1. Our Next Evolutionary Leap

From Single-Cell to Planetary Awareness

You consist of trillions of cells, living together as your mammalian body. Cells whose ancestors were once free-living cells in the ocean. Around one billion years ago, they figured out how to come together and form simple multicellular colonies, and now, after a billion years of evolution, they are making up you and me, free-living multicellular animals on planet Earth. We are one and many.

So, our ancestors made this gigantic evolutionary shift at the biological level a billion years ago, transitioning from being individual parts to form a new, unified whole. It’s time to make a similar shift, but at our human cultural level. To move from seeing ourselves as separate individuals to becoming aware that we are also planetary parts. And live as that.

A Wider We is Possible – The Wider Embraces Method

I know it’s possible to make that evolutionary leap and change our identification to a wider we.

Together with groups of friends, I’ve developed a method, Wider Embraces, that can give you glimpses of this wider you, letting you become aware of your deep belonging to everything you are part of and take it as your first-person perspective. Sounds strange and impossible, even scary? It’s actually lovely and fun, and you’ll get loads of new and surprising insights.

Our framework is based on the modern scientific worldview and our personal experiences of living on this planet. We embrace everything we belong to, from the widest to the smallest: our physical universe, our planetary ecosystem, and our human culture. We embrace ourselves and the various groups we are part of. It’s a type of guided meditation, and you are the one experiencing and drawing your own conclusions. It’s a method to become aware of the layers of reality that we are usually unaware of.

In this book, I present my findings and insights from my unique set of wider Embraces. Yours will be different; reality is more complex and multi-layered than one person can experience and comprehend.

Our Planetary Crises – Caused by Cooperation and Separation

We are an amazing species. We excel at cooperating and manifesting what we want. I’m writing this on a computer that is the result of thousands of people, if not millions, working together. And yes, at the expense of many people’s and other living beings’ suffering.

We all hold different stories about the state of the planet; some are more optimistic, others are more pessimistic. I see a whole cluster of planetary crises coming our way; some call it the meta-crisis. We are exceeding the physical and biological planetary boundaries, with climate change, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss and extinctions, chemical pollution, and other environmental issues. And we have crises inside our human culture: wars, AI, economic inequalities, mental health problems, etc. These two clusters amplify each other. I view it as a single problem with a single root cause – separation.

Planetary Boundaries and the Meta Crises

I’m convinced that there is no way we can stop ourselves from ruining the biosphere and our human societies without taking a leap as profound as when our ancestors transitioned from single-cell organisms to multicellular beings.

We will never solve the challenges we face on this planet by pointing fingers at one group or another or trying to downsize our consumption personally. While this can slow things down a bit or make us feel good, it won’t change the underlying structures that are driving our problems. And those structures run much deeper than what is usually thought.

We have about one billion years left on this planet before the Sun expands and the Earth is uninhabitable. Everything we do now will impact the next billion years.

The Transformation of an Environmentalist

For clarity and transparency, I’ve been part of the environmental movement in Sweden since the mid-70s, standing on the side of nature and fighting against human exploitation. I’ve demonstrated against nuclear power, clearcuts in the forests, polluting industries and acid rain. I’ve worked for solar and wind energy, bike lines and organic farming. I’ve been employed and on boards in several environmental organisations, handling all the tedious work, including organising meetings and courses, and writing press releases and newsletters. If you like to know more about my background and sources of inspiration, there is a longer story in the appendix. (For website readers – https://widerwe.org/about-stina-deurell/)

However, through my work with the Wider Embraces method, I’ve changed and expanded my view significantly. I’ve come to understand the necessity of forgiveness, and I’ve become aware of the critical role of separation. I’ve embraced humanity and the whole planet as it is, realising that, ultimately, I am planet Earth. Sometimes a realisation like this can lead to passivity; everything is perfect as it is. For me, it’s the opposite; I’m on an active path forward, including stillness and unconditional belonging.

The Impulse – Who is Embracing?

The question ”Who is Embracing?” came to me in 2012 after a year of travelling from my home in Sweden through Europe to Egypt and South Africa. Initially, it was just a brief glimpse of an alternative perspective. I remember sitting on a commuter train in Cape Town, looking out the window, and asking the question. Suddenly, the view shifted. I still saw the grey buildings; they didn’t change, but who was aware of them had changed.

I took the question to my circles of philosophical and spiritual interested friends, and we began exploring our common Embraces and mapping the territory.

The same impulse, or variations of it, arises through many others. We all form our own interpretations, depending on our backgrounds and personalities. This is my way of expressing what I’m experiencing and what I think is essential. You bring your experiences and ideas to the table when you read.

We know we are one Humanity on one Planet
in our minds, as knowledge.
Time to wake up to this realisation
in our whole being, as our identity.