Part 2: Awakening from the Myth of Objectivity

There is a myth so deeply woven into the fabric of our culture that most don’t recognize it as myth at all. It tells us that to be wise, we must be unemotional. That to be credible, we must be detached. That the ideal human is the “objective observer”—rational, separate, unaffected.

This worldview is not ancient or timeless. It was born just over 400 years ago, during the scientific revolution—a powerful time that gave us new ways to understand the universe, but also birthed a dangerous illusion: that mind and body, human and nature, self and other are separate.

Despite groundbreaking scientific discoveries since then—including Einstein’s revelation of a deeply relational universe—this mechanistic, non-relational view still dominates our institutions. We see it embedded in our legal systems, medical models, educational frameworks, and corporate hierarchies. Even many spiritual paths subtly perpetuate it, praising transcendence over embodiment, “light” over the honest chaos of human feeling.

So much of our pain stems from this disconnection—from being told to stand apart from life instead of within it.

What happens when you feel deeply in a world that rewards emotional flatness? You are pathologized. Stigmatized. Labeled as unstable, dramatic, irrational—or worse, ill. When the soul stirs with grief or longing, when the heart breaks open in protest of injustice or personal loss, it is too often seen as a problem to be fixed rather than a sacred initiation into truth.

What western culture calls “mental illness” is, in many spiritual and indigenous traditions, known as a shamanic crisis, a dark night of the soul, or a spiritual awakening. These are not signs of failure. They are rites of passage—thresholds of transformation.

And yet, instead of supporting the soul through the fire, we sedate it.

Here’s the invitation: when resistance arises—whether in the body, in the mind, or in your emotions—don’t push it away. Don’t pathologize it. Get curious. Resistance is the edge of transformation. It’s where old paradigms crack, and a new way of seeing is born.

As long as we cling to the myth of separation, we will miss the sacred in our own discomfort.

But if we allow ourselves to feel, to stay with the tension, to listen to the stirrings within, something astonishing begins to unfold.

A doorway opens.

Not into madness.

But into wisdom.