The Illusion We Never Outgrow: When “By Myself” Becomes Our Greatest Delusion
Have you seen a toddler learning to tie their shoes? Their tiny fingers fumble with the laces, and when you reach out to help, they push your hands away with fierce determination: “Alleine!” the German child insists. “Alone!” cries the English-speaking tot. “Be’atzmi!” (בעצמי) declares the Hebrew speaker, literally, “by my self.”
This moment – this universal declaration of independence – is one of the crucial milestones of childhood. We smile at their determination. We celebrate their growing autonomy. We see it as progress, as development, as the emergence of a person.
But what if this moment, so precious and so celebrated, contains within it the seed of our deepest confusion about reality? What if the very word the child uses – atzmi (עצמי, “my self”) – reveals both a profound truth and a profound illusion?
The Ancient Pattern of Separation
Look at what’s actually happening in Genesis 2: An etzem (עצם) – a bone, an essence, a noun – is being taken from Adam to create woman. But the Book of Genesis isn’t describing a surgical procedure. So what is it describing?
Adam represents infinite consciousness – wisdom (chochmah) flowing like an endless river. Woman represents understanding (binah) – the moment that flow crystallizes into form, into a separate, defined thing.
When the Bible writes (Genesis 2:23), “This is etzem from my atzamai” – “bone from my bones” – the infinite awareness crystallizes into a separate form. And the moment it becomes a thing, an etzem, a noun, it believes the illusion: “I am separate. I am independent. I stand alone.”
The Forgetting
But here’s the truth hidden in plain sight: The moment understanding (binah) becomes a noun – a separate etzem carved from wisdom (chochmah) – it forgets where it came from. Woman emerges from man and believes she stands alone. The child pushes away the helping hand and declares “be’atzmi” – by myself.
This is the pattern repeating itself. Consciousness crystallizing. Flow becoming form. The river mistaking itself for a single drop. And in that crystallization, the forgetting begins – not because anything actually separated, but because it felt separate. Because it became a thing, a letter standing alone (etzem + ot, עצם+אות), instead of remaining the endless flow that writes all letters.
The Pattern We Live
That toddler pushing away your helping hands will carry this feeling for the rest of their life. The “be’atzmi” – by myself – that felt so empowering in early childhood becomes the prison of adulthood. Every “I think,” every “I choose,” every “I decide” reinforces the separation that began when consciousness crystallized into a noun and forgot it was a verb.
We spend our lives defending our independence – our atzmaut (עצמאות) – never realizing that independence itself is just etzem + ot: a bone plus letters, fragments mistaking themselves for the whole. We are letters insisting we write ourselves, waves claiming they create the ocean, understanding that has forgotten it is wisdom wearing a temporary form.
The helping hand we pushed away was never separate from us. We were never tying the shoe alone. Consciousness was always flowing through, not from. The river was always the river – we just convinced ourselves we were an independent drop.
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