The Illusion of Separateness

Learning to Forgive the Ones Who Didn’t Mean to Hurt You

The room around me is cool and quiet in the moments after I’ve stretched and flowed and moved with my breath. I’m alone with myself and the inner peace cultivated through my practice. Yet, for some reason, I still reach for my phone and tap on the app that I’m currently most addicted to. Instagram. (Typical millennial).

People will hurt you. It’s the thought that generates in my mind after seeing a post from someone who hurt me once. And while it is undeniably true that people will hurt you, I learned a long time ago that most of the time, they don’t do it on purpose.

Do you remember middle school? Hormones raging. Changes happening way too fast. New social environments. The pressure to start growing up before you’re fully ready… or was that just me?

Anyway, this was when I first had to learn about getting hurt by people you love. I honestly don’t remember the first time it happened – it’s hard, because I never really knew what I did to deserve the cruelty that was being directed at me. I just remember that sometimes, my middle-school best friend was so angry with me, she would pretend I didn’t exist.

“Did you hear something?” She would say to our peers whenever I tried to speak to her. To ask her what was wrong, what I’d done, and how I could fix it. I never got answers, though.

Shame and pain would build up in my body – forming knots in my throat, causing me to physically shrink into myself. And at the end the day, the only way to release the tension was to cry (privately of course — to avoid further shame and humiliation).

Sometimes this lasted for a day. Sometimes for a week. Sometimes longer… And in the end, when she would finally give in and start talking to me again, I was always grateful, even though she never did tell me what I’d done wrong. 

This is the reason why I know that most of the time, people don’t hurt you on purpose. Kids are innocent. They’re playing out behaviors that they learn at home. They’re operating on a purely emotional and hormonal level. And especially when it comes to middle school kids, they’re just trying to survive.

Okay, sure, some kids are bullies. But even then, they aren’t behaving that way because they want to hurt others. It’s more about the attention it gets them. The status that comes with being a bully. And the way others perceive them. Or maybe it’s about the quiet pain that they’re carrying inside, but don’t know how to manage or express... Bottom line, it’s about them. Not about the kids they’re hurting.

The thing is, wounded children grow up to become wounded adults. And in a lot of cases, people never really learn how to manage, heal, or alchemize the hurts that live within them. And then, often, those hurts end up spilling out onto others. 

I didn’t always understand this. Certainly not in the cruel hallways of my public middle school, or the intimidating classrooms of my massive high school. Not even in the higher educational wisdom afforded to me through my college years. I spent all of that time living in the victimhood mentality of being hurt by others. A mentality that led me toward many more hurts that could have been avoided.

No. It wasn’t until I started exploring wellness, spirituality and healing that I began to see things from a bigger picture. Now, my spiritual understanding of life takes the lead in how I see things.

As soon as I see the post — the one from the beginning of this story — I close the instagram app and put my phone down. A heaviness settles over me as the emotional residue that still lives in my body begins to resurface. I try to let it out with a deep breath, even as I’m already aware that I’ll need more than my breath to move through it. So I open my phone — this time with intention — and start writing my way through it.

Sitting there, holding the weight of the phone in my hands, I remember something I’ve been understanding more and more lately: the illusion of separateness. When we are born on Earth as humans, we’re born into this sense of separateness; an illusion that is fortified by the self-focused lens that’s embedded within our societies and cultures.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being self-focused. It’s just that sometimes, we need each other too. We need people that we can see ourselves in – the pieces we already know and love, the parts we want to develop, and even the bits we don’t like so much, (or that we can’t quite see on our own).

I needed my middle school friend – the one who hurt me – because she helped me recognize the part of me that shrinks away at the thought of having done something wrong… the part of me that feels like she is inherently wrong. Recognizing that part of myself helped me develop the side of me that’s rebellious and bold. There’s so much magic in that.

We are all fragments of the Universe, wholly complete within ourselves. But we are not separate. And if you tap deeply into your own being, you can really feel it – the oneness of everything.

But because we are human, we forget. We get lost in the illusion of separateness. And as a result, we fail to understand that every single person on this planet is struggling through the mess of being human, just like us, (only, through their own, individual, fragmented lenses). We fail to realize that actually, we are all the same.

I wonder if we would be as quick to hurt or feel hurt by others if we recognized that we are not actually separate. If we recognized that when one person hurts another person (whether directly or indirectly), they’re really just expressing the hurts that live within themselves.

Looking at life through this lens, my anger softens. I start to feel more compassionate toward the experiences of others. I witness the pain and sadness that drives them. And I start to realize that if another person hurts me, I can simply remind myself that the only person in charge of my emotions, how I feel and express them, and whether or not I let them linger, is me.

As I sit with these reflections, the heaviness begins to soften. I let it go with a big breath in and out. I remind myself that I have forgiven those I once felt hurt or wronged by. And I send them silent thoughts of love and compassion. But that doesn’t mean the pain of being hurt won’t creep back in again sometimes. And when it does, I’ll do my best to acknowledge it, let myself feel whatever needs to be felt in that moment, and then, lovingly let it go.

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