The Interconnected Self
We’re living a myth. Reality is much deeper than we’re told….
From very early in life we’re taught to live a lie.
I call it the myth of The Isolated Self.
We’re taught to believe we’re separate from other people, nature, the world, even from those closest to us.
Writer Charles Eisenstein calls it ‘the myth of separation’.
Like all myths, it contains some truth.
We’re all different. We see the world through unique eyes and can only partly understand everything that exists outside of us.
We’re separate and we’re unique.
Separate but not isolated.
We’re not ONLY a separate self.
Separation is only part of who we are.
We’re also An Interconnected Self.
Everything you see, touch, smell, taste, hear, changes you. You’re constantly evolving and adapting to the world around you — changing it and being changed by it.
When you talk to someone, the conversation happens BETWEEN you and her/him. The conversation is an interconnection. If you’re truly engaging with that person, what they say changes you, and you are changed by them.
When you stand in a forest, it changes you. Standing there, you change the details of the forest — where birds fly, which animals emerge and allow themselves to be seen, your walking compacts the soil and mulches dead leaves.
Each breath changes the composition of the air.
We change and are changed by everything we connect with.
Even without direct contact, changes happen. Your behaviour changes if you’re being watched — even if you don’t actually consciously KNOW you’re being watched. I’m not even talking about the fundamentals of Quantum Theory which reveal how fundamental reality is changed by the presence of an observer. I’m talking about the macro-world level: we’re always being influenced by our connectedness with people, creatures or environments around us — whether that connection is direct or not, conscious or not.
Life is a web of interconnectedness.
What if it’s deeper than that?
What if it’s not just ‘me’ connecting with the world, but ‘me’ connecting with all the other parts of ‘me’?
What if ‘I’ is not a single thing, but also is a web of interconnection?
‘What if ‘I’ am the relationship between my self-talk, unconscious thoughts, body, personal history, how much sleep I’m getting, the stories I live by, and much else?
We know that’s true don’t we?
If you change an element of ‘you’, everything else changes too.
If you cut down on sleep it impairs good decision-making, physical and mental health, relationships, confidence.
If you address deep-level painful memories of the past, it alters how you see, act, feel in the present moment.
Everything inside is connected to everything else inside.
Everything inside is connected to everything outside.
If we change an element of our inner or outer life, we change everything.
We are not, fundamentally an Isolated Self.
We’re an Interconnected Self.
We’re one element in a web of inter-relationship, collaborating with all the other elements to create the world we share.
The voice in your head that calls you ’I’ (part of your mind’s executive function system) sits on the edge between your internal web of connections and the external web of connections. It observes both and, when it wants something to change, we can learn to identify what needs to be altered and allow everything else to fall into place.
This is how The Interconnected Self navigates an Interconnected Universe.
Of course, you’re a ‘self’.
That’s only part of the story.
You’re a Self-With-Others.
This is the ground we start our journey from.
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This is the first in a series of 14 emails and articles, introducing Self-With-Others: A guide to living and thriving in an interconnected world.
The whole series is free. If you sign up you’ll receive two emails a week (and links to recordings of them if you prefer listening to reading) for 8 weeks. It will give you a complete overview of Self-With-Others, guiding you to build confidence, clarity, creativity and connection.
You can access the full email sequence here: https://www.subscribepage.io/swointroduction
#selfwithothers #connection #creativity #confidence #calm
