Hey hey, hope you guys are doing well. It’s the week after Memorial Day and I’ve got something stirring that I want to explore with you today. This has been the product of a handful of really profound conversations, a few recent books, an “Awakening Session” with Michael Gungor, and a few what I guess you could call "mystical moments" during times of travel.    I’ve been a part of leadership in the Christian world for 17 years now… Starting back leading music for YoungLife when I was in high-school, then being involved in college ministries, then leading worship for two churches simultaneously, then joining full-time staff at Harbor 10 years ago (almost to the day). I saw on Facebook memories that May 27, 2009 I was posting about setting up my desk and stuff.    Again, I know I’ve said this on this podcast before, but not having been raised with a strict theology or doctrine or formal religion has actually been a blessing. I don’t carry as much baggage as some of my friends do, and it has allowed me to hold a few of these “beliefs” we ascribe to a bit more loosely. I’ve always been curious. Curious about how things work, where words or phrases came from, why certain things behave certain ways… My late-grandmother would call it “Intellectual curiosity” when describing herself. I’ve always loved that. Never not learning about something.    So… the latest for me has been this theme popping up everywhere. What I would call “The Big Lie.” It’s something that we’re all conditioned to believe, either from personal experience or being taught it from a very young age. It’s something that seems to be central to most of the problems we encounter in life; most all of the suffering; all of the hate and division; and it’s very simply this: The big lie is that we are somehow separate from the whole. The big lie is that somehow we are “other”… That we aren’t all in this together; whatever “this” is. That there is an “us” and there is a “them.” That we are either above certain people; or that we are below other certain people. That foreigners are truly foreign. That strangers are truly estranged.    The Big Lie is that all of humanity is (and should be) properly divided into little tribes and nations and religions and political affiliations… that THAT is somehow the answer to all of our problems. The lie that God, however you’d define God, wants an “us” and “them”… or if He doesn’t, He wants us to go out into the world and homogenize everyone to think, believe and behave exactly as we do. As if we have the full and final answer, and the only problem is that we haven’t properly evangelized the whole world.    The word “religion” quite literally means “re-ligio” like ligament, and means “re-binding.” Taking our divided realities and binding them back together into wholeness. Human and divine, male and female, heaven and earth, sin and salvation… The goal of all of these world religions seems to be to draw back a separated humanity into Oneness. Each one having slightly (or very) different approaches and philosophies and ideas about the HOW that should happen, but almost all end at a place of Oneness. Heaven, Nirvana, Shalom, Enlightenment, Goodness.    The big lie is that somehow these religions are fundamentally different and opposed and should be treated as an “us” and “them.” Or that our job is to convince everyone else how wrong they are. Rather than recognizing that so much of this truth has come from the same Truth tree. Yes, are some of us WAY off base and need serious course-correcting so that our “Religion” isn’t in the business of hurting people, or the danger of developing extremists that quickly become terrorists. An acknowledgment of our inter-connectedness doesn’t negate the need for course-correction. But it does remove the lie of separation and otherness that makes it so much easier to wage war. Anyone that’s been in military combat knows how much easier it is to shoot at someone from 50 yards away than 5 feet away. The closer you get, the more you see yourself in that person… the more humanized the enemy is.    Proximity matters. And that’s part of the problem with the internet. We have this faux-proximity… This pseudo-community that is ALMOST real, but definitely not. Close enough to share pictures of our kids with one another, but distant enough to leave hateful comments on posts. Close enough to celebrate anniversaries but removed enough to fight back and forth in the comments further polarizing and relegating an important conversation to locker-room talk.   You can’t win conversations. That’s like trying to make the BEST artwork, or building the strongest sandwich. That’s not how we measure things. You can’t win in a Facebook comment battle.    All of this is a product of the Ego. This little part of us that is so persuasive, so convincing, so manipulative… I believe our Egos are definitely a product of evolution, definitely a product of the Fall… they’re how we learned to survive and pass on our genetics and beat out the competition, but there comes a time in life when your Ego has to be called out for what it is. It’s a tool. A deeply flawed tool, but sometimes it can be helpful.    Your ego is everything about you that you can define… Your name, your birthplace, your height, your race, your education… You ego is essentially what someone would write up about you on your Wikipedia page. It’s ABOUT you, but definitely doesn’t capture YOU. It’s not your essence. It’s just a photograph of you at a specific point in time. A snapshot. Like when someone introduces you at a party or a speaking event or describes something about what you’ve done, what you know, etc. It feels like it’s ABOUT you, but if that’s all someone knew of you, it would fall so deeply short of your fullness.    Egos want to compare. They want to know where they stand. Are we skinnier or fatter than them? Do we have more or less money than that person? Are we smarter than that person on Facebook? Are we more right about who God is than that devout person from another religion? Are we more successful? Are we more organized? Are we more peaceful? Are we more progressive or more conservative? Egos thrive in the soil of comparison… but what happens when we give our Egos too much leeway is that they leave us feeling overly simplified. Reduced. Small.    Picture a triangle. Perfectly balanced. A sharp point at the top going down to two equal sides, sharp corners and a perfect, level line across the bottom. It’s almost as if, at birth, we’re all at the top of this triangle. We’re all the same. Roughly 6 pounds of flesh and bone. All crying the same way. All breathing the same way. All needing our mother’s milk. We don’t know all of these ideas of comparison and separation and us vs. them and Egos driving the conversation… We’re just babies. Slightly different size, slightly different shades of skin, but very much the same in almost every way.    Then our parents begin telling us stories. Stories about what’s right and what’s wrong. Stories about what’s better or worse. Stories about us and stories about them. And we slowly start to slide down the triangle… away from one another. Things get more complex and as they do, we become more and more settled and defined in our ways, landing comfortably in opposite corners of the triangle, believing we’re on the RIGHT side, and they’re on the WRONG side, meanwhile missing the fact that we’ve grown apart quite significantly. In fact, we’re so far from one another that now we can’t really even see each other’s faces. We begin dressing differently and speaking different languages and, whether we recognize it or not, we’re living inside the Big Lie.    The Ego loves it. Our soul’s hate it. Our souls know we were made for one another; for interconnectedness; for Oneness with everyone and everything… But we have this manufactured, inherited man-made separation that we ascribe to.    The goal for every one of us is that as we grow older, we let our Egos drive less and less often. They can stay in the car, but they have to sit in the back seat and they can’t pick the music. Egos are helpful for the first half of life—they literally help us survive, but once they accomplish that—they need to be called out for the frauds they are. That’s the task of the second-half of life, is to gracefully exit SURVIVAL MODE and ensure the next generations don’t inherit all of the unhelpful lies that we were handed by our parents.    If you don’t believe we’re all connected, start watching One Strange Rock on Netflix. Will Smith narrates it, and a dozen astronauts with hundreds of days logged in space all discuss the interconnectedness of everything on earth. No matter how important you think you are, you’re still on a tiny ball hurtling through empty space at thousands of miles an hour. No matter how tough you are. How big your muscles are. How powerful you are… Joseph Stalin, responsible for nearly 20 million deaths, had a massive stroke and was found on the floor, soaked in urine. Francisco Franco, dictator in Spain that created political concentration camps developed Parkinsons for the last 12 years of his life. Mao Zedong died of a heart attack. I mention these guys because their perhaps the definition of when the Ego is out of control… and yet, they’re just as vulnerable as the rest of us.    In America, we think we’re invincible, but we’re only 240 years into this experiment with democracy. The Roman Empire latest twice that long and still crumbled. The President might feel like the most powerful man in the world, but only for 4 years at least, 8 years at most. People have yorkie-poos that live longer than that.    I say all of this because we need to ZOOM OUT. We need to zoom out from our little tribes and encampments and Facebook groups and political affiliations to see the Oneness of all of Creation. We’re in this together. Just ask all of the ecosystems being affected by Climate Change.    The Big Lie: that we’re all individuals, is leading to some terrible outcomes. Especially within America. The self-made man is a myth. There were hundreds of people that got you to where you are. And probably hundreds more working to keep you there.    The damage we do when we’re believing this lie has pretty significant consequences. We say things that can’t be unsaid. We damage ecological rhythms that take centuries to heal themselves. We fracture relationships that take years to be restored back to trust and flourishing.   It’s actually funny when you REALLY step back and look at all of the distinctions we make to try to feel better about ourselves. We rank, we organize, we divide, we split hairs, we interpret certain words in the Constitution or Bible in slightly different ways and then feel superior than the others. It’s amazing how shallow we are. When I see a new person walk in the door at the gym, my ego immediately begins processing them. “I’m younger, taller, probably smarter…” and I’m sitting there, observing my Ego like, “Who hurt you when you were little? Why do you feel the need to do this?” New person at church? “They probably don’t know much about different atonement theories, they look like they’re from lower-income, probably can’t contribute much financially…” and this is just happening uncontrollably; a sad little reflex our egos have.    I’m nowhere near the place where I’ve tamed my Ego from even speaking up, but I’m definitely beginning to see it for what it is. And instead of letting those comparisons and labeling that my ego is doing DEFINE those people, I’m letting my Soul press through and actually connect with them. The immortal diamond within me searching to connect with the immortal diamond within them. The Jesus in me finding the Jesus in them. Oneness finding Oneness.    And that awareness is all we can ask for. I don’t think we’ll ever be WITHOUT the big lie, but at least knowing it’s a lie is a start. Calling it out for what it is. Putting it in its’ proper place.    Immediately all of the “HOT TOPIC” conversations become a little bit less heated. There’s less of a desire to be “RIGHT” and more of a desire to be “WHOLE/COMPLETE/CONNECTED.” Experiencing communion… common union. With everyone around us, every thing around us. That awareness is the ticket, for me, right now at least.    This is so interesting to me because the business we own and operate, this branding agency, is in the business of Ego. People pay our team hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to manufacture a reputation for them, and then “Position” them against their competitors using tools and tactics of comparison. We’re literally in the Ego business. Playing into this side of us as consumers. It’s good for business, but not great for rejecting the Big Lie of good vs. bad, right vs. wrong, us vs. them. And that’s something I’ll have to wrestle. And we’ve even begun to do that… To not manufacture who you WANT to be, but rather presenting accurately who you truly are… But trying to find the Soul of a business is tricky work. And maybe impossible.    To try to tie a bow on this little exploration, I’d encourage you to try to start catching yourself in the act of letting your Ego drive… catching yourself in the act of believing the lie. That separation is somehow worthwhile; or that the fruit of separation will somehow, someday be beautiful. I don’t think so. I think the stem of nearly all of our problems is the myth of division; the sin of separation.    The Bible is full of calls into Oneness, and then we get busy creating rules about who is “in” and who is “out” in this Oneness thing. Like you can only be a part of the Union if you follow these rules.    1 Cor. 12:13 Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit.   later in vs. 27 All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it.   Ephesians 4: 3 Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. 4 For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future.   One. One humanity. One body. One Oneness. We all share the same spirit. Let’s act like it.    I know this level of alignment and unity feels WAY out of reach with the world and how divided everything is… But what if we started just in our immediate vicinity. Our immediate sphere. Our family. Our closest friends. Recognize when our Ego begins drawing distinction and comparing/contrasting… And don’t beat yourself up for it, but just recognize it, pat it on the head and gently place it in the backseat. “Nice little ego… good boy. Ok, you can go back here. Yeah, you’re safe back here.”    This has implications all over it. Personal, emotional health. Relational health. Financial health, when we stop trying to keep up with the Joneses.    A bit of a rant today, but it’s something that’s been present on my heart lately… and something I think I’m just barely beginning to scratch the surface of. Hope this was interesting and worth your time. If you guys have any questions or thoughts or suggestions for future topics, I’d love to hear from you. Shoot me an email at [email protected]    I love you. Make it a good day.