“We’re all connected.”
It’s one of the most common phrases in modern spirituality. It sounds compassionate. It feels expansive. And for many people, it’s the first idea that softens the sharp edges of isolation.
But there’s a quiet assumption hiding inside that language—one so subtle it often goes unnoticed.
Connection still implies separation.
When we say we’re connected, we’re usually imagining something like a network: separate individuals linked together by something deeper. Invisible threads. Shared energy. A cosmic web tying distinct selves into a meaningful whole.
That image may feel comforting—but it leaves the structure of separation intact.
There’s still me over here.
There’s still you over there.
And something in between doing the connecting.
Which raises an uncomfortable question:
If separation is real enough to require connection… what actually changed?
The Comfort of Being Linked
The idea of connection is appealing because it soothes anxiety without demanding too much of our identity.
You don’t have to question who you are.
You don’t have to loosen your sense of control.
You don’t have to confront the fragility of the observer.
You’re still an individual self—just no longer alone.
That’s why “we’re all connected” fits so neatly alongside the same struggles it claims to transcend: anxiety, comparison, competition, fear of loss. The story sounds different, but the emotional structure remains unchanged.
The self is still central.
It’s just spiritually networked now.
Why Connection Isn’t the Same as Unity
Most people don’t notice the difference, because the word one gets used loosely.
When someone hears “we are all one,” the mind almost immediately translates it into something familiar: many things sharing a common source. Separate waves from the same ocean. Distinct sparks from the same fire.
But notice what survives in every version of that metaphor:
Multiplicity is still primary.
Unity becomes a background property—something added on top of individuality—rather than the ground from which individuality arises.
That distinction matters.
Because if separation is primary, then unity is something to achieve, remember, or return to. And that quietly turns insight into a project.
The Subtler Possibility
What if separation was never primary?
What if individuality wasn’t the starting point—but the result?
Not metaphorically. Structurally.
What if the sense of being a separate observer looking out at a world of others is something that arises with experience, not something that exists before it?
This isn’t an abstract philosophical claim. It’s something you can notice directly.
Every experience includes:
- an observer
- something observed
But those two never appear independently.
There is no seeing without something seen.
No hearing without sound.
No awareness without content.
Observer and observed arise together—or not at all.
Which means the observer is not a thing standing apart from the world. It’s a relationship that only exists as long as experience is happening.
No Privileged Perspective
Here’s where the shift becomes uncomfortable.
Every perspective feels like “I.”
Not metaphorically—actually.
Wherever experience is happening, it appears from the inside as the center. That’s true for you. It’s true for everyone. And because it’s true everywhere, it isn’t owned anywhere.
There is no single vantage point that contains the whole.
No observer behind the observers.
No master perspective watching the rest.
No cosmic witness holding all viewpoints at once.
This is where many people instinctively pull back—because the mind wants either:
- a central authority, or
- a final position to stand on
But neither exists here.
Why This Isn’t “Everyone Is Me”
This is also where the most common misunderstanding shows up.
When thinkers like Alan Watts used phrases like “we are all God in disguise,” many people heard something empowering—and missed what was actually being pointed to.
Taken literally, it sounds like expansion of identity: I get to be everything.
But that interpretation quietly preserves the very structure it claims to dissolve. There’s still a special “me” at the center—just inflated to cosmic proportions.
What’s actually being pointed to is the opposite.
Not:
“I am everything.”
But:
There is no separate ‘I’ that could own everything.
No perspective is privileged.
No experience is more central than another.
No observer stands outside the field it observes.
That’s not mystical—it’s deeply ordinary.
It’s simply how experience already works.
The Fear Beneath the Idea of Separation
So why does this feel unsettling?
Because separation gives us something to hold onto.
A boundary creates:
- ownership
- control
- comparison
- continuity
If I am a distinct thing, then I can protect myself. Improve myself. Secure my future. Preserve my meaning.
When separation loosens, those strategies lose their footing.
And beneath that loss is a quieter discomfort most people never name:
The discomfort of existence being singular.
Not lonely—but without an outside.
No final witness.
No ultimate audience.
No one who will eventually explain what this all meant.
For many people, individuality is less about ego and more about survival. It localizes the weight of being alive.
Why “Connection” Is So Popular
This is why the language of connection is everywhere.
It offers:
- reassurance without surrender
- unity without vulnerability
- belonging without dissolution
It lets the self remain intact while feeling less alone.
But it also keeps the deepest tension unresolved.
Because the ache isn’t coming from disconnection.
It’s coming from the assumption that there was ever something separate to connect in the first place.
What Happens When That Assumption Softens
When separation stops being the unquestioned starting point, something subtle changes.
Control becomes less urgent.
Comparison loses its edge.
Empathy stops being a moral obligation and becomes a natural response.
Not because you’ve adopted a new belief—but because the boundary that made others feel distant was never as solid as it seemed.
This doesn’t erase difference.
It doesn’t collapse individuality.
It doesn’t turn life into a blur.
It simply removes the idea that difference requires distance.
Why This Insight Feels Destabilizing
Clarity here doesn’t feel like certainty. It feels like groundlessness.
The mind wants conclusions. Positions. Final answers.
But this insight doesn’t replace one worldview with another. It quietly removes the one you didn’t know you were standing on.
That’s why clarity often feels harder, not easier, the more honestly it’s allowed. It doesn’t give you something to hold—it shows you what was never holding you in the first place.
Nothing to Adopt
There’s nothing to believe here.
Nothing to defend.
Nothing to claim.
You don’t need to stop saying “we’re all connected.”
Just notice what that phrase quietly assumes—and what happens when that assumption loosens.
Not as a philosophy.
Not as a doctrine.
But as a lived curiosity.
The point isn’t to replace one explanation with another.
It’s to notice what remains
when the need for explanation relaxes.
