Your story about yourself is not the Truth
Uncovering your essence nature
“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” ― Rumi
What we’re about to explore may not match what you currently observe or experience in the chaotic Age of Humans, but it is a key to finding peace amidst that chaos.
In an era in which discussions about disinformation and misinformation abound, it becomes even more important to reflect upon our similarities beneath all the apparent differences.
There is evidence to suggest that society is becoming more divided and less empathic than ever before. From consumerist culture to the nuclear family, our very social foundations are built upon norms that are not designed for our individual or collective well-being.
It’s no wonder that humanity feels fragile and fragmented. Before we fight against this from within the system, we first need to take a step back from the social frameworks that have conditioned us to think and behave and relate in certain ways. These ways do not serve you, they serve the system.
Beyond the limits of political systems and social statuses - and the “us vs them” narratives that they engender - we might reconsider how we could achieve the dream of “unity in diversity”.
This unity has little to do with manmade ideas about equality or justice as dictated by Western ideals. A global world order based on the assumption that ‘equality’ means allowing everyone to act like privileged white men is missing the point entirely. That can only ever come about through cultural imperialism, which is not unity but erasure.
Yet, counter-intuitively, in order to really accept all the social and cultural differences, we must first release them. We must relinquish our grip on their social significance and look inside ourselves towards our essential nature as sentient beings.
This essential nature is the force that makes us human. It is the thing that binds us in humanness before the tribalisms of dogmatic religion and partisan politics and coloniality separate us from each other.
This greatest similarity — and therefore the only thing we can all empirically claim as Truth — is that which everyone can agree upon. It is the basis of many traditions that preach spiritual liberation. It is the simple I Am.
A shared awareness of our self-reflective consciousness is the doorway into seeing our unity. Beyond all the opinions, identities, and physical differences, we share the wonder that we are life being aware of life itself.
The purpose of human life is to be awed by this awareness. Everything else is ego and politics.
If you can be humbled by the miracle of life each and every day, you might find that your attachment to personal stories and opinions seems more ephemeral and irrelevant in the great scheme of things.
Instead, you recognise your place in the cosmos at large and see how fleeting your human concerns really are. When this happens, you might breathe a great sigh of relief: the realisation releases you from all the striving and ruminating and opining.
Uncovering this essence nature in yourself, you uncover it in all others. The differences start to disperse, even while others continue to be ruled by them.
Now you can be and act from a deeper level of awareness. Instead of being bound by social expectations, you tune in to the natural flow of being. In Eastern thought, this is the Tao or Wu Wei.
This is not to negate the place of social justice movements. Pain is real, however it is perceived. People will always be driven to protect and reproduce their social groups — it is hardwired into our biology and inspired by the will to freedom.
Yet this will to freedom is more clearly seen in all its glory when we are willing to free ourselves from the divisions we put up for ourselves. We cannot truly know ourselves until we have detached ourselves from what, at our core, we are not. This includes most of the stories we tell about ourselves, both in self-talk and social interactions.
If social activism is your true calling, you will find yourself on that path from whatever worldview you hold about the nature of Self. Your inner voice will guide you in action and there is nothing that will keep you from it.
I used to be the righteously angry activist. Nowadays, I still act when it’s called for, but it arises from intuition rather than ideology.
In tuning in to our deepest wisdom, things flow because they are the right thing to do without needing to mentally conceptualise them as “the right thing to do”.
Yet in working from a place of peace rather than fear or anger, you find that your attachment to outcomes disperses. The important thing is that you are being in accordance with your deepest will. The only goal is wherever the present moment finds you.
Whether you are a straight cis-gender able-bodied white male or a disabled pansexual black transwoman, you have the ability to simultaneously see beyond these labels yet still embody them and be a beacon for their expression.
This is about celebrating the play of life that arises from the self-aware I Am rather than fighting against it. It is the ability to see everything as One whilst delighting in the multiple ways in which that unified essence expresses itself.
Many people will embody a way of being that is destructive rather than delightful. They are attached to their socially constructed prejudices; they know no other way.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
When Martin Luther King said this, he knew that unity was not found through focusing on the things you dislike about other people. Our own inner light must be a bridge to others.
Without knowing and expressing our own inner light, why should we expect to see others expressing theirs?
Yet this light is perceivable only in the context of darkness also existing. The joy of peace is felt through the knowledge of its opposite. The bliss of liberation requires that we endured the misery of the ball and chain.
We also realise that the human ego does all things out of the desire for approval and recognition. Some people go about this the wrong way, as they have learnt to identify with and seek approval through the costume of their social shell. Our individualistic culture encourages this and exaggerates our differences, even when many of these differences are little more than masks.
From the broadest perspective, the differences and divisions seem like a mirage: you still see them, but you recognise the wrong-thinking from which they arise. This thinking in itself is illusory yet people reify it through wrong action. Thoughts become things, thus the divided self is a divided society.
However, if you can transcend these divisions within your own mind, you discover the peace of radical acceptance. You can shine its light upon your whole world.
If you can suspend any cognitive dissonance for long enough to give yourself the chance to feel into this mode of being, you will realise that this was the foundation from which you were existing all the time. You just hid it underneath all the ‘shoulds’ of society.
This is an example of what the Eastern sages refer to when they talk about the “gateless gate”. The way to peace was always open within us, but the social construction of reality obscures our view.
This is an invite to hold your identity labels and opinions more loosely — your ego might be worried that they will blow away in the wind, but the only thing they will lay bare is the equanimity of your true nature.
