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One of the first (and, as spiritual progress goes, worst) things advanced minds do is immediately try to seperate itself from the environment surrounding it. I refer you to Robert Bakker's novel, <i>Raptor Red</i>, where lacking any formal language with which to identify itself, the main character simply refers to herself as "Red", due to a red patch on her snout. Advanced minds are always categorical like this. The first thing they do is split the world into "Me" and "Not Me". Then, everything in the "Not Me" category is split into "Good for Me" and "Bad for Me". It's this kind of categorization, essential to our physical and egotistical survival, that prevents human beings from feeling the connectedness that does, indeed, exist. You *are not* a unique and beautiful snowflake, standing alone, your survival independent of those around you. You *are* unique in the sense that a liver is different from a kidney is different from a heart. We're all part of this big, bumbling organism, being left alone to experience the societal evuivalent of adolescence all alone. If we, as a species, can remove the barrier of ego that seperates us from each other, we'll be much better off.
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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
---Friedrich Nietzsche
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