I have struggled for forty years with the way one word is understood.  I know transcendent is the appropriate word for me to use, but dictionary definitions do not include my experience. Merriam Webster offers these synonyms: metaphysical, otherworldly, paranormal, unearthly. They declare the opposite meaning of transcendent is “natural.” I can't accept that.  From my experience transcendent is entirely “natural.”

Here’s the problem. We humans are wired from birth to learn a social identity. Some call it “ego,” some call it the “Little Self.” In Pakistan one learns a social identity fundamentally different from one learned in Alabama. Both are valid, necessary, and tribal. But that social ID is only a fraction of who we really are.

Our social identity is a role like any role, but actors drop theirs’ when the curtain falls. Lay people don’t realize they role-play all the time and believe they must live that role, which is only a tribal role. By the time we’re about twenty-five, we've come to believe our role totally defines us, as in, I’m a white American male, that's all, nothing else. It's almost like an actor coming to believe he's Hamlet. And no school, church, temple, mosque, or nation will teach you otherwise.  It would weaken their objectives.

But we are more than our role. On some deep, inarticulate level we know that. Which means we need to let go of the need to play that role. Some Pakistanis believe they need to kill daughters who dishonor them. Some Alabamians believe African Americans are less than human.
All of those people need to let go of the need to accept those inhumane ideas.

Letting go of our attachment to tribal identities defines Buddha’s insight. In English buddha means “the man who woke up.” Jesus urged us “to be as children” because children had not learned a tribal ID.

I grew up conditioned to be a Catholic, by eighteen I had rebelled and began a search to find who I was. I searched every belief system I could find. I used LSD, smoked weed, studied Zen, and much more. I was skeptical of all believers.

However, all that searching over 30 years prepared me for one life-changing experience that told me who I am.

It happened at my desk.  Reading science, I discovered what a star does. For years I -like most people - had wondered, “Who am I?  Where did I come from?”  Suddenly, at my desk, I discovered the answer. I am star stuff. We all are. A fact.
 
My molecules and atoms were literally cooked into being out of energy/matter in the heart of a star(s) eons ago before it exploded, casting all my energy/matter into space.  Gravity spun that material into a swirling mass that became our sun and planets, and out of Earth’s soil all living things emerged.  Who am I?  An earth man. Where’d I come from?  The processes of the stars.

Social identity no longer defined me, but I couldn’t communicate my experience using “transcended” because people thought it had to mean "supernatural."  The word connotes, even defines, the unearthly, the supernatural.

I had not transcended Earth. I had transcended "little me." I'm here, an Earth man beyond tribal restrictions. For one who emerged from Star-stuff the idea of the “supernatural” is fantasy. Testable evidence of that idea has never been offered in human history.

The realization I am Star-stuff affects my thinking, feelings, reactions, point-of-view, and behavior every day. It allowed me to shed the need for social identity when I discovered that my spiritual roots in Earth’s soil make me responsible to Earth and all of Earth’s children. That transcends every social identity and defines my purpose as a human being, which is the third questions humans have always asked. 

I accept my tribal conditioning. I use it, play with it, take advantage of it, but I do not need it.  All this makes free play easier.  It makes our relationship to the words humus (soil?), human, humane, humor and humility much more meaningful.