When we separate things, they change dramatically. An egg white separated from a yolk, and whipped is so completely different from an egg white and yolk intact that you would never associate the two.
As human beings we have become expert at separating things. We separate ourselves from others, break connections. We separate our heartfelt feelings from our intellect. We separate ourselves from the land and sea.
In the western world, we have sensed for a long time that these separations are not healthy, and yet we remain addicted to them. These sepaations are responsible for our ill health, mentally and physically.
There are still models alive today from indigenous peoples such as Maori in Aotearoa/New Zealand that look at people and the world without separation. Sadly, many Maori have fallen ill due to adapting the separations of the modern world. But at the heart of their culture, and reviving slowly but surely is the concept that human kind and this planet are not separate at all, and are intrinsically linked as one whole living breathing entity. We know science can now prove this too.
The first people of America shared a similar belief system.
I love to think of the Maori word, whenua. And to call this broad and deep concept simply a word, does not seem to do it justice. Whenua is the name for the placenta, that feeds an unborn child. It is also the name for land, which feeds us all as infants, children and adults.
There was no separation between whenua the placenta, and whenua the land.
We have many beautiful concepts such as this at our fingertips, we just have to breathe, live and believe them, connected.