Sunday, September 25, 2005
The Illusion of Separation
The more we rely on technology the more we give away our power. This is the situation in some of the Gulf Coast areas in the US right now. It made me think about how much technology I take for granted and how very difficult I would find it to survive without electricity, gas, running water etc. Many of us who live in cities in particular, are so removed from the natural world that we can start to believe that we’re in charge. This is a really dangerous distortion. The recent disaster in New Orleans in particular highlights how close we all are to chaos.
In the blink of an eye everything changes. In the Guardian newspaper on Saturday there was an interview with a woman who survived one of the recent Tube bombs in London. She had been right next to the bomber when he detonated his bomb. One minute there she was thinking about getting to work, in the next second she was sitting in a tangled mass of metal. She lost both legs. Before this she had a good job, was very well paid and lived a full and active life. Now she sits in a wheel chair, totally traumatised, unable to come to terms with what has happened.
Perhaps a mistake we make is to believe that things will always be the same. We are totally shocked when there is a major Earth shift or huge storm. Why is this? We know that the Earth is in a constant state of shift, that continents have been torn apart, seas have risen and disappeared again and so forth. Things have never always been the same. Do we think that the Earth will stop moving and shifting because we are so advanced technologically? Do we think we should somehow be able to stop natural disasters now?
Humans have never been so technologically advanced and so spiritually impoverished all at the same time. It seems to me that one follows on from the other here. Technological advancement seems to cause the ego to believe itself to be a god. Looking through the eyes of the ego we see only separation and separation is our greatest fear. In fact fear of separation is the root cause of all our fears. As small children we fear separation from our parents and this transforms into fear of separation from each other and the Divine. No one could become a suicide bomber unless they were convinced that they were separate from others and from the Divine. No one could kill or harm another unless their egos were running the show. Why? Because the truth is that separation is an illusion. It is an illusion that the ego buys into fearfully, but in out hearts we know that it is not so.
When was the last time you asked your heart about anything? It takes practice to be able to communicate with the heart, as most of us haven’t done this since we were children, if at all. If you look into the eyes of a baby you will clearly see what I am talking about. A light shines out from a baby’s eyes. A baby will hold your gaze and connect with something deep inside you. What is that? Where do you feel it?
The Hindu religion refers to that light and that feeling as the “Real”. Everything else is the “Unreal”. The Real is the Divine and it is what we actually are, all of us. We are not separate from God, we are God, all of us. Now hang on a minute. If we are all God what about all the religious leaders, all the clerics, all those people who are there to connect us to God – or whatever you call it? What about them? Well you tell me, because the fact is that we all have a direct line connection, in fact we are the connection. In our hearts we know this, but we have to listen to the heart to hear it.
In the blink of an eye everything changes. In the Guardian newspaper on Saturday there was an interview with a woman who survived one of the recent Tube bombs in London. She had been right next to the bomber when he detonated his bomb. One minute there she was thinking about getting to work, in the next second she was sitting in a tangled mass of metal. She lost both legs. Before this she had a good job, was very well paid and lived a full and active life. Now she sits in a wheel chair, totally traumatised, unable to come to terms with what has happened.
Perhaps a mistake we make is to believe that things will always be the same. We are totally shocked when there is a major Earth shift or huge storm. Why is this? We know that the Earth is in a constant state of shift, that continents have been torn apart, seas have risen and disappeared again and so forth. Things have never always been the same. Do we think that the Earth will stop moving and shifting because we are so advanced technologically? Do we think we should somehow be able to stop natural disasters now?
Humans have never been so technologically advanced and so spiritually impoverished all at the same time. It seems to me that one follows on from the other here. Technological advancement seems to cause the ego to believe itself to be a god. Looking through the eyes of the ego we see only separation and separation is our greatest fear. In fact fear of separation is the root cause of all our fears. As small children we fear separation from our parents and this transforms into fear of separation from each other and the Divine. No one could become a suicide bomber unless they were convinced that they were separate from others and from the Divine. No one could kill or harm another unless their egos were running the show. Why? Because the truth is that separation is an illusion. It is an illusion that the ego buys into fearfully, but in out hearts we know that it is not so.
When was the last time you asked your heart about anything? It takes practice to be able to communicate with the heart, as most of us haven’t done this since we were children, if at all. If you look into the eyes of a baby you will clearly see what I am talking about. A light shines out from a baby’s eyes. A baby will hold your gaze and connect with something deep inside you. What is that? Where do you feel it?
The Hindu religion refers to that light and that feeling as the “Real”. Everything else is the “Unreal”. The Real is the Divine and it is what we actually are, all of us. We are not separate from God, we are God, all of us. Now hang on a minute. If we are all God what about all the religious leaders, all the clerics, all those people who are there to connect us to God – or whatever you call it? What about them? Well you tell me, because the fact is that we all have a direct line connection, in fact we are the connection. In our hearts we know this, but we have to listen to the heart to hear it.
