Contemplations on who we are can help us see that we are not who we think we are — and that by breaking free of the enculturated self, we can not only free ourselves from our dysfunctional culture, but we can change the way we live on this beautiful planet and see the essential health of our organism.

Garin Samuelsen

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7 min read

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Jul 19, 2023

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I sit in a small park nestled in a small town in Vermont. Cars rush by. People rush by. A few people stop and also sit. The air is already warm though it is still early on this summer day. The summers keep getting hotter. I hear robins but few other birds. Here are my contemplations this morning. Please forgive me if at first the things I write seem to go off on different tangents. In closing, i hope you see that they all come together.

The Idea of a Personalized Self getting better or improving is not True. There is No True Self

• We have adapted ourselves unknowingly to an incredibly dysfunctional cultural system. This system is thousands of years old. It now spans the entire globe. Many people think that this is the way humans are supposed to live.
• Human beings are naturally violent. Poverty is just the way things are. Wars have always happened. We are supposed to be in competition against other people. I can keep going down the list of beliefs about human beings that are inherent in our cultural mythology. None of these beliefs are true.
• In our cultural mythology, we are taught that there is something inherently wrong in us and that we must strive to do better or think that a God will save us.
• In our cultural mythology, we are taught that we are selves separate from the Universe.
• From the idea that we are separate selves, psychological fear enters into the picture and a need to control, manipulate and destroy anything that is a threat is normalized.
• Hierarchy is not natural. Diversity is natural.
• Our culture has the belief that the world was created for human beings. The world was not made for human beings. Evolution is a flow of interrelationships changing through time. All species are essential to the great web of life. This belief that the earth is for human beings has led us to destroy the very home in which we need to survive. Saying that the world was created for human beings would be just as insane as the world was created for kangaroos.
• Our schooling system makes children compete against each other in order to be placed into a cog within the system — the cog being work. Also, one is taught that one has the potential to climb the class ladder to find success. One is rewarded or punished with a grading system that has nothing to do with learning but with fear based memorization. One’s authentic voice, wonder and curiosity is institutionally pushed down, and one builds an “ego” full of defenses and urges to be better then or feel worse then other community members due to the dysfunction of how one is parented and educated.
• All species evolved in complex relationships with everything around them. There are no higher or lower species in nature. Having a larger brain doesn’t make one better than any other species, just like having wings doesn’t make one better or higher up on a human-created hierarchy of nature. That condors can fly long distances on thermals without moving their wings, or peregrine falcons can fly fast while diving, or penguins can fly through water, doesn’t make them better than other birds or other species. They have evolved to live and thrive in their multifaceted habitat.
• Evolution has equipped all species through genetics that are passed down generation to generation, mutation, relational diversity, and adaptation, to thrive within the complex domains of the ecosystem in which they live. This is no different than the differences of apes in which we are another branch. Gorillas and chimpanzees have adapted to the habitats in which they live. They are no better or worse than us.
• Human Beings are interwoven with all other species within ecological systems. Every species is important to the overall health of the system. All species, from certain bacteria to certain fungi, plants, or animals, are exactly what they are supposed to be in regards to evolution. All species have evolved with all other species, and all species are deeply interwoven in a multiplicity of relationships within a larger ecological system that is also evolving.
• There is nothing wrong or sinful in human beings.
• Human beings were not always at war. In fact, for most of their history, they lived in health and relative peace in small groups across many different ecological habitats.
• In regard to evolution, we evolved to have what our culture terms the ego. I would say that a better word may be body/mind navigational system. It is a complex system that helps us survive, live and thrive both individually and collectively with each other and the planet. This navigational system which enables us to imagine, communicate, problem solve, measure, travel and protects us from threats is not a personalized self. When needed, it is activated. When it is not needed, it quiets. This system is no less important than the blood flowing through our veins, organs, bone, and muscle system. It is not a personalized self. It helps our organism to survive and live well both individually, collectively, and with nature.
• In a healthy culture, this navigational system is not always on high alert. It doesn’t fashion a strong sense of self-identification as a separate self. It can be quiet when it is not needed. In this quiet, one directly experiences wholeness, a universal consciousness that flows through all.
• In a healthy culture, an individual is truly an individual. Individual means undivided and whole.
• In a healthy culture, there is no strong sense of a personalized self, for one is seen as a part of the human and ecological community. There is no becoming a better human being. There is no idea that the human is flawed just like a tiger or a gazel are not flawed.
• A healthy culture helps the individual and collective flourish and allows the navigational system to interact with intelligence and learned wisdom.
• In a dysfunctional hierarchal system such as ours, we have created the idea of a separate personalized self called the ego that is flawed and we need to suppress and push down, especially unwanted feelings or thoughts. We have created the misconception that we have a personalized ego and can actually become better and grow into higher levels of consciousness. From this illusion, this egoic self can even have an individualized soul and either go to heaven or hell based on your belief.
• In a dysfunctional hierarchal system, a human being is brought into a toxic world in which it has to fight to live well within the confines of what this society says is success. It is told through the familial and educational system that this self needs to become somebody and follow authority, not its own intelligence, to find an economic role to better itself and be successful.
• In our dysfunctional hierarchal system, a human being is taught that hierarchy is the natural way and that mankind has always been at war and is inherently violent. We are taught that a hierarchal economic system in which only a few hold most of the wealth is the best and only system to have and that as a separate self, you just need to pull up your bootstrap's, no matter your situation, and rise up the violent ladder of competition for your own success.
• All the psychological issues we see in our culture is a reflection of a toxic dysfunctional culture that perpetuates drama and trauma.
• If we can understand that this personalized self is not who we are, and can observe it’s enculturated distorted personalized thinking directly, we can see that all thoughts and feelings are not a personalized self. It is a system that has been put on high alert, is scared, feels separated, and is lost in its own protective programs. Seeing this, we begin to let go. Seeing this, letting the navigational system know we are okay, allows it to quiet. As it quiets, truth, the underlying reality of all that is emerges. Another word for the underlying reality is Wholeness.
• In the quiet, seeing becomes clear, listening becomes clear, and right action flows naturally. Our navigational system is then arises naturally when needed and is not personalized. Here, an authentic, genuine, interconnected way of living happens spontaneously, for it is who one is.
• Instead of reacting, one acts by not-doing. There is no try or becoming. there is no personalization, so one is now in flow with what is. This is waking up. This wholeness is you and has always been you. We just need to let our navigational system relax and quiet and simply not personalize it. In this not doing, right action takes place.
• Not personalizing or thinking I am somebody special, important, better or worse, I see the world as it is. I see in wonder the amazing ecological systems that I am simply connect with. I see all other creatures as beautiful in their own unique ways and see how they are all interwoven into a great earth system.
• I see that our earth system is connected to a solar system that is connected to a galactic system that is connected to other galaxies into a grand Universal Wholeness.
• Because I am not personalizing, i see i don’t need much. I see that joy arises in community and connection and being free.
• Everybody has Wholeness within them even if our culture says otherwise. If our culture is saying something, it is most likely not true.