Oneness and separation are inextricably linked. Therefore, oneness is the case that transcends and includes separation. Prove it, you say? You are the proof. Consider….
We’ve talked about how becoming the 1st-person point of view of oneness is the human gift, or human destiny, if we get there. Not thought. Not feeling. Oneness. No-Thingness. As one’s self-identity. But at this point in our story, oneness identity does not come naturally. We may ponder it, think about it, understand it—and that use of thought and cessation of thought is an ability uniquely human on Earth so far as we can tell. But because it belongs to the mental realm where choice lives, not the reflexive physical where we become such a being developmentally, we don’t necessarily get there. In fact, rarely do we get there, which is why we have and need these unconscious and fractal reminders of our true nature to poke and prod us awake.
Unconscious reminders are those that come from ourselves out of the repressed depths. They bubble up as insights and inventions, behaviors and artistic expression. They come as beliefs and as laws.
Fractal reminders—which, technically, we could say unconscious reminders also are—come through natural means, as if from outside of ourselves. These can take many forms. They can, for example, be events we observe in nature that we note apply to ourselves—the mirrors of everyday life. They can take place within us, without us, and, in the case of the most fundamental natural bond we create, within/without us.
What’s within/without us, you ask? Child birth.
Child birth: where nothingness and thingness meet to create life.
Child birth: where time stops and self wipes away in one brief, orgasmic flash. Then time and self pick back up with the parents-to-be, and also starts anew with a zygote. (1)
Child birth: where the in/out sex act forms the inner being who will come out nine months later with his or her own inner life.
Child birth: how the force of nature sets us up to partake in nurturing relationship, to realize our interconnectivity on the most basic, physical-into-emotional, undeniable level. Physical-into-emotional is important. Physically, we need air and food and that can be meaningful or robotic. But child rearing can’t be robotic. Family and nurturing has a necessary, inescapable “higher” or “other” component, which is emotional. We must feel for and take care of an infant. We must feel for and take care of a new mother. If that fails on the personal relationship level with the father, it is taken up by the extended family. If that fails, by the society. (2)
Birthing holds it all, the story of us, literally and figuratively. Heck, birthing bears us to read the book of life in the first place! And the process of creating family is a constant reminder that we are inextricably linked in a chain of being that is the kissing cousin of oneness. So, even if oneness as identity actualization is a step too far, we cannot deny that we are oneness in action.
Well, we can deny it. We can look for some other reason for all existence being inextricably linked up and down the chain of being. But in our denial, there we still are, being oneness. Being, whether self-identifying as oneness or not. Being whether born anew in wholeness consciousness or just plain physically born.
And if you’re anything like baby me, being means balling your eyes out.
—————-
1.) This is not to say that a zygote is a self or a baby, but the beginning of the clock ticking on a budding personal awareness.
2.) And sometimes that fails, too. There is no perfection here. All of this developmental talk assumes the healthier outcome. Yes, there are tragedies like miscarriages, abusive parents, sociopaths who feel nothing, and traumatized mothers who fall through the cracks of a broken system. But we’re talking about the main life drive without which our species would fail.