The Illusion of the Separate Self

"Everything is really everyone, and all those beings have their own agency, point of view and forms of life" – James Bridle

After all the December rain, the gardens of Jo’burg feel so exuberant, generous and joy giving that I can’t help feeling that I’m entering into this year with a calmer orientation to the intensity that this year promises.

In about a week, we’re headed to Kerala with Breathwork Africa for our second Breathwork Immersive and a week after that, I will be heading to New York City to offer breathwork training for www.thebreathecollective.org.  I’m so excited about our little breathing community that is gathering momentum in the city.

As I have been preparing for these sessions, I have considered the meaning of self-hood and how preoccupied we have become with what ‘the self’ has come to mean. As the world has become more complex and volatile, our need for self-determination and identity has intensified. The more uncertain the ground beneath us feels, the more tightly we cling to the idea of an autonomous, separate ‘me’.

Our human impulse to understand the nature of reality by examining the details of an individual part can be valuable up to a point. Meaning and energy is lost when whole interconnected system becomes fragmented by borders and constructs.

When we approach self-awareness in this limited way, it ironically can create more anxiety. Often the more self-aware we become, the more material we have to and analyse.

In the quest to reclaim a sense of self, we risk forgetting this deeper truth- that the self we are defending is, in many ways, an illusion. We are not singular beings but living ecosystems. And yet, here lies the paradox of our time. Can we hold personal agency and responsibility while simultaneously recognising the illusion of separateness?

Consider the life force of the breath. We share a vast ocean of air, exchanging molecules continuously with one another, across borders, across species, across time. The very molecules that are exchanged in our lungs and cells today have passed through the bodies of a trees, animals and other human beings from the beginning of time.

The physical body itself is created from what we consume. A single meal carries within it the labour of countless hands, the generosity of soil, sun, rain, and seed. The genetic code that orchestrates our existence arises from an immense ancestral pool. Even our mitochondria, the engines of our life force, carry DNA inherited from a common maternal ancestor, linking us through deep evolutionary time. More incredible still: the human body contains more bacterial organisms than human cells. And were it not for inhibitory neurons in the nervous system, we might feel one another’s physical pain as our own.

Perhaps the invitation is not to dissolve the self, but to expand it. To allow our sense of identity to grow less constrained, less defended, more permeable. To remember that we are not merely connected to life, but are expressions of a vast, intelligent, and unfathomable system. Perhaps the longing for wholeness is not fulfilled through perfecting the separate self, but through remembering that we are made of stardust, breath, bacteria, ancestry, and unseen threads of relationship, woven together in an exquisite tapestry we call life.

Listen to this enriching conversation with Krista Tippet and James Bridle which explores this idea in more depth.

Listen Here

I’m currently reading Jame’s Bridle’s book ‘Ways of Being “and it’s blowing my mind!”.

How then, might working consciously with breath be a way to embody this idea and to enter into an expanded and compassionate relationship with your health, vocation, life transition or leadership journey?

May this year offer you abundant opportunities to be experience this ever expanding and evolving interconnected self. I would be honoured to explore this with you.

In breath and co- creation.

Ela