Self-Other Paradox

If World War III were to erupt tomorrow, our ability to experience happiness and fulfillment would rapidly diminish. Conversely, were planet Earth to become full of enlightened beings tomorrow, our ability to experience happiness and fulfillment would rapidly increase. Our ability to manifest the lives of our dreams depends on how manifest others’ dreams have become.

At the most common sense level, the quality of our shared experience of life depends on the values, priorities, and belief systems that we all project into and onto the world. In other words, we influence each other moment by moment and for better or worse. We both shape and are shaped by our inner attitudes and outer shared environment.

In the diagram, the dotted lines indicate the mutual, permeable influence of individuals, communities, and conditions.

As we make effort to consistently improve the health of our bodies and minds, those benefits extend into and beyond our immediate, local environment. Empowering ourselves, we enhance our communities. There is no other way to enhance any future or any community other than through our own individual, sustained effort to improve the health of our own bodies and minds. That is, communities become healthier one individual at a time. If we want to see our communities evolve, we ourselves must evolve.

What we perceive ourselves as connected to and responsible for determines what we value. When we recognize that we are connected to our future, our communities, and all communities (and the future of all communities), each day of life becomes a valuable opportunity to begin learning how to skillfully shape the best type of future for ourselves and others.

How we perceive the world has a profound impact on our sense of purpose and meaning. When perceiving that everywhere we look we are surrounded by friends and friendly forces, our lives feel welcoming and warm. Conversely, when perceiving that we are surrounded by unwelcoming factions and forces, we feel insecure, threatened, and so on. Perceived isolation engenders suffering, whereas perceived connection produces meaning.

Self Includes Other.

Were I to make intense effort to locate “myself”, that one thing that really constitutes “me”, I would never find any solid, absolute thing, existing apart. I would find biological processes that extend backwards into billions of years of evolution and energetic processes that will extend forwards in time into inconceivability and unknowns. I would find emotional constructs that I project outward onto my environment, based on both how I have been conditioned and how I am currently conditioning “myself” to respond to environments. I would find that I constantly qualify my perceptions as pleasant or unpleasant. I would find that those qualifications and projections are malleable and intangible. I would find that perception and projection have no meaning without an environment to which I can relate. I would find that my sense of “I” depends completely on “other”.

Are we the food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink – our clothes, our means of transportation, our jobs, the house we grew up in, or our neighborhoods? Are we the genetic coding passed down for who knows how long? Are we the fact that others allow us to interface with them as a functioning entity? Are we the product of a collective, “mythological” agreement? Are we really only one of these fixed, identifiable things, or one thing much, much more than the others?

Strangely, paradoxically, our sense of “I” is a feedback loop whose origin and mutual influence is everywhere, throughout time. Becoming aware of the fundamental identity of “myself as inclusive of other” is the primary source of meaning and well-being.

Compassion is a more profound depth of acknowledged connectivity than empathy. Compassion perceives any plight of “other” as “mine, right here, right now” – and is therefore unable to bear that suffering without taking immediate action to rectify its causes. We don’t pat ourselves on the back for removing our hands from fire – it is an innate response, because we acknowledge a connection to and responsibility for our hands. When authentic connection is perceived (like a mother does her child), a sense of responsibility ensues.

That which offers us the most meaning in life is that for which we feel a deep sense of connection and responsibility. Sincere study and practice aims to broaden the scope of concern and perceived connectivity, which exponentially increases the “amount” of meaning available to experience.