# 12 The trap we set ourselves
We have a relationship with everything in our lives. And this relationship defines how we feel and act: Separation, fragmentation, and power are the baselines. And they have their effect.
We have been on a journey to understand our consciousness, which lately has led us to different parts of ourselves. We are now aware of the consequences trauma can have.
We started with the equation that the inner reflects the outer. Now we come back to this and ask ourselves: where is the connection between our consciousness, our ability to understand the world, and the destruction we create?
About relationships
We have a relationship with everything in our lives, including the people we live with, the dreams we suppress, the events that happen to us, and the world as we see it. This relationship defines how we feel, think, and act, how we understand a situation, and how we experience things. Everything expresses this relationship. The outer world reflects the inner world, which means our outer situation shows what kind of relationship we have.
But we define and shape our relationships inwardly. So, if I’m frustrated with my working situation, it’s not the work itself that’s boring me. The source of my frustration is the fact that I don’t allow myself to move on to another job and the underlying belief that I have to accept everything around me as given.
Let’s take this to the destruction of nature, the destruction of our communities, and the toxic culture we have to deal with. We realize this only expresses our relationship with nature and ourselves. If we want to understand it, we must examine this relationship and know where it comes from and how we maintain it. Only then will we be able to profoundly transform our relationship and change the ecological disaster, our addictive societies, and the wars raging all over the world.
Three paradigms
If we examine our relationship to nature and the world, we’ll find three paradigms that are closely interwoven. These three paradigms—separation, fragmentation, and power — create a culture of neediness, which is the main driver of our actions, whether social, political or cultural.
The principle of separation derives from our belief that we are separate from nature and each other, and that we are independent and not interdependent. It comes with the belief that we aren’t directly affected by how we treat nature and others. So, if we explore and destroy nature, nothing will happen to us.
The principle of fragmentation is built on the belief that everything is made out of smaller entities and that, to understand something as a whole, we only have to examine its parts and how they fit together. It’s a mechanical perspective with at least two blind spots: in life, everything is always more than the sum of its parts; and life is not machinery but an ongoing dynamic that we can only be part of but never will understand as a whole.
Our principle of power is based on the hierarchy between men and nature. We believe that we have the right to exploit both nature and ourselves.
All these three principles correspond to the desires arising from our senses and our thinking.
The uselessness of being outward-orientated
A child lives in oneness during pregnancy and the first months of life. There are no boundaries, no separation between child and mother, no ‘I’ and ‘you’, just one being. Only later does the child slowly experience herself as different from her mother and the world she is living in. Gradually, the ‘I’ starts to emerge in relationship to the world, and the child does this by identifying herself with certain worldviews, experiences, patterns, and ways to deal with the world. This is a normal and healthy process, part of growing up. Indeed, it is necessary as it leads to the individuation of a child. But individuation is not separation; it doesn’t need to end in neediness, as it usually does.
To understand why individuation turns into separation, fragmentation and neediness, we must return to Robert Kegan and his model of adult development. We must take a closer look at what he calls the “socialized mind”: a person who is mostly outward-oriented and tries to understand and fulfill the expectations of others. While this mind is common, it doesn’t need to be. It deviates from the maturation nature is looking for.
If we could, we would strive for self-realization: we would try to figure out what we can and are meant to do in this life. And if we fully understand what that means, we will follow that path. The ‘self-authorized mind’ from the Kegan model is a necessary step. It’s the next one after the individuation of a child and an adolescent; it’s an essential step of being an adult: being ‘responsible’, being able to respond to what’s occurring in one’s life. But it is not the goal. Self-realization means not only identifying oneself and finding answers to questions like: why are we here? What can we contribute? It means recognizing that the self is an expression of universal intelligence and strives to be shaped by it. This is what Kegan calls the “self-transforming mind”, a mind that serves the greater one.
If we change society, we change the path of our lives
Our ‘socialized mind’ is simply a result of societies built on the principles of obedience; cultures that work with shame and blaming, being wrong, being worthless, and the need for guidance and shaping. We can shape childhood, youth and growing up differently so that, by growing up, our children immediately enter self-realization and self-leading. But we must understand how deeply we have engraved separation, fragmentation, and power into our daily lives.
To give you an example, the way we define pregnancy, birthing, childcare, and upbringing is built on the constant interruption of the relationship between mother and child, and the idea that the mother is not competent to give birth to her child and raise it. We have culturally overwritten a process that has worked and has been refined by nature for millions of years. Now, what’s the result? It’s really simple. We are not bonding properly. We are not nourishing ourselves and our children properly. We are constantly setting mother and child in a context of lack, anxiety, and fear of being inadequate. And while we are not nourishing and being nourished properly, we develop neediness.
So we are hungry; we are hungry for love and connection, trust, and esteem, but we cannot supply ourselves with them. We are living with a ‘socialized mind’. And this mind is never stable, as it always relies on the judgment of others for its well-being. And this is never secure. While we didn’t learn and don’t teach ourselves to turn inwardly and find the source of love and strength in ourselves, we try to overcome our hunger through endless activities and consumption. But in doing so we don’t heal the wounds; we only cover them and suppress our emotions, worsening our situation in the long run. So we are caught up in an accelerating dynamic of consumption, destruction, separation and fragmentation, neediness, and addiction, and this can be observed throughout the last couple of decades. This is our path: we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves.
What we create, we can change
But all of this is man-made; it’s not natural or inevitable, which means it’s changeable. To realize this, we must understand an important distinction between the ‘socialized’ and the ‘self-authorized’ mind. The ‘socialized’ mind doesn’t know that he only lives by a world model. He holds to what he sees and perceives as his world. You can see this extensively in modern science. Most scientists simply ignore the fact that everything they do is done in their bodies and is shaped by their bodies. They stick to the paradigm of objective truth, although the history of science has countless stories of truths that aren’t truths anymore. Scientists can be very rigorous in their research but miss the point that they must work on their consciousness. That’s simply because they live in a realm unaware of a greater reality.
Only in later developmental stages of consciousness can one realize that one’s worldview is only a worldview and can be changed. And only then can one learn the fundamental truth: „A change of worldview can change the world viewed.“1
As long as we hold ourselves in the socialized mind, we hold ourselves in destruction. This is the trap. The longer we stay in it, the more we reinforce it by perpetuating unhealthy dynamics. That’s why it becomes more difficult for us to leave. But if we can change our underlying paradigms, we will change our perception and understanding of the world, which leads to another world. And we will free ourselves from the trap we build.
Pearce, J.C. (2002) The Crack in the Cosmic Egg: New Constructs of Mind and Reality. Simon and Schuster