A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.
-- Albert Einstein
March 4, 1950
Albert Einstein got a lot of things right about physics, and with all his deep gazing into the universe, we think he got this right, too.
Compassion for the greater good is the outer circle of the Center for Compassionate Leadership’s model. Without an anchoring in our interconnectedness with everyone and everything, self-compassion and compassion for others can quickly devolve into narcissism or manipulation.
At a time in our history when we have the greatest technological capacity for connection, there is substantial evidence that we are more isolated and disconnected than ever. In a recent large survey, 76% of survey participants reported being either moderately or highly lonely. We are at the core a social species, but our drive to set ourselves apart through achievement isolates us.
There are very practical reasons why an acknowledgement of our common humanity will strengthen our compassion practices. When we get down on our self for failures and mistakes, an awareness of our fellow humans helps us see that we are not alone in messing up; that all humans are flawed. We can then more easily become kinder to ourselves, knowing that we all go through challenges. It’s part of life. As Kristin Neff, PhD, teaches so wisely, recognizing our shared human condition is what differentiates self-compassion from self-pity.
Once we have begun to place ourselves into the constellation of all humans, it then becomes easier to connect, relate, respect, and trust others. Recognizing our shared human experience with others, whether it is by finding common experiences with new people we meet, or through a formal practice like “Just Like Me,” will lead us to deeper places of cooperation, collaboration, and connection.
These practical reasons for practicing compassion for the greater good have very concrete outcomes, and yet there is something else much deeper going on at a depth that we can only speculate about. Another idea of Einstein’s, which was posited nearly 90 years ago, is what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance,” or what modern physicists describe as quantum entanglement. This condition describes a situation where two particles can affect each other regardless of the distance between them. Our physical separation is what we experience as humans, but there is more going on suggesting that we are connected to more than just those things in our present time and place.
We are the product of millions and billions and trillions of prior events and circumstances. Realizing that, we can begin to let go of some of the stress that we put on ourselves to define our separate identity through achievement. We cannot separate ourselves from all that has come before to create us. There is no truly separate “me.” Dan Siegel, MD, shows us how to balance our own identity with the greater good: “We care for our internal identity as a 'me' while also embracing the reality of our interconnected identity as a 'we.' A simple way to remember this important integrated identity is thinking of ourselves as a 'MWe,' a fundamentally related being that we can be proud to call human.”
So if we are all connected on some level -- as science now proves and as contemplatives have known for centuries -- we share responsibility for the whole of our existence. Together we must tend to the well-being of the universe, the planet, and of each other. It’s not just the climate activists that remind us we are running out of time. Our interconnected future depends on it.
Photo by Willian Justen de Vasconcellos on Unsplash.