omniharmonicSeparation
Separation is the experiential and ontological condition of disconnection from the web of relationships that constitutes reality. While the story-of-separation names the dominant cultural narrative that normalizes this condition, separation itself refers to the lived experience of fragmentation — the felt sense of being cut off from the Earth, from community, from the sacred, and from dimensions of one’s own being. It encompasses the split between mind and body, between human and nature, between self and other, between masculine and feminine. Separation is not merely an idea one holds but a condition one inhabits, encoded into the nervous system, the institutions, and the relational patterns of a civilization that has organized itself around the premise that disconnection is the fundamental nature of existence.
In Benjamin Life’s mythic and philosophical writing, separation functions as a developmental passage rather than a permanent fall. In “The Ancient Future Ancestor’s Story,” the two-legged beings’ capacity for abstraction and categorization gradually severs them from their role as gardeners of Gaia, initiating a spiraling process in which the ability to see the world as broken-apart pieces overwhelms the capacity to perceive its wholeness. Yet this journey of separation is not portrayed as a mistake to be undone but as a necessary passage through which humanity gains the self-awareness required for a more conscious reunion. The essay describes ancestors who merge “the wisdom they had gained on the journey of separation and individuation with the Original Teachings,” creating a new order of wholeness that could not have existed without the harrowing passage through disconnection.
This understanding connects separation to wetiko, the cannibal spirit that thrives in the soil of disconnection, and to dominator-culture as its social expression. In “The Christ Meme,” separation is identified as the core wound of colonial consciousness — not merely a philosophical error but an embodied reality living in nervous systems, economic structures, and political institutions. The antidote is not a return to pre-separation innocence but an evolution toward interbeing, a recognition of fundamental interconnection that integrates rather than abandons the gifts of individuation. This developmental arc — from unconscious unity through separation to conscious reunion — is central to the entire body of work, echoing the alchemical journey from unconscious wholeness through dissolution to a higher-order integration.