Re-conceiving our Self, Re-creating our World

 “ Who am I?” This is one of the ultimate questions, one which we humans love to ponder. It is a question that can lead us down many winding paths, into many different costumes and roles, onto many different answers. I think of myself and my peers as teenagers, trying out new looks, new words, new attitudes, to find one that feels like it fits. Our sense of self can limit us immensely, or set us free to fly high and joyfully far. The human tendency to ask the question “ who am I ?” has, over the past few decades, fueled our media driven consumer society, pushed us down the path of hyper-individuality, and in turn consumed us and blinded us to more pressing matters (such as our ability to survive on this planet). This is one of those distracting cultural stories I spoke of earlier, in a recent post.We have become enraptured by all the answers given to us by consumer society, and we often forget to seek a deeper answer. When we ask the question “who am I?” truly of ourselves, and refuse to take someone else’s answer as truth, we may find powers available to us that we didn’t know we had. How we answer this question can determine our actions, and how we treat the world we live in. So clearly this question of identity can help us on our quest of creating a better world for ourselves.

What is your identity? Who are you? What part of you is the “ you”? We can look to answer this question via culture, biology, religion, spirituality, psychology, quantum physics, philosophy, and so on. One answer may actually be that we are many selves. We are our careers.We are our bodies, our finger nails, our eyes, our smile.We are the personality– the “small s” self– and also the “Higher Self” We are atoms. We are light. But are we only these things? Where do we end? This is a concept that stirs me. Where do we define our limits? Do I stop at the water I just drank? If the water is now me, is the well also me? Is my skin my boundary, or do I draw the boundary to include the food I eat, the air I breath, the land that harbors me, the hand that holds mine, the mother that birthed me, the child I birthed in turn? Buddhists recognize the concept of self as a human construct-they just see through it. It is a metaphor.We can put lines around our “self” and say that “ I end here”, but where we start and end is just a concept for us to understand ourselves by; it is a tool of perception. “ We can define it however we want, the definitions are arbitrary.” (Macy) If we want to live in a better world we need to look beyond the answer to the question of identity given to us by our culture.We need to find deeper answers. We need to re-conceive our “self”. We can do so with our very own eyes and minds and hearts, and the help of a couple of concepts.



“We are our relationships.”
You are your relationships. You are nothing without relationships. Literally. Everything about you is in relationship to something or someone else. Your atoms cannot make up your cells alone. They need friends. And your cells cannot make up your muscles without other cells. You would not be you without your mother or father. That relationship, or lack of it, created who you are today. Same with your friends. Everything you have come in to contact with–had relationship with on any level, however small– shaped you. You cannot separate yourself from your relationships. And thus, “ As you do unto others, so you therefore, do unto yourself. ( Thank you to Charles Eisenstein for smoothly articulating this resonant concept!)



The Ecological self
Growing up, I never really got the whole “we are One” stuff. Not only did it seem a little hokey to my adolescent self, I also just really couldn’t understand it. No small momentary glimpses of understanding penetrated, not through studying Buddhism and Hinduism in college, nor later meditating in groups or solo.The idea sounded good, but I just felt like me. I didn’t feel like I was everyone else, everything else outside my skin. But it began to click in when I truly comprehended the direness of our planet’s ecological state. It wasn’t a dramatic moment, rather a slow revealing from the world, and a growing willingness to look on my part. It was when I really allowed myself to understand the truth of our predicament– only then was I able to begin to feel that I was truly one with all life. Because when the earth that feeds me flounders and fails, than I , undoubtably, flounder and fail. There is no way around it. I’m in the earth and the earth’s in me. I am the earth and the earth is me. I know this not as some hypothetical woo-woo idea. It is more literal than most anything I can think of. Arne Naess, the father of the Deep Ecology movement, coined the term “ecological self” for this very knowing. My own self-interest lead me to understand, in my bones, that I am not just me. There is a larger me, a whole world of me–a whole universe, even, of me. Talk about Deep ( or broad).When you draw the boundaries of your identity to include the planet that is your very life, that is your “ecological self”. And it really is your “self” I am talking about here. It is in your self-interest that there is clean air to breath and clean water to drink. Naess talked about a natural process of maturation leading to wider and wider circles of identification, from ego to social self, metaphysical self, and ecological self. This is what I began to feel, and have continued to deepen into, as I grow to understand– both intellectually and emotionally/spiritually– the fragility and magic of life.This is a deepening process, and a broadening one. John Seed, an Australian activist, writes about this shift in sense of self as a spiritual one: “ ‘I am protecting the rainforest’ develops into ‘I am part of the rainforest protecting myself. I am that part of the rainforest recently emerged into thinking.” (Thinking Like a Mountain, pg 36)

The above concepts are myth-busters for the powerful paralyzing western cultural assumption of “We are separate.” As Derrick Jensen says," We identify more readily as ' civilized' than we do as ' living being'. " This is a misunderstanding that prevents us from knowing our true selves, and keeps us from creating a better world.  But when we begin to grasp the ideas and feelings of “ I am my relationships” and the “ ecological self” healing and empowerment occurs. As John Seed writes: “Alienation subsides. The human is no longer a stranger, apart. Your humanness is recognized as merely the most recent stage of your existence. . .As the fog of amnesia disperses, there is a transformation in your relationship to other species, and your commitment to them.” (Beyond Anthropocentrism,TLM, pg 35-36) Out of this comes more joy, more meaning. I know this to be true. My desire to be of service to the world grew tenfold, or more, as these concepts penetrated and worked their magic on my consciousness. As Arne Naess put it:



“ What humankind is capable of loving from mere moral duty or moral exhortation is, unfortunately, very limited. . . The extensive moralizing within the ecological movement has given the public the false impression that they are primarily asked to sacrifice, to show more responsibility, more concern, and better morals....[But] the requisite care flows naturally if the self is widened and deepened so that protection of free nature is felt and conceived of as protection of our very selves.” (Coming back to Life, Macy and Brown, pg 47)

Not only are we more motivated and energized to work for the benefit of life on earth, but we also enjoy a depth to our love of life that is surprising. No longer are we easily blinded and distracted by the hyper-individualistic desire to buy more, preen more, and waste our energy on the impossible striving for perfection. For we sense we are perfect already, as nature is perfect and awe-inspiring and miraculously powerful. And we realize, as our larger self is able, our own ability to weave life into new and more suitable forms.