Small Selves

Do we ever keenly observe our many selves within and without? Why do we get attached to the identities that separate us into nations, religions, races, and economic classes? Dosen't such attachment make us insensitive to the pain of others not included in our identity. For example, as an American, does one feel the pain of 600,000 Iraqis who have died since the Iraq war began in 2003? As a radical Islamist, does one feel the pain of the thousands of Americans who died on 9/11? As someone from the Indian upper middle class, does one feel the pain of the poor Indian farmers, more than 15,000 of whom commit suicides annually?

Why do we humans split ourselves in such a manner, that we stop feeling any love for another who is not a part of our "small selves?"

As individuals with small selves, we seem to recognize multiple personality disorder only when it becomes pathological. But what we may think is normal may not be so different from what is pathological, when seen from the viewpoint of the one who is fully self-integrated. A self-integrated being sees our insanity in the same way, as we see the insanity of the pathologically insane.

How can we recognize this insanity of being split, when everyone around us is also split?

This is the challenge of meditation.

Meditation is not an effort to become the whole. Meditation is the simple non-judgmental seeing of one’s fragmentation.

In that seeing, the first act of wholeness begins...