Leaping into Wholeness

and by Garin Samuelsen

I was sitting by the Pacific as the sun began to ease towards the distant horizon. The sun was caught above thin marshmallow clouds.  A green liquid sky fell upon Catalina Island. A seagull called out as it glided across the shore to stand like a sentinel upon the sandy beach.  Beauty was in this presence.

As I watched, something was percolating in me, not forced, just arising.

In front of me was the vast ocean that spread beyond any horizon.  Behind me was a culture that is all consuming like cancer and at war with the world.  Aware of this, I wondered, what is one to do about living in a culture that is highly dysfunctional, full of suffering, and pushing us closer towards the end of human life as we know it? Are we ordained to live this way, or can one be free of all inculturated conditioning? This sort of thinking was kind of gloomy, right? 

So instead of beginning with gloom, let us begin here.  Right here.  Now.  That now in which all is. Here in presence time/space disappears.  One sees in this quiet that all is interconnected in a vast web that is immeasurable and beyond any label.  Holding it all together is Wholeness.  Wholeness is another word for God, Tao, Buddha nature, Source, Great Spirit, etc.  It is a word that points to the infinite eternal timeless ground of all, beyond knowledge.   Wholeness flows through all things including you and me.  Wholeness is within you and me.  As Empedocles shared, “God is a circle whose center is everywhere, and its circumference nowhere.”   It is right here, right now.  Always. Simply note, without the earth or sun we are not here.  Without all other species, humans are not here.  Without the universe, we are not here.  We are all interdependent.  This is a fact.  We are not separate.  You are, in your very nature, whole.

Interdependency arises out of wholeness. When one wakes up into wholeness, one sees that even if our culture destroys itself, wholeness itself would be untouched. For wholeness is, and has always been. It is not impacted by life or death, though both swim in its timeless current. Seeing this gives rise to great compassion for a culture that is stuck in the illusion of separateness.

So move slowly here with me. This isn’t something to quickly read. Read a little bit at a time, process, dig in, question, and then come back. This is from what I have come to understand. Quite possibly I am wrong. That is okay too. At the end comment, and bring in your own understanding and insights. Journey with me here. And again, take your time.

——-

Have you ever wondered…

Why is our culture so divisive?

Why is our culture so isolating?

Why is it so hard to be still, to not do anything, and to be completely okay with oneself?

From what I have come to see, our society programs us into the illusion of separateness.  Our whole system is built from this belief. Being born into this culture, we all are taught to split off from wholeness. Since the day we are born, the belief of separateness is reinforced daily due to the traumas and embedded conditioning within this deeply dysfunctional system, a vicious cycle that solidifies this divisive belief.  Culture is a belief system that is taught into us. Based on this, culture lives in our thinking.   We project this inculturated thinking upon the world.

——-

THE PROBLEM:

Our culture, formed thousands of years ago out of this separatist ideology, created oppressive hierarchy, and from this dualistic belief, we have created our ideas about right and wrong.  Species are now placed in categories with humans on top.  Categories have also been placed upon humans and formulating us into class systems.  The idea of race was born to distinguish who gets power and who doesn’t.  Sexism was created so a certain group, men, are given more power than women.  Poverty was created to give more power and wealth to the top of our hierarchal societal structure. We can go on and on about all the oppressions of our society.  Simply stated, from separation arises  duality, fear, conflict, isolation, drama, war and sorrow.

All people born into this culture whether rich or poor are conditioned to play out the roles of this system.  The wealthy “leaders” programmed into the cultural hierarchy have been taught to foster this belief and play out its drama.  The majority of our politicians play out roles that do a great job of creating division and leading us into more and more trouble, suffering, and ignorance so that we can all stay within our own roles.  Politicians are taught to disassociate from caring for the whole of humanity and nature while actively participating in the perpetuation of oppression and violence so they can stay in power and wealth.

Our system has created personhood as a corporation so they can spend as much money on politicians as they want. This gives them tremendous power to dictate policy and leaves the majority of people who have little money little power. CEO’s and the boards play out their roles for these corporations and must follow the dictates of profit. These roles provide  them great power to deceive, manipulate, and perpetuate destruction while filling their pockets with wealth.  Corporations have become the real movers and shakers of economics and politics of oppression and the ongoing destruction of the environment, rather than countries. The system of separation has provided corporations great power to focus on profit above all else, a profit which generally speaking goes to the top echelon of the corporation while most of the lower level workers are paid so little that they struggle to make ends meet and or go into debt.

Our divisive culture has made sure that  the media, governed by corporations, perpetuate the separatist belief of  how we should view the world as well as alienate us from each other so we will not come together to create any reasonable change.  Instead of in-depth and investigative reporting, the media presents a whirlpool of entertainment and corporate biased viewpoints. Rather than dialogue to gain greater understanding of complex issues, they show us superficial debates with little knowledge of the issue being discussed. This is wonderful for the system for it perpetuates ignorance and division. Advertisers pay into corporate media entities to shed light on how much we are all lacking and need to consume their products to be someone in this culture. This simply reinforces what we were taught in school and perpetuates the systems mythos of separation. We then go and consume in various ways, paying into the continuation of the system.

Last, our separatist culture has made sure to create an educational system that subtly indoctrinates us into its inherent separatist ideology that numbs us away from wholeness and interconnectivity.  Our educational system does a wonderful job in taking away children’s wonder, voice, while making them follow a prescribed curriculum in which they have no choice in the matter. Our educational system molds children into adults to follow the dysfunctional dictates of our culture that help create the idea that one is separate from the world and not okay in who one is. 

——

Our system does a great job in numbing us from wonder and connection through fear and ignorance and normalizing oppression.  We don’t even stir though we have enormous discrepancies between the top 1/2 of 1% of our population and the rest of society across the planet. We accept that we have a class system and poverty.  We accept war.  We accept pesticides and herbicides. We accept the suffering of cows, pigs and chickens. We don’t seem to really care about the continued ongoing oppressions.  We even rationalize and argue how we need to relentlessly tear down the environment for human developments.   

What are we doing with our life? Most of us get up early, leave our square house, get into our square vehicle, drive in traffic, get into our square office space, work jobs we despise, then get back into our square car, go back to our square home, turn of the tv, go to sleep and do it again.  Many families have both parents working and rarely have quality time with their children or to connect with nature.  Their lives are full of stress and yet they go and do this again and again.  This is accepted and normalized as we have adapted ourselves through our conditioning that this is just what is.  

Though climate change is becoming progressively worse each and every day, we have been taught  to ignore it, just give up and feel hopeless or to deny it. We feel isolated and alone.  We have anger, sadness, depression, anxiety, and sorrow.  It can feel so overwhelming.  

TO CLOSE - LEAPING INTO WHOLENESS

Yet, maybe, we have been taught to live in an illusion and if we can begin to wake up and come together, we can wake up and shift everything.

 I am sitting doing nothing.   I am just noticing the ocean, the texture of the meandering clouds and the warm breeze.  Thought can’t capture its vast complexity and depths.  And I am also pondering how is it to wake people up to the fact that they are already whole, okay, creative and interconnected?  Here, I realize something that is so simple yet seems so profoundly difficult...

Politicians are not going to save us.  Corporations are not going to save us. The media is not going to save us. The educational system is not going to save us.  The system is not going to save us. They will only foster fear, ignorance and take one away from joy, beauty, love, interconnectivity and Wholeness.  

The only thing to do is leap into oneself. 

What does this mean?

Take a moment and pause here with me. 

If we come from anger, anxiety, and frustration in order to fight against the system through reaction, we are by this very act providing the right type of fuel that makes the system go. Our system is about dysfunction, fear, hatred, anger, ideas of rights and wrongs, and the continual reinforcement that we are not okay.  If we don’t understand our own inculturated thinking, our actions feed the system.

By finally stopping and beginning to actually be aware of oneself, we can stop and get off the treadmill of doing, off the treadmill of our cultural expectations, the treadmill of hate and anger, and begin questioning the ideology of separation and the belief that one is not okay in just being. 

By slowing down, we can observe our interactions with life and dig into oneself.  For example……

Have you ever listened to your thoughts? Do you identify with them? Do you have emotions around them?  Do you push things down like anger or anxiety? Where do those feelings go?  Are we thought?  Are we the body?  How are you moving through life? Do you need to keep busy?  Why?  Do you consume and buy things consistently?  How come?  Do you get lost on your phone? How do you interact with your partner? Friends? Family?  People you don’t know?  Do you feel okay?  Do you not?  Do you adhere to a political party and hate the other party or parties? Where does your food come from?  Do you care when others suffer? Do you care when animals suffer?  Your pets?  Trees?  Are you aware during your conversations, especially around family?  Why are conversations so hard?  What does it mean to listen? 

And lastly, do you feel connected, or do you feel isolated and alone?  Are we busy to keep us from feeling this loneliness?  Do we distract ourselves to not see this?  Do you feel seen by others?  

Most of us, as we are conditioned, rarely take time to actually notice our own programs, our own thinking or beliefs that get in the way of actually listening.  This is because we have been programmed to not question or dig in. We have been conditioned to live by our programs in order to keep the system going.  Ever since we were children, we were told subtlety and overtly that our voices really didn’t matter.  We learned when to say something and when to shut up.  If we didn’t, we were labeled and identified as troublemakers.  

Our society does a wonderful job keeping us distracted, consuming and isolated. It’s an ongoing drama that is so comfortable we don’t want to actually discover peace, quiet and wholeness. These three things of drama; distraction, consumption and isolation, keep us from ever looking at the issues that face us.

Yet there is a great paradox here.  In order to leap into oneself, which only you can do, we need each other for support.  Our society tells us to essentially stay isolated, get caught in addictions, be entertained by our phones, social media, shows, podcasts, etc. rather than take time to make and have authentic connections.  We are not alone in actuality.  By pausing, we can begin to actually see another.  If we can pause, we can have the patience to slow down and dialogue with one another, and create a real sense of community.  By stopping and listening, to let go of our thought inculturated self structure, we can break free of conditioning and wake up. 

Essentially, any identity and belief is not true.  Words can point but they are never the thing itself.  What is born will die.  Go beyond.  We are not our culture.  The system is not outside of ourselves, but lives in all of us collectively.  If we let go of the enculturated self together, we can build a community that is based on health, wellness, interconnectivity, ecological principles, and sustainability.  For we are not really separate but imbued in Wholeness.  

This would mean a great revolution, It would be what Timothy Leary was pointing at when he said, "Turn on, tune in, drop out." He saw that the society that has been conditioned into us is  a rotting mausoleum of violence and hierarchical oppression. The only way to tear down the structure is to stop, leap into awareness of oneself while supporting each other while dropping out of the matrix of our society. We would come to see that our society is built out of the illusion that we are separate. This is Maya's world, the God of illusion. until we question this, we will forever be caught in her grand drama.

i leap

over the edge

no longer content

to satisfy dreams

to jump where dragons and monsters

roam

In the dream

ideas of good and bad

coexist

A realm of duality 

A drama of actors and actresses

nothing but illusion

and i am done playing the game

i leap

diving where few want to traverse

i began slaying

into the depths

of myself

discovering it is not easy 

to slay the things i love

not easy 

to slay what i thought i was

I discovered that there are

no doorways

nor keys

there are no paths

only i am

to where everything

that once was

is no longer

and divisions

and attachments dissolve

like clouds

where

sight becomes clarity

and maya is perceived directly

and the drama of

ignorance

and fear

are seen as

nothing more than phantoms

so here

i slow down

and move with the flow

and listen in

i rage into freedom

And commune with all

i am here

beyond all words

all symbols

all ideas

flowing

is where i am

not in holding back

not in covering up

not in appearances

but in oneself free

this is power that is greatest

not forced on others

but radiating what is

which can't be contained

here

i question and laugh

at the dictations of civilizations

i dispel authority

i see no religion

i laugh at the folly of politics

to walk through uncharted lands

is where creation leaps

unrehearsed

not nursing on second-hand knowledge

i leap into the unknown

already whole

i may be frowned upon by society

i am fine with that

i don't need society

to dictate right and wrong

they say that is morality

but what is morality 

but should and shouldn’t

the blind following 

of others ignorance

when one tries to be good

when one tries to be moral

that is not goodness

that is not moral

it is of fear

see if we question just a little

we will find society is a mausoleum

blind and rotting

a mirror of fear

a bondage of ego's attachments

and in the blind following

the conditioned responses

lies the violence of following

the power of authority

and the rise of wars and violations

i don't want any of that

i question and live free

why do i need ambition

when i have love dancing right here

i stand alone

yet encompass all

and in this living

compassion comes on its own