Separation

Today I heard a comment like, "Separation causes suffering." Many in the room were quite quick to agree and there was much nodding of heads and murmured yeses. Separation is looked at as something to overcome; an undesirable, unrealized state of being. While it is so that "separation causes suffering," it seems that a vital understanding of what separation really "causes" is often overlooked.

What is experienced here, these days, is that separation causes everything. Without separation, nothing would appear to exist. Separation causes all phenomena to appear, so, yes, separation causes suffering; and it also causes joy, happiness, sorrow, me, you, rocks, trees, other, birds, love, hate...all apparent objects, feelings, thoughts, etc. exist, because of the apparently separated "I". In short, separation causes life.

It is because of this idea of separation that "I" experience beautiful sunsets, birds singing, the embrace of another, the sting of rejection, the pain of acid reflux, aging in the body, a solar eclipse, being flipped off by another driver, and on and on and on.

Separation is not a "state of being" to be overcome. It's not a feeling that needs to be conquered. It's what allows It/Me/One to experience Itself/Myself/InfiniteForms.

With separation: life, existence, phenomena. Without separation--the undifferentiated void.