I go through life, for better or for worse, with myself at the center of it.
I don’t know how any of us can break out of that perspective, the individual perspective, the individual will, the separation of me and not you, of I and not us.
Perhaps that lesson —unity— is the lesson all of humanity must learn before we can move on to anything better than what we have now. I think we must. But I don’t know how.
I feel it. Do you? The limitation, the uncertainty of separation, the pain and ultimate wrongness of these physical and emotional and mental limitations, keeping us trapped, literally, inside an individual view that is always incomplete.
Always an individual perspective or understanding is incomplete, because each individual is finite.
We know our finiteness with certainty, but we also know that knowledge, and love, and the universe, and maybe potential and growth are infinite.
Certainly the bounds of our universe, and life, are far beyond the limits of the individual at any time, in any situation.
As long as we are trapped in individuality, we are frustratingly limited, severely impaired, dumbed down. We are often lost in error, utterly mistaken about the things we assume so blithely and ignorantly to be truth.
If we could see beyond, beyond our individual perspective, to get a glimpse of how much we don’t know, and how often we are wrong
If we could see a bit of our limitations, we would be less confident, maybe. Less trapped in our rightness. Less sure of our noble motivations. We might wonder more, assume less. Start fewer wars.
We cannot escape our individuality, not completely. But we can imagine.
Imagination is the most powerful tool for growth we possess.
Imagination is the key to empathy and growth and wisdom and innovation. Imagination allows us to live outside of ourselves.
Imagination removes the individual boundaries which trap us the rest of the time. Imagination is not just an extra, a ‘flight of fancy’; it is the very key to a wider and better existence for everyone, everywhere.
Until we can see how limited the individual will and mind is, we cannot see our own error and adjust. We cannot see our own need and begin to meet it unless we first see outside of ourselves. We cannot see our own goodness and begin to value it until we see from outside of ourselves.
Trapped in our individuality, we never see what’s really there and we never see what’s missing. We feel it all as normal, because it is, to us; it’s familiar, expected; and that’s what normal means.
I am I, and how I feel think move act speak perceive is I, and I cannot perceive my own existence as wrong because to do so would be to negate my own worth and I cannot allow myself to do that.
I cannot, as long as there is only the individual.
Imagination allows us to move beyond the walls of the individual mind. To see what could be changed. To see what doesn’t need to be changed. To see that our individuality is not the ultimate measure of our value.
To see that unity means the same thing as freedom.