different perspective of reality – a oneness or unity. In this unity the self is not separate but is rather an essential component of something vast, incomprehensible and beautiful. And at the same time the self is a discreet expression of that unity.

This perspective has been taught through oral tradition and woven into the earliest of sacred texts. This oneness is at the root of every major religion and all spiritual tradition.

This is not to suggest that there is some earlier idyllic period of human awareness that we should return to. There has never been more than a small percent of humanity that truly embodied the wisdom of our oneness.

What I notice is that humanities newest God, the God of science and technology, is now beginning to describe this same unity. The so called objective curiosity of science is revealing an interconnectedness that flows throughout all of existence from the smallest sub-atomic viewpoint out to the greatest possible context.

There is only “one thing” science seems to declare. And that one thing is alive (is life). It sometimes looks to us like a particle and sometimes like a wave. It is constantly in motion and no matter how chaotic it appears it is always in the process of organizing at a higher level of intelligence.

All of this takes me back to the Taoist understanding of “The Flow.”

Our dream of separateness has us forever trying to outsmart the flow, trying to push the flow in the directions and ways that we believe it needs to move. Our free will (that treasured aspect of humanity) leaves us free to push for all we are worth. It also gives us the option of realizing that not only can we go with the flow but that we are the flow.

We have a choice in every moment – separateness or oneness. One divided will always be less than the wholeness that is possible.

For more thoughts on this here is a link to a video talk by Jill Bolte Taylor, a must see. How many brain scientists get to study their own brain from the inside out? I recommend going to http://www.microclesia.com/?p=320 – allow 18 minutes and have your mind blown open.

Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com