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The ‘Feeling’ of Connection, How Do We Cultivate It?

Published on 01/02/10
by randy

A basic premise of ancient spiritual teachings and contemporary physics is that “everything changes and everything is connected”.  Some have called this the tension between the law of impermanence (The Second Law of Thermodynamics) and the Law of Interdependence (Everything affects everything).  The joy we find in our lives can be directly related to our capacity to face the uncertainty of change and our cultivation of the ‘feeling’ of being joined.  While greed, ignorance and fear continually work us to feelings of separation, we’re repeatedly challenged to move past the temptation to separate.  In what seems to be accelerated change, the illusions of things not changing has been shattered.  A few conservative talk/TV hosts and politicians receive popularity by playing to people’s desires to ‘the way things were’.  In the face of a rapidly changing economy, facing challenges to meet change in globalization, immigration and stewardship to the planet, their responses to facing the uncertainty of the future are simply a child’s scream of “No, I don’t want to go there”.  Yet, the train’s moving and it’s moving faster than ever before.  And so we tend to polarize on our willingness to meet change and uncertainty, creating the unproductive stalemate in our mind’s separation from one another.

So where do we get our ‘feeling’ of connection?  How big or small is it?  My childhood focused on family, church and the community.  There was a sense that the authority within my circles of belonging had the answers to change and uncertainty.  It was simply a matter of belief.  I carried a peace in thinking we didn’t need to drill deeper in our curiosity about impermanence and interdependence.  This was not helpful when facing the rapidly changing social climate of the late ’60’s and early ’70’s.  My ‘feeling’ of separation grew as the foundation of most authoritative beliefs was shattered by observation.  The lack of congruity of action to belief was too big and I temporarily separated from my history, simply denying my beliefs rather that taking it as challenge to dig deeper.  My sense of security had been replaced by the realities of uncertainty.  My sense of connection had been replaced by an angered sense of separation.

It’s been a long road back, forever challenging my mind’s temptation to stop, to hold out on the surface, deflecting the depths of life.  Yet, life happens.  People die, suffering doesn’t go away, and conditions present us directly in the midst of uncertainty and our total interdependence.  It becomes a continual battle between willingness to explore or sliding back to the obstacles I grow in preventing a spiritual deepening.  Some of us try to grow our sense of belonging through technological advancements, working every social network we can.  Others define a sense of belonging by number of returned text messages.  Our media seems to push our sense of success and belonging in definitions from dollar worth.  And all the way we seem to be losing our real capacity to connect with one another as ourselves.

The real litmus test for one’s ‘felt’ sense of interconnection can be seen in the level of curiosity.  The love carried forward is evidenced by one’s genuine desire to go deeper through skilled listening.  It seems more and more rare to find those willing to break beyond the veils and obstacles of ‘busyness’ and ‘fear’.  While it seems safer and easier to lock into our safe routine and fixed beliefs, eventually life presents the challenge to drill deeper.  Whether in sickness, injury, job loss, natural disaster or any other upset that pulls the rug from our sense of security, we eventually meet the choice of digging deeper, burying our head in the sand, or swimming upstream against the laws of nature.  At some point we come to see our health is dependent on other’s health.  Our depth of being is dependent upon others’ depth of being.  Our spiritual security is dependent upon other’s spiritual security.  Our capacity to show up, pay attention and be our best is  dependent upon others showing up, paying attention and being their best.  In short, our best is found in breaking the barrier between you and me, us and them, as we arrive to a bigger belonging.  We come home to the ‘felt’ sense of our connection through Big Hope, not pollyanna wishes for things to be different than they are.  They just are and can we meet the very ‘is-ness’ of this moment in loving gratitude for one another?  Can we openly explore our differences in search of our similarities, touching the essence of our interdependence?  Can we connect with our perceived enemies through the simple courage of asking, “Can you tell me more as I try to stand in your shoes for a moment?”.  Can we acknowledge that perception is deception, that the problem is never what we think it is?  Can we breath in “yes” to the rare opportunity to meet in this moment, breathing out “thank you” for our courage to participate?  In review of the day, can we be specific about actions, thoughts and speech taken to move to deeper joining?  Can we honestly review those areas where we’ve contributed to harm, feeding feelings of separation?  Can we humble our selves, pledging to aim away from thoughts of judgment and opinion?  Can we raise ourselves to be the mountain in the face of uncertainty, forever willing, ready and able to show up in full attention, aiming to be our best?  Can we cultivate gratitude and big sense of belonging, standing in the consequent feeling of joy?s

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