Transcending the duality of ‘self’ and ‘other’ is only one of several goals on the inner journey of spiritual expansion, but is no less important for being one of the crowd attending your soul’s unveiling. I’ve been coming across references to it in my own reading for decades, likely starting with the north American Zen of Alan Watts, whose books and cassette tapes were widely available in my early years (70/80’s). After decades of practice and implementation it has become second nature, an almost daily and sometimes hourly reminder that I am what I perceive (Thou are that: Tat Tvam Asi) in image, thought and emotion. And of course this includes the reprehensible behaviour of others, the deliberate ruthless cruelty that we see all around us, only occasionally balanced by kindness, compassion and charity.
This insight is pointed up in many ways, one of which is the notion, expressed by Jung and others, that what we deny in ourselves is what we eagerly see and suspect in others. Our shadow self that stalks the bright, cheerful and sociable being that we admire in the mirror before setting out for the day, tossing out scraps of self-criticism, self doubt, and the low self-esteem that the proud ego loves to trade in. The shadow that often succumbs to envy, insult and resentment; the shadow that plots imaginative revenge but never acts on the impulse.
We think we know all too well what motivates others in the competition for achievement, status and praise and can easily feel justified in employing the defensive strategies that easily come to hand with years of practice. In doing such we tacitly admit to the dark operations of our own shadow self, feeling the inevitability of such procedures in a society that seems to value competition over cooperation. In the middle of these interactions we can see that we are all alike in our strategic implementations but we tend to shrug it off as unavoidable. Which, under the current rules of the game, it is.
So how to change the rules of the game? That is a question we on the conscious inner journey often ask ourselves. When everyone else is playing to win, how do we show our reluctance to enter that race without giving the impression of snobbery or superiority, especially in a corporate structure, where relegation to wimp status ensures further ill treatment and back stabbing mockery. The transition to a new set of values can be a challenge, but not an insurmountable one.
Acting the willing loser arouses pity and scorn in those who set themselves up as winners. One waits patiently to see whether the scorn or the pity wins out. One can influence that outcome by the practice of projecting unconditional love, giving the ‘winner’ piles of energy to their bolster their dodgy heart chakra. When done without any acknowledgement or subtle indications it can work its magic, taking the wind out of all willful aggression, and often remaking the warrior into a lovable pussy cat.
There are of course, many other strategies, but that is one I know from experience with many clients, that can work small wonders in the workplace. In its practice the initiator can often see just how human and weak the workplace warrior actually is, replacing your anxiety with insight. Insight which shows just how common such aggressions are, leaving the erstwhile ‘victim’ on an ethical par with the former ‘victor’. In that new level playing field the insight that the dichotomy of ‘self’ and ‘other’ is but an illusion based on non-existent boundaries. The duality thus dissolved is not only a feather in the cap of the aspirant but one way ticket to the next stop on the journey to that fabled destination of not only seeing the One instead of the many but arriving there for a short stay in what has sometimes been called Unity Consciousness, where as I heard this morning in my doctor’s office: “all is one and one is all, to be a rock and not to roll” (Robert Plant, lyrics to Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin.)
Another mode of perception that can lead to the transcendence of ‘self and other’ is the ingestion of psychedelics, these days most often facilitated by the ingestion of psilocybin mushrooms, now legally available and encouraged by the very authorities that once condemned it, when the ‘high’ which includes many attributes and insights, shows quite clearly that the ‘perceiver’ and the ‘perception’ are not only joined at the hip but bonded at the heart and whatever is felt at the moment as the ‘mind’. Some previously unsuspected aspect of the intuition leaps into the psychedelic fray and convinces the experiencer, without so much as a hint of waffling, that which is perceived is indeed a function of the perceiver’s consciousness, reflecting any assumptions, preconceptions and prejudices that may have been built into the system from birth and education, as we are sheep-dipped into history’s settling of scores.
With that insight one can be catapulted into a realm where nothing else exists but perception, whether it be of individual humans, collectives of various kinds, landscapes urban or rural, belief systems, – religious, political, economic, metaphysical. The one can see how those perceptions lead to ideas, ideas that take hold and begin to dictate their parameters, their reality tunnels as they have often been called. Then understandings of myth and legend and how they feed into history, as it is written and known, make their presence felt. The experiencer can easily get lost in the welter of ideas and perceptions, inspiring as they come and go, but rarely leaving a permanent platform from which to utter the new truth. Which is just as well as we already have an overflow of insistent orators plying their trade and pushing for prominence.
Others have felt that prayer and meditation are equally useful in the transcendence of self and other. The vehicle seems to be the silent calm such rituals afford. A calm that consoles as it breeds humility. The temporary cessation of expression, the pause on noise. The realization seems to rise unbidden from the silent calm, like bubbles on a heated pot. People will tell me, more or less, ‘It just came to me and I knew it was so. I had read and heard but then I just knew, and none could dissuade me.’
“Strangers passing in the street/by chance two separate glances meet/and I am you and what I see is me” (Pink Floyd, Echoes, lyrics by Roger Waters)
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