Just as there is a collective human unconscious, there is a collective unified human consciousness. In addition there is, innately, a sense of unity in all that exists. From a quantum mechanical perspective, energy and consciousness are the foundations of all that exists. This is why there is a natural feeling within you that happiness, peace and love are the way things should be and war, suffering and hate are aberrations. As a very young child you felt connected and free. But as pain entered your life, fear arose and separation resulted.
Separation represents the most profoundly harmful experience in the progression of suffering. It removes the sense of belonging. A sense of belonging and unity are natural. Both pain and fear are natural. Separation is unnatural. When pain enters your life you recoil in fear, withdrawing in a natural survival reaction. The emotion of recoiling and survival is fear. When the fear is held consciously and resolved separation does not happen. When the fear is held unconsciously, when it is distracted from or suppressed, it leads to separation. The first part of protecting yourself from unresolved fear is separation.
Separation is the result of unconscious, unresolved fear. You move from love to fear to separation because you have never learned how to hold pain and resolve fear. Unresolved fear causes you to divide, to isolate and distinguish. This gives rise to disconnection. This draws you apart from all else. In separation you exist in a separate reality. Your reality moves from ‘we’ to you and me, us and them. Life moves from a flow of human expansion to a war with life. What was one has become many.
Separation challenges authenticity and your sense of a true, whole, worthy Self. When a sense of separation becomes your dominant experience, wellness, creativity, compassion and sufficiency are diminished. As pain moves you from love to fear, unresolved fear moves you from the spiritual wholeness of Self to separation, un-lovability and unworthiness, which are aspects of separation. In separateness you move from a soul and feeling based life to a more mental and physical based life. Child-like innocence is replaced with a sense of heaviness and burdened responsibility.
Unresolved fear is suffering on a mental and emotional level but separation is the fundamental experience of suffering on the level of Self.
The authentic Self, the natural, connected, authentic ‘You’ starts playing a role. The ego becomes preeminent. Your search for love, acceptance and worth comes to dominate your life. You become whatever is required to gain approval of others. You unsuccessfully seek worth and self-acceptance in accumulation, position and acknowledgment.
In your disconnection and separation you feel unlovable and unworthy. This represents the core of real suffering. This is the basis of human wounding. This is the power of unresolved fear and separation.
In separation your ego dominates. When the ego dominates your experience, the ego becomes protective. It’s a fear response. The ego begins to grasp for love of others, positive judgments from others, approval from others and recognition from others. Worth becomes something that you think can be outwardly acquired or bestowed upon you if you play the right role. Life becomes an unwinnable game or play. You can never be rich enough, beautiful enough or intelligent enough. In separation, life becomes suffering at a most basic level.
As you begin to live a life in separation, it becomes ‘normal’. Everyone is living this way. But there is a major outgrowth of a life lived in separation and that is that you begin to personalize everything.