and the journey to that place of understanding and acceptance has been an interesting one for me and it 's given me an insight into the whole notion of self which i think is worth sharing with you today
we each have a self but i don 't think that we 're born with one
you know how newborn babies believe they 're part of everything they 're not separate well that fundamental sense of oneness is lost on us very quickly it 's like that initial stage is over oneness infancy
unformed primitive it 's no longer valid or real
what is real is separateness and at some point in early babyhood
the idea of self starts to form
our little portion of oneness is given a name is told all kinds of things about itself
and these details opinions and ideas become facts which go towards building ourselves our identity and that self becomes the vehicle for navigating our social world
is it who we really are
or who we really want to be
and my panic at not having a self that fit and the confusion that came from my self being rejected created anxiety shame and hopelessness which kind of defined me for a long time
the self changed
sometimes hateful
sometimes not wanting to be there at all
the self was not constant
before i realized that it was never alive in the first place
and my mom is black from zimbabwe
even the idea of us as a family was challenging to most people
but nature had its wicked way and brown babies were born
but from about the age of five i was aware that i didn 't fit
i was the black atheist kid in the all white catholic school run by nuns i was an anomaly
and my self was rooting around for definition and trying to plug in
because the self likes to fit
to see itself replicated to belong
that confirms its existence and its importance and it is important it has an extremely important function without it we literally can 't interface with others we can 't hatch plans and climb that stairway of popularity of success
but my skin color wasn 't right
my hair wasn 't right
my history wasn 't right my self became defined by otherness which meant that in that social world i didn 't really exist
and i was other before being anything else even before being a girl
i was a noticeable nobody
another world was opening up
around this time performance
i 'd literally lose myself
and i was a really good dancer i would put all my emotional expression into my dancing i could be in the movement
in a way that i wasn 't able to be in my real life in myself
and at sixteen i stumbled across another opportunity and i earned my first acting role in a film
i can hardly find the words to describe the peace i felt when i was acting
my dysfunctional self could actually plug in to another self not my own
and it felt so good
it was the first time that i existed inside a fully functioning self
one that i controlled
but the shooting day would end
and i 'd return to my gnarly
but still searching for definition
i applied to read anthropology at university
dr phyllis lee
gave me my interview and she asked me how would you define race well i thought i had the answer to that one and i said skin color
so biology genetics she said
there 's been more time to create genetic diversity
on the one hand result
but what was credible
what is biological and scientific fact is that we all stem from africa in fact from a woman called mitochondrial eve who lived one hundred and sixty thousand years ago
and race is an illegitimate concept which our selves have created based on fear and ignorance
strangely these revelations didn 't cure my low self esteem that feeling of otherness
my desire to disappear was still very powerful
i had a degree from cambridge i had a thriving career but my self was a car crash
and i wound up with bulimia and on a therapist 's couch and of course i did
i still believed my self was all i was
i still valued self worth above all other worth
and what was there to suggest otherwise
we 've created entire value systems and a physicalreality to support the worth of self
look at the industry for self image and the jobs it creates the revenue it turns over
we 'd be right in assuming that the self is an actual living thing but it 's not
but there is something
and that thing is oneness
awareness of the reality of oneness and the projection of self hood
for a start we can think about all the times when we do lose ourselves
it happens when i dance when i 'm acting
in those moments i 'm connected
in much the same way as an infant might feel that feeling of oneness
and when i 'm acting a role
i inhabit another self
and i give it life for awhile
because when the self is suspended
so is divisiveness
and judgment
and i 've played everything from a vengeful ghost in the time of slavery to secretary of state in two thousand and four
and no matter how other
these selves might be
and i honestly believe
the key to my success as an actor
and my progress as a person has been the very lack of self that used to make me feel so anxious and insecure
i always wondered why i could feel others pain so deeply why i could recognize the somebody in the nobody
it 's because i didn 't have a self to get in the way
i thought i lacked substance
the thing that was a source of shame
was actually a source of enlightenment
and when i realized
and really understood
very familiar with its dysfunctional behavior but i 'm not ashamed of my self in fact i respect my self
more and more from my essence
dancing and celebrating with women who 've survived the destruction of their selves in literally unthinkable ways
destroyed because other brutalized psychopathic selves all over that beautiful land are fueling our selves addiction to ipods pads and bling
then we 're devaluing and desensitizing life
and in that disconnected state
destroy marine life
and use rape as a weapon of war
so here 's a note to self
and oceans will continue to surge through the cracks
with the earth and every other living thing
we 've just been insanely trying to figure out how to live with each other billions of each other
our crazy selves are living with each other
and perpetuating an epidemic of disconnection
let 's live with each other
our connection to the infinite and every other living thing
we knew it from the day we were born
let 's not be freaked out by our bountiful nothingness
it 's more a reality than the ones our selves have created
imagine what kind of existence
appreciate the privilege of life
and marvel at what comes next
simple awareness is where it begins
thank you for listening
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