Origin Story

In the beginning, God said,

Let there be light!

And you appeared.

From what we can tell, this took a little time (about 13.8 billion years), but it doesn’t make it any less true: the Big Bang happened, and you were born.

In a collection of public talks titled, Out of Your Mind, Alan Watts shoots straighter than this, writing, “You are the Big Bang.” He describes the Big Bang not as a one-time kick-off, but as an ongoing process where everything in the universe, including us, originated and continues in a long-running play that is still being performed today.

He compares it to someone smashing an inkwell against a wall: ink from the same bottle everywhere, but our blurred perspective makes it easy to forget that the splotch that landed on the floor is the same stuff that splattered on the ceiling, all coming from the same source and all the same. Just as the oak tree is implied by the acorn, or the chicken from the egg, each of us is implied by the birth of the universe, and only an illusion separates us from a blade of grass or a star hundreds of light years away, and this illusion is time.

Time tricks us into thinking that we’re separate from all that’s around us, but if we were able to watch a super sped-up version of the process of the universe in reverse, we’d watch as you and I, and all our friends, and all our family, and all the fish, gorillas, bugs, and trees turn back into an ever decreasing complexity of forms and combinations. You and I and all other molecules of complex life would turn back into our simpler multicellular ancestors, then single-celled ancestors, until we eventually all become fundamental non-organic stuff on a swirling orbiting rock which inevitably returns to the star where you and I are forged. We’d watch as you and I turn from a star back into a nebula of gas where nearly every one of us is hydrogen. As we continue to collapse toward the beginning, everything collapses with us, and we all get hotter and hotter until we are a universe that is less than one-trillionth the size of the period at the end of this sentence. We’re so incredibly hot that all of the forces within the universe are completely indistinguishable from each other. We are, in fact, one with each other. This is the universe as an acorn, where 13.8 billion years ago we were born.

Our culture doesn’t usually think about it like this. The same story told from a more typical perspective is that the universe was created, a bunch of stuff happened, and as a result, we showed up. In this version, we’re a very lucky outcome at the end of a long chain of complicated events. More than just a lucky outcome, we’re often described as the finished product, our evolution framed with words like, “the ascent of humanity” or “the rise of humankind.”

There are some real pros and cons to this “we’re an outcome” sort of thinking. One big pro is that we’re special. We’re precious. In this big and complicated universe, we are (as far as we know today) totally unique in our ability to understand ourselves, face the challenges that surround us, and little-by-little, grasp the science that supports how we got here. Conversely, a big con is that we’re special. We’re all alone. There’s nobody like us, certainly nobody on our own planet. Sure, dolphins and chimpanzees are pretty smart, but have you seen their infrastructure? Their universities? Terrible. They don’t even have wifi!

The belief that we’re an outcome distances us from all the other beings with which we share our existence. We place ourselves in a role where we are pitted against all that might threaten our right to not only survive on this planet, but to conquer and hold dominion over the world we possess: our world. The story is evident in how we talk about our achievements. We conquer the elements, conquer the seas, conquer hunger, conquer cancer, conquer the stars. Everything is our villain until it submits. We don’t live with other beings on this planet, but rather they live to either support us (as food, building material, clothing, etc.), or to get out of our way.

The story further separates us from each other. Just as we’ve culturally embedded beliefs about other species (worms are slimy and gross, lightning bugs are magical), we’ve culturally embedded an inherent ranking of ourselves. Race, gender, income, ability, ethnicity, spiritual beliefs, etc., are all at our disposal to define levels of quality between us, and to use them to historically justify very real and sometimes horrific stances: some humans can live here, others can’t; some can have a medical procedure, others cannot; some can go to school, others can’t; some you can purchase, others you cannot, some you can kill, others you can’t; some will go to heaven, others will not.

We’ve become so well-practiced in our game of separating things that we take it to the ultimate level. We divide ourselves and permit a cast of voices in our own minds to remind us of our place. Ceaselessly, an inner monologue comments, congratulates, passes judgment, second-guesses, gets embarrassed, is regretful, is guilty, is anxious, etc. We’ve convinced ourselves that this inner voice is us, so much so, that we usually don’t notice that our own private copilot is there at all. It feeds on and amplifies the opinions of those around us, including the people we’re closest to, as well as the people we declare we’d never listen to (but do anyway). We unconsciously invite the news, religion, advertisements, entertainment, social networks and a million other streams of input to influence our opinions about ourselves until we solidify them as certain and set ourselves on a spectrum with good/successful/worthy on one end, and bad/unsuccessful/unworthy on the other.

This story feels terrible, though, and deep down, we know that something is wrong. For many of us, the story has made life heavy, unjust, incomplete, and unhappy. It turns what would otherwise be the setting for the most incredible, unique, and wondrous existence into an uphill competitive slog where even the top achievers aren’t happy or content.

What would it take to throw this story away? Who would you have to be in order to abandon thousands of years of cultural indoctrination, to feel connected, to have a sense of purpose, and to live without anxiety, guilt or fear? Our culture may be incredibly powerful, but culture isn’t something “out there.” No, culture is nothing more than the story we collectively tell ourselves about who we are, and we take part in it by being a part of it, individually.

In this way, to change a sick culture, you don’t have to break free from it, nor do you have to fix other people, you can change it from within by changing yourself. You are the hero of your own life, and choosing the ways to contribute to our collective beauty or ugliness is your villain to fight. Finding your way to peace and contentment within yourself emanates to every action around you, meaning that the moment you become your very best you, then culture is automatically changed—everything is automatically changed: no other action is required. This is your hero’s journey. Every superhero saga begins with an origin story, and this one is yours:

Be the real you. Save the world.

Admittedly, though, it’s not going to be easy. Culture is inevitably going to push back. As you look around at the unconsciousness and disconnection that surrounds you, and at the people who seem to be rewarded for being the best at being dysfunctional, it might appear like an absolute exercise in futility—the ultimate uphill climb. It will require tremendous and fantastic levels of courage: the courage to step away from a fundamental way of living that is the only way any of us has ever known. You’d have to be someone who is at least as mighty as culture is in order to stand a chance. You’d have to be almost superhuman, you’d have to be something impossibly and undeniably powerful.

Lucky for us, you’re much more than that, remember?

You are the Big Bang.

Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash

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