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Writer's pictureClaudio Da Silva

From "Having" to "Being" to "Interbeing": Individual Enlightenment vs. Collective Enlightenment

Updated: Mar 22, 2020

Individual enlightenment doesn't really exist; only collective enlightenment exists. We don't exist as individuals. Relationships are what make us exist. We are all connected. Even when we are alone, we are still in a relationship - in a relationship with our body, our emotions, our thoughts, the air, gravity, nature around us and basically with all that we can call "life".


The esoteric view, the religious view and the atheist view are all experiencing friction against each other and even inside their own ideological view. War is all over the place, not only countries against countries, rich against poor, so-called races and ethnical groups against each other, nationalists against globalists, young against old, men against women, heterosexuals against all other sexual orientations; war has its roots in how we understand relationships. We wage war on others everyday. We wage war on ourselves every second through blame, shame, deception, frustration and all the negative feelings we carry with us. This is caused by lack of bonding, attachment or connection with Life. How can we get out of this situation? 


Real war is mental war


Real war in the world and within ourselves is a war of ideas, mental war. War doesn't start with our body, nor our emotions, nor our soul. War starts with thoughts, with our beliefs. If we make peace in the realm of our beliefs, peace will automatically and indubitably occur in the realm of flesh. What links and connects everything and everyone is the idea and the concept of Life. Everybody agrees on wanting life and wanting to have a better life by seeking happiness, security, love, etc., but the latter are all consequences of the former. We all have different concepts of happiness, security, love, etc. but we all have the same life in us. Maybe one can say I don't know what happiness, love or security is, but one cannot say "I don't know what life is" because he/she is alive... that is a fact. Reconciling with Life can reconcile us all.


Reconciling with life can reconcile us all


Where reconciliation is, life and true relationship are. We have to move away from a deadly and destructive civilization based on the false maxim "I think therefore I am". This philosophical view gave sovereignty to intellect and modernity as its consequence. However, if we want to create one human living community, we are invited to reconnect with this new and very old truth of "we relate therefore we are", which gives sovereignty to the wholeness of humankind, nature and the entire cosmos. What is more powerful - our little intellect or the infinite and eternal cosmos? What are we really seeking - modernity or eternity? If we manage to reconcile with ourselves (physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually) and in all of our relationships (family, partner, colleagues, enemies, nature, Creation/God/Life Force, etc.), life flows in our entire being and connects us to what we really are: interbeings.


This destructive world is based on "having". We are an incommensurably increasing quantity of people who are rejecting this lie of existing through having and are instead working hard on existing through being. We work on ourselves by healing from our darkness and by awakening and nurturing our light. I'm inviting you to the next and last step. You can only Be by Interbeing. Being on your own doesn't exist. Only THE RELATIONSHIP of your being with all living creatures around you exists.


Only THE RELATIONSHIP of your Being with all living creatures around you exists.


Individual Enlightenment does not exist in the end. If we want to go all the way to the end, we need to seek Collective Enlightenment. World peace will only be incarnated and manifested when we reconcile with horizontal love (loving one another) and vertical love (loving the Source of Life). Life is not the opposite of death. Life is always eternal. I invite you to tap into everything that makes you alive around you today, not tomorrow. This is the start of eternal peace, eternal security and eternal happiness.



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