Episode 32: The Cult of Individualism and the Philosophy of Oneness

We're told from a very young age to "be yourself."

It's become one of those phrases that sounds so obviously true we rarely stop to ask what it actually means. Find yourself. Express yourself. Prioritise yourself. Build yourself. Protect yourself. Somewhere along the way, the self became the centre of almost everything.

It's worth asking whether that's made us happier.

In this episode, Bello and I explore one of the foundational ideas behind Way of the Heart: that our culture's obsession with the individual isn't simply a personality trait of the West, but a philosophical assumption about reality. We contrast it with the wisdom traditions, which have been suggesting for thousands of years that perhaps we're not nearly as separate as we think we are.

It's a conversation about the ego, politics, relationships, identity and belonging. But mostly, it's an invitation to consider a radical possibility:

What if the story of "me" was never the whole story to begin with?