The message is: you’re the medium part 3

This post is a follow-up of this post and this post.

I sometimes wonder whether inter-being means that there is no such thing as an active or a passive state. When all things are connected, is your life being lead or can you have free will? I think this is a question asked from the point of view of the meaningful self. It starts from a perceived illusion. For a meaningful self as described by Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” free will is the ultimate evidence of self-realisation, of proof that you are here.

How can that be true if there are always things in life which you can’t consciously control? It also implies that the absence of free will is a bad thing, but your eyes see and hear without you consciously wanting it. They help you avoid collision when you’re driving a bike. It’s no ‘free will’ but it’s not a bad thing either, is it?

Descartian logic is also trapped in the following paradox: you can only be a free and independent you from others or regarding others. To me, this is inter-being. Every act towards free will is at least inspired by the world around you.

The message is: you’re the medium

Great Ocean Road, London Bridge, Port Campbell National Park 1959 © pizzodissevo

While listening to a dharma-talk by Thich Nhat Hanh I had the following insight about inter-being. It’s what I believe to be the foundation of the touching theory, a series which I hope to develop one day into a book.

You are always in between. You are the bridge that connects other people with the rest of the world. What would that mean?

It means there is no longer such a thing as superiority or inferiority. There’s not even equality. Every other person, every thing is an opportunity and an invitation to connect with a part of life that may have been out of reach, but nonetheless is a meaningful part of life.

That person or thing is not meaningful in itself. It becomes meaningful through connection. Its meaning comes from the fact that it brings you in touch with a different aspect of reality which goes much further than its own entity. In theory it also ceases to be meaningful when it ceases to connect.

That’s also why there is no such thing as a meaningful self. Meaning only arises through connection. Who you are becomes meaningful when you connect people and things with other people and other things. And it would cease to become meaningful whenever you stop being a connection.

To be continued…