Yesterday, it occurred to me how much of our human relationships are characterized by guilt or judgment. Guilt and being judgmental are two sides of the same blade, and that blade separates people into their own little self-focused domains.
For a moment I felt like I saw what it would be like to be free of these barriers. If you could really communicate fully with another human being – if you had no hesitation or self-consciousness in your interactions – wouldn’t it be like having the same mind?
We know that the human brain can function as different entities, if barriers are introduced. TV shows love to dwell on the weirdness of multiple personality disorders, or the functioning of split-brain patients. When communication between the two halves of someone’s brain is cut off, those two halves begin to function like different people. One hand may even fight the other hand for dominance.
If we can see a mind break into two different minds, doesn’t it stand to reason that two minds might, for just a moment, act as one? This synchronicity would probably only last briefly, a tenuously balanced moment in which time freezes and we step outside the barriers in which we’ve lived our entire lives.
I think this happens rarely, in fleeting moments, sometimes in young children, sometimes when someone looks face-on into another human being’s suffering, sometimes in music, when the musician for a moment feels connected to the floor and the audience and the sky itself. In that moment, judgment ceases, and the individual flexes and stretches out into a much bigger world.