The Evolved Podcast

What They Never Taught You About Being Human

Subscriber Episode • • Aaron Scott • Season 1 • Episode 20

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What if the boundaries we perceive between ourselves and others, between humans and nature, between mind and body, are all illusions? This profound question lies at the heart of our exploration into the myth of separateness—a story so deeply embedded in our culture that we rarely question it, yet it shapes every aspect of our lives.

The belief that we are fundamentally separate creates suffering on every level. When we see others as "them," empathy collapses, social systems become exploitative, and our sense of self grows fragile and performative. Our separation from nature leads to ecological destruction, while our divorce from the sacred creates an existential vacuum—a spiritual hunger that no amount of consumption can satisfy.

Yet biology tells a different story. Through mirror neurons, we literally feel others' emotions. Our microbiome connects us to ecosystems. Trees communicate through underground networks. Quantum physics shows particles influence each other across vast distances. In moments of deep presence—whether through meditation, love, or crisis—people consistently report experiencing a profound unity with all life.

Meanwhile, global systems depend on maintaining this illusion of separateness. Industrial capitalism breaks life into units of profit. Nation-states foster "us versus them" thinking. Religions that become institutions stop pointing toward oneness and begin policing access to it. Modern medicine treats the body like a machine rather than an ecosystem. These systems metastasize, producing war, loneliness, ecocide, and spiritual amnesia.

The antidote isn't fighting these systems on their own terms—it's remembering what they've forgotten. When we reintegrate what they've severed—body with mind, self with earth, pain with purpose, spirit with collective—we become dangerous to systems that profit from our disconnection. Our liberation isn't just personal; it's systemic.

What kind of world might we create if we truly remembered we belong to one another—not metaphorically, but biologically, emotionally, cosmically? Every time you choose to see someone rather than judge them, every time you honor your own need for rest or truth, you break the spell of separation. You become the bridge to a world where success means rising together, power means stewardship, and love is our natural state.

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Speaker 1:

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Evolved Podcast, a place for unfiltered truth, deep reflection and heightened awareness. Here, knowledge isn't just information, it's a tool for transformation. Each episode is designed to challenge illusions, reveal patterns and empower, not to entertain but to awaken. We live in a world that teaches us to divide Me from you, mind from body, human from nature. It's a world built on boundaries Between countries, between races, between what we call self and what we call other. But what if those lines are lies, not real, mere illusions self and what we call other. But what if those lines are lies, not real, mere illusions? What if the aching loneliness, ecological collapse, the fractured systems we navigate every day are not just symptoms of a broken world, but symptoms of a broken story? In this episode, we're going to challenge the narrative that you are alone. We'll explore the quantum physics that says we're entangled, the ecosystems that whisper our interdependence, the microbes that shape our minds, the emotions we pass between each other like breath. Because the truth is you were never separate, not from each other, not from the earth, not even from the source that gave you life. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. So take a breath, let's begin.

Speaker 1:

You might be wondering why does any of this matter? This idea, the illusion of separateness might sound abstract, esoteric, like something distant from your real life. After all, you've got to pay bills, a job to keep people to take care of. What does an idea about connection and oneness have to do with any of that? And here's the quiet truth most of us are never told Everything.

Speaker 1:

This illusion that you are alone, that others are them, that nature is outside of you, that your mind and body are split, shapes every single decision you make, whether you're aware of it or not. It shapes how you move through the world, how you treat others, how you talk to strangers, how you handle conflict, how you define success, how you live and how you love. When you believe you are separate, you overwork yourself because you think your worth must be earned. You ignore your body's pain because you've been taught it's a machine. Your worth must be earned. You ignore your body's pain because you've been taught it's a machine. You distrust others, withhold vulnerability and live behind masks. You exploit the earth's resources because you've forgotten they're your own lungs, your own skin. You seek validation from man-made systems that were never designed to honor your truth. You might not say it aloud. But the belief is there. I am alone, I must protect myself, I must prove myself, I must survive, and from that place it's almost impossible to truly feel safe, connected or free. But the moment you start to peel back that illusion, even just a little, something shifts. You realize your worth was never conditional, your pain was never a weakness, your intuition was never a fantasy and you were never meant to do any of this alone. This isn't just spiritual poetry, it's the foundation of consciousness, the lens through which you see yourself and the world. Change the lens and everything changes. So no, this isn't irrelevant. This is the quiet linchpin of your entire life. It's the water you've been swimming in the story, beneath your story, and once you see it, you can start telling a new one, one where wholeness isn't a reward. It's your starting point.

Speaker 1:

From the moment we are born, we begin absorbing stories that will shape our sense of reality. These stories are not just told to us. They are built into the language we learn, the systems we live in and the relationships we form. One story above all becomes a scaffolding for everything else the story that we are separate Separate from one another, separate from nature, separate from the divine, divine, separate even from parts of ourselves. This story is so deeply embedded that we rarely notice it, but it touches everything, from the way we structure our economies to the way we grieve a breakup. It tells us success must come at someone else's expense, that love must be earned, that nature is a resource, that life Is a competition and our pain is a personal failure.

Speaker 1:

When we believe we are fundamentally separate from other people, suffering arises in the form of ego, competition, judgment, alienation and conflict. Empathy collapses. If I am fundamentally not you, your pain becomes less real to me and compassion becomes optional. Social systems become exploitative. Others are treated as means to an end, labor, resources or threats rather than extensions of ourselves. Loneliness and identity crises grow. We obsess over defining ourselves in contrast to others, and our sense of self becomes fragile and performative. This illusion gives rise to tribalism, racism, economic disparity and war, all rooted in the idea that my survival is not your survival.

Speaker 1:

Separating ourselves from nature has led to the ecological destruction and spiritual desolation of the modern world. We treat earth not as a living system we are embedded within but an object to dominate. Biodiversity, loss and pollution stem from this delusion of control rather than the real world interdependence. Indigenous worldviews, which saw rivers, forests and animals as kin, were dismissed as primitive by a mindset that prized extraction over reciprocity. When we forget that we are nature or the actual universe reflecting on itself, we create systems—industrial agriculture, fossil fuels, consumerism—that extract until there is nothing left to sustain us. This is not just environmental collapse, it is a spiritual one. Modern materialist paradigms have divorced consciousness from the cosmos, reducing life to mechanisms and meaning to myth. The sacred becomes irrelevant. The soul is treated as fantasy. Healing becomes pharmaceutical, not holistic. Death becomes final, not transformational. Our bodies are treated like machines, our emotions like glitches. This division creates an existential vacuum.

Speaker 1:

People suffer not only from mental or physical illness, but from spiritual hunger, a loss of meaning, mystery, a connection to something greater than themselves. These divisions are illusions created by the mind, amplified by culture, religion and economy. But in truth there is no other. There is no out there, there is no non-spirit, there is only interbeing, a seamless web of life, intelligence and energy that we are never outside of, only asleep within. When this illusion of separateness dissolves, whether through deep love, meditation, sacred medicine or crisis, people often report a profound unity with all life, with the universe, with the divine, and in that unity, suffering recedes, not because pain disappears, but because the isolation around it does. But what if that story isn't true? What if it's not even close? One of the most fundamental errors in the modern human worldview is this belief in separateness. This illusion fractures reality into artificial categories self and other, humanity and earth, spirit and matter, and and from that fractured, profound suffering arises. We construct identities in contrast to those around us and structure entire systems economic, political, even cultural on the premise of scarcity and survival.

Speaker 1:

But biology itself tells a different story. Human beings are neurologically wired for connection. The presence of mirror neurons in the brain means we literally feel the emotions of others. Our nervous systems synchronize in moments of shared experience. This is not metaphorical, it's measurable. We wince when someone else is hurt. We cry when another's voice cracks. The boundary between my emotion and yours is far more porous than we were taught.

Speaker 1:

Our interdependence with nature is equally irrefutable. The human microbiome, the collection of trillions of microbes living in our bodies, comes from the world around us soil, food, water and contact with other living beings. These microbes regulate everything from our digestion to our mood. You are, biologically speaking, a living ecosystem. You are not in nature, you are nature itself. This truth deepens further in ecological systems. Trees, once thought to be solitary organisms, are now understood to exist in complex underground communication networks via microhazel fungi, through which they share nutrients, send warnings and support weaker neighbors. Nature reveals that forests are not collections of trees, but communities. Your breath, too, is not your own. Every inhale is oxygen produced by plants. Every exhale is carbon dioxide returned for photosynthesis. The cycle is seamless there is no line where you end and life begins.

Speaker 1:

Even modern physics offers insights that shatter the myth of separateness. In the quantum realm, entangled particles influence each other instantaneously across vast distances, defying the classical notion of locality. Physicist David Bohm proposed that what we see as separate parts of the universe are actually enfolded expressions of a deeper, undivided whole. Beneath the apparent fragmentation, there is coherence. Wholeness is not a poetic idea, it is the literal structure of reality. And then there is consciousness, perhaps the most intimate domain in which the illusion of separateness begins to dissolve.

Speaker 1:

In moments of deep meditation, spiritual awakening or the use of certain plant medicines, individuals often report a profound sense of unity, a merging with all life, a loss of personal ego and the direct experience that there is no true boundary between self and other or matter and spirit. These experiences are not rare. They are consistent across cultures, times and traditions, and they often leave the individual with a lasting sense that what they had believed to be reality was merely a narrow sliver of something far vaster, more interconnected and more alive. All of this points to a single truth that perception of separateness is an illusion, a dream we inherited from our culture, our institutions and our fear. But it is not real. And when we begin to awaken from it, we find not a loss of self but a returnness to wholeness. We find that earth is not beneath us but within us, that the divine is not elsewhere but everywhere, that our lives are not disconnected from one another but woven together in a field of being so subtle, so vast and so intelligent that we can only call it sacred To heal personally, collectively, ecologically. We must return to this, knowing not as philosophy but as real lived experience. To live otherwise is to be completely delusional. If that's your vibe, good luck with everything.

Speaker 1:

Indigenous cultures never forgot this, nor did mystics. In Hinduism, this is tat tvam asi thou art that. In Taoism, it is the flow of the Tao which moves through all things. In Christianity, it was the kingdom of heaven within. These weren't poetic ideas. They were maps of the real human experience. And yet here we are, living in a world built on the lie of separation, a world where people die for pieces of land, where parents fear their children's identities, where the success of a company might require the silent suffering of thousands. Let me ask you something when was the last time you looked at a stranger and felt like they were you, not metaphorically, viscerally, like a part of your own nervous system? When was the last time you looked at a tree and felt not like an observer but a sibling? When was the last time you said the words my life and knew it didn't quite fit what you meant?

Speaker 1:

The illusion of separation is not an abstract error. It is the root of our disease. It is what makes us numb, is what keeps us fighting ghosts, it is what allows cruelty to exist, not just in systems but in the quiet cruelty we show ourselves. But here's the secret the illusion only works if we believe it. That's why it has to be reinforced constantly through media schooling and fear.

Speaker 1:

The illusion is fragile, it needs repetition, it needs shame, it needs speed, and that's how you keep someone from noticing the field they're standing in To dismantle it. We don't need to fight it. We need to slow down enough to feel what is always true, To unlearn, to reconnect, to pause, breathe and remember. We begin to dissolve the illusion not through ideology, but through attention, through presence, through choosing to be with what is, without trying to label or escape it. The shift begins with something simple but radical A new orientation to the world, one in which the boundary between self and other is porous, one in which difference is not division, one in which life is not something we survive but something we are. If the illusion of separateness is the root of suffering, then healing begins with unlearning that illusion, not intellectually but experientially, begins with unlearning that illusion, not intellectually but experientially. This process is not about achieving unity, it is about remembering it. Beneath our stories, identities and defenses, we are already whole.

Speaker 1:

The stark reality is that the illusion of separateness is not just a psychological error, it is the foundation of global systems. Psychological error, it is the foundation of global systems built to dominate, extract and divide. These systems do not just tolerate separateness, they require it to function. The more fragmented we are from each other, from our bodies, the earth and our truth, the more controllable we become. Let's examine them on an individual basis.

Speaker 1:

Take industrial capitalism, for example, whose core dependency is the belief that your value lies in what you produce or consume. Industrial capitalism breaks life into units of profit. The body becomes labor, nature becomes resource, time becomes a commodity. It requires separation between workers and owners, producers and consumers, human beings and ecosystems. The emotional severance fuels consumerism. Disconnected people fill the void with things and the earth is strip-mined to meet this artificial hunger. Rather than healing the inner world, the system monetizes it. The more broken we are, the more products we need. The more distracted we are, the less we take back our autonomy. It metastasizes through planned obsolescence, hyper-individualism and the sacred myth of economic growth, even as the planet burns.

Speaker 1:

Take nation-states and geopolitical borders. These foster the belief in us versus them. I know this sounds far-fetched, but in truth, borders are imaginary lines Made through violence, real violence. Modern nations require the illusion of separateness To justify war, enforce immigration policies and prioritize loyalty to flags over shared humanity. Patriotism becomes a form of spiritual amnesia, convincing people to die for constructs while ignoring their shared breath with strangers across the seas. It metastasizes in drone warfare, ethnic cleansing, xenophobic politics, border militarization. The system survives by keeping you afraid of the other, even if the other is just you, in a different body with a different name.

Speaker 1:

When people polarize one another, when people delineate, when people try to create divisions, they believe that they are taking a stand for themselves, but in truth they are a victim of a system, of a mechanism of thought, a perverted, deluded understanding of the actual reality of their existence, of their life. This disconnection is fueled even by organized religion. When it's weaponized, it's rooted in the illusion that we are separate from the divine. When religion becomes institution, it stops pointing towards oneness and begins to police access to it. God becomes a male authority figure in the sky. You become a sinner in need of saving. A priest, pastor or prophet becomes your translator to the divine. This separation fuels obedience through shame, violence in the name of purity.

Speaker 1:

It metastasizes in holy wars, theocracy, moral policing, the erasure of indigenous spirituality and earth-based wisdom. Natives all over the world are viewed as savages, as animals with a lack of understanding and deep insight. However, in truth, their insight and knowledge is closer to the reality of the actual, real world existence. What better way to control people than to convince them they are fundamentally unworthy, unless redeemed through submission to a god, to an ideology to doctrine. This is even ever-present in the practice of modern western medicine. Modern medicine excels at trauma repair but fails at holistic healing. It treats the body like a machine, not an ecosystem. Illness becomes a malfunction, not a message. Symptoms are silenced, not listened to. Symptoms are treated, cures disregarded. The patient is a passive object, not a self-healing system. It metastasizes in over-medication, over-specialization, medical gaslighting of women and minorities, profit-driven healthcare that treats but never cures.

Speaker 1:

The illusion of separateness makes people alienated from their bodies, turning to institutions instead of intuition. When you believe your body is broken and your pain is random, you surrender your agency and your healing to a system. These systems together form a global metastasis, a cancerous replication of the illusion of separateness. They produce war with us versus them, loneliness, you versus the world, ecocide, man versus nature, medical dependency, body versus self and economic despair, worker versus owner and, lastly, spiritual amnesia, the ego versus the source. In this world, love is in truth a liability, rest is considered laziness, Compassion is weakness and unity is a threat. These systems don't just depend on separation. They are terrified of your wholeness, because a person who remembers they are part of everything cannot be controlled when you reintegrate what they've severed your body with your mind, yourself with the earth, your pain with purpose, your spirit with the collective. You become dangerous to these systems because your liberation is not just personal, it's systemic.

Speaker 1:

So now, as we come to the end of this conversation, I want to leave you not with an answer, but with a question, a question that might change how you see the world from this moment forward. What kind of world could we create if we truly remember that we belong to one another, not metaphorically, not spiritually, but biologically, emotionally, cosmically? Because the opposite of the illusion of separateness isn't an ideology or a utopia, it's presence, it's wholeness. Its presence, its wholeness, it's the felt sense that we were never meant to live in pieces In a conscious world awake.

Speaker 1:

Success would no longer mean rising above others, it would mean rising with them. Power wouldn't be domination, it would be stewardship, holding the whole gently in our hands. Work wouldn't be about exhaustion or extraction, but about sacred offering what we give back to the web that gives us breath. Love wouldn't be a scarcity or a transaction. It would be the natural state of beings who no longer fear their own vulnerability, who remember that connection is the oxygen of the soul. In that world, we would listen differently to our partners, to our children, to the earth, to the subtle voice within us that we've ignored for too long. We would walk slower, speak more truth, unlearn more than we achieve and, perhaps, most radically, we would suffer together instead of alone, because suffering shared, becomes compassion and compassion changes everything.

Speaker 1:

This world I'm describing isn't far away. It isn't locked in some distant future. It's's one shift away From fear to presence, from ego to essence, from me to we. And so you, right now, are holding the thread. Every time you choose to see someone instead of judging them, every time you listen without needing to fix, every time you honor your own need for rest, truth or softness, you break up the spell of separation. You become the antidote, you become the bridge.

Speaker 1:

We don't heal the world that we have known by fighting it on its own terms. We heal it by remembering what it forgot, by becoming the very thing it's missing Wholeness. So, as you leave this space, pause, feel your body, feel your breath, the same breath that the trees exhale. Remember the people who have loved you back into yourself, Remember the feeling of belonging. Even if it was fleeting, it was real and it still is. Let it guide you back to the world, not to escape it, but to reenter it as a kind of medicine, because this world doesn't need more cleverness, it needs more remembrance. It needs more people like you, who are willing to live with their heart open, who are brave enough to walk gently, love fiercely and stay awake, no matter how loud the illusion becomes. You are not alone. You never were.

Speaker 1:

As you continue listening to the Evolved Podcast, I'm going to unveil the true nature of the world that exists right under your nose. I'm going to analyze with you, out in the open, the systems at play here and the ways we can grow together and evolve. My aim To provide you with real ways to touch higher levels of awareness through truth and knowledge. Episodes are updated weekly. If you want to change your world for the better and support this evolution of consciousness, please show me by following, sharing this podcast with those you love and leaving a review. If you enjoyed our time today, please donate on Buy Me A Coffee, linked in the show notes below. Until next time, let's level up and master your universe.