Oppenheimer and How we Judge “Others”

Hello beloved reader,

First of all, a moment of celebration as this Substack has just reached 200 of you lovely subscribers! Cheers!🥂🍾 🎉💫🌟✨🌈 🤸‍♀️🧚‍♀️ 💃🕺☯️💖🙏🕊 I’m thrilled you continue to give this writing a space in your inbox. Thank you for your continued support, it’s appreciated more than you may know.

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As I mentioned in a recent post, I’m traveling at the moment, so my posts may not be quite as regular. I arrived in Sydney on Tuesday morning Australian time for a visit with my 86-year-old mother, which is Monday evening New Hampshire time (Sydney is 16 hours ahead) and on the plane I watched the movie Oppenheimer.

Source: https://ricardomonteiro.one/oppenheimer/

From my perspective, the movie Oppenheimer is brilliant because it shows how people so often judge others by projections from their own minds.

Rarely does a human being have enough awareness to actually see another person as they are, rather than who the person looking believes them to be, judged through their own lens, their own perspective, their own ignorance, their own bias, their own conditioning.

How is it possible to ever truly know another human being unless we recognize each human being is simply a single, unique expression of the One/Source/God/the Divine or whatever you may choose to call that which is beyond this material realm of human existence?

Essentially everything we see “out there” in another person, is also an aspect of ourselves. 

And yet in our ignorance as the human species, we love to “other” other people. 

Perhaps it’s too painful to own the fact that we may have the exact same quality in ourselves that we find so abhorrent in another. But this is the basis of all therapy — the very quality I condemn in another, is only because I cannot own: “And I am that too.”

For example, when I lived and worked in New York City, a person came into my life who triggered me so much, I sought out a therapist. (As an aside, it seemed that everyone I knew in NYC embraced therapy as a way of understanding oneself, which ultimately leads to radical self-acceptance and love.) 

I bitched and moaned about this person whom I’ll call Louisa, essentially condemning her to the therapist.

The therapist eventually turned around and said to me, “Camilla, it sounds like Louisa really knows how to take care of herself very well. Perhaps this is a quality you need to develop yourself.”

What a rude awakening it was for me to think about the fact that maybe the “other” person wasn’t the problem. 

And it was eventually empowering to understand that it was only my reaction to the other person over which I had control. Once I began practicing the art of extreme self-care, I no longer had a problem with Louisa.

Each of us is simply one drop in the ocean of human existence. And yet — sorry to mix metaphors — but each of us also has the power to create a ripple effect. 

I uncovered plenty of my own biases by going through interfaith seminary at the age of 45 where I committed to two-years of a daily spiritual practice, which led me to the experience of observing my humanity from my divinity. Or as it is described in the Bhagavad Gita’s chapter 13, there is The Field and the Knower — if you would like a deeper dive into this concept, you may read from my book, Chapter 17. New Hampshire, May 2013, The Bhagavad Gita and Healing.

And still, of course, I have my blindspots, as we all do. 

But that first step of witnessing my humanity from my divinity — the same inner-divinity that exists in every sentient being — or from that “observing awareness,” or “witness consciousness,” gave me an entirely new perspective on the human experience.

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The author Michael Pollan’s work investigates how psilocybin — the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms” — provides this same experience of witnessing or observing our humanity from our divinity. 

I first read Pollan’s New Yorker article in 2015 and then his 2018 book, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. 

As Pollan writes in the New Yorker article,

“One of the researchers was quoted as saying that, under the influence of [psilocybin,] “individuals transcend their primary identification with their bodies and experience ego-free states . . . and return with a new perspective and profound acceptance.” 

Perhaps this is another case where you may read about what a mango is, but until you actually taste the mango and experience it yourself, you won’t really know what a mango is. 

And here I’m not advocating for everyone to go out and try psilocybin — I have not tried it, and yet from everything I’ve read about it, I have the sense that I experienced a similar phenomenon through committing to a daily spiritual practice for two years while studying world religions with the spiritual teacher, Rev. Dr. Stephanie Rutt.

So often we do not know we even have biases and blindspots, until we have had the experience of witnessing our humanity from our divinity.

Perhaps we can only see our own blindspots when we recognize ourselves in every single human being on the planet — these days when I am triggered by another, if I catch myself wanting to condemn that other person, I try to remember to say to myself, “And I am that too.” (There is an exception for me though: I do not find it possible to do this when it comes to the former “orange” so-called president.)

Ever since I cultivated the courage to share my writing with others, when I sat in my first writing workshops at Vermont College of Fine Arts, sitting around old wooden desks arranged in a circle in a building I learned was once a seminary school, I became aware of how we all judge each other’s writing from who we are. We all bring our own “stuff” to another’s writing. Once I understood this, I realized I cannot control how my writing lands in a reader. Each reader comes to the writing with their own lens, their own perspective, their own ignorance, their own bias, their own conditioning.

Hence the importance of practicing staying detached from outcomes.

I am simply the conduit the writing flows through. It’s my job to show up, pay attention, tell my truth, and remain detached from outcomes.

And what an amazing point in history humanity is at now when more and more people are cultivating this capacity to observe their humanity from their divinity, whether they’ve developed this through spiritual practice, listening to spiritual teachers like Eckhart Tolle, or by taking “magic mushrooms.” Cheers to waking up!

Source: https://www.life.com/history/robert-oppenheimer-in-life/

And just for fun, I’ve been experimenting with ChatGPT - typing in “Summarize in one sentence: xxx” and I copy and paste in my article. For this post it gave me:

The author shares reflections on her recent travels to Sydney, discussing insights from the movie "Oppenheimer" regarding the human tendency to judge others based on personal projections, and explores themes of self-awareness, radical self-acceptance, and observing humanity from a divine perspective, drawing parallels between spiritual practices and experiences with psilocybin, ultimately advocating for detachment from outcomes and the cultivation of a deeper understanding of oneself and others.