We and they

01/09/2024

The world is a mess now. More than 50 armed conflicts are going on on different sides. They are reported every day in the news. We are bombarded with real news and shameless propaganda and it is often hard to tell which is which. People seek power by whatever means, by distorting facts, belittling others, exaggerating one's own understanding. 

There are two sides to every conflict: us and them. One side is right and the other is not. It is important to study and identify the inner mechanism that leads us to the feeling of being on the right side. 

It's easy to notice and correct our obvious mistakes, but we don't have an appropriate instrument for evaluating our deep convictions. Logic doesn't work for them, our conscience stretches enormously, and even intuition can be wrong and dangerous. 

In my book RIGHT NOW I suggested that our worldview is based on a false assumption of separateness. Our second misconception is that life takes place in time. I presented that life is a live broadcast, where every action shapes the world and becomes part of history. You can study the past, but it is ash in the deep and often unreachable recesses of the mind. 

 Life is what is actually happening to you and me right now, not how we interpret it. What matters is how we treat others and what we see. Bad treatment and reckless behavior have become the new normal. The biggest human challenge is to see the world correctly, as it actually is. Most people's worldview is based on the beliefs that have been fed to them. These beliefs create a person's identity, their perception of themselves. The basic nature of self-image is that it is distinctive and different from other people. Each person has their history and identity. What matters is what meaning you give it. If a person considers himself better than another, he promotes himself. If he considers himself inferior to someone else, he lowers himself. If he takes himself as he is, he allows others to be just as they are.

I call this direct perception. It means connecting to the world without the distortion produced by the ego. Then the boundary between me and you disappears and we work together in real time. Then 'us' and 'them' are history. We no longer define ourselves by the terms of the past, we live in the now. In that magical moment, the miracle of life opens before us, which the physicist David Bohm called the Implicate Order. It is a reality in which there is no sense of a separate experiencer produced by the mind and senses. There is also no separation between we humans and the universe. They are one whole. 

Direct connection with other people removes the concept of 'they', and connection with the universe removes the concept of 'we'. This reality cannot be experienced. It is realized when a person sees himself correctly. Direct perception leads to acting right. We don't act right because we don't see the world correctly. We act out of selfish motives, some are due to our strong –and wrong – convictions. Many people live in their bubbles without seeing the miracles which life throws in front of them. Life is a struggle and competition for them. 

Direct perception bursts this bubble of selfishness.