There is the infinite dance of cosmic being, and within it, but largely unaware of its undifferentiated participation in the totality of existence, there is the personal human mind. This mind is insensitive to life as a whole because it is filled to the brim by the particular images and ideas that determine its sense of separate existence and generate the chaotic social reality created by its necessarily conflicted social relations.
Hidden beneath the isolated superficiality of the experience-based personal psyche —that is, at the very core of mind itself— awareness and the wholeness of being exist without distinction. However, at the superficial level of mind conditioned by personal and tribal experience and sustained by fear and desire, distinction is all there is. Distinction is, in fact, the life and essence of the self that deems itself separate and unique. Who would any one of us be be without the all-too common distinction between “you” and “me”; between “us” and “them”; between “me” and “myself"; and, more generally, between “me” and “not-me”?
Life, the ever shifting movement of existence as a whole, is all-inclusive and therefore not “a thing” or a container of things. But personal self in order to exist and endure in its own self-reflective eyes , must be something, some “one”, somebody. It must also endlessly strive to be recognized by others as such within its particular cultural enclosure.
The personal self is all about gradually evolving identity and the defense and projection of that identity, whereas life is innocent of separation, and therefore anonymous. Which is why the separate and self-projecting self can never feel secure and at peace, much less survive a serious inquiry into itself and the truth of its participation in life.
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