Connection

We are learning to love our enemies, neighbors, friends, family and all of nature as ourselves, because they are ourselves. We are all connected.

Connection is what we all yearn for most deeply, and connection is our future.

Connection is nature’s way. Connection is a mother’s way.

Connection is resonance.

In nature, all is connected. You depend on nature and nature depends on you. Modern comforts help us to forget, and that forgetting creates a sensation of disconnection and dissatisfaction.

You are meant to connect in community, and we all do this naturally without social conditioning to suppress feelings and feel ashamed.

You are meant to connect in close relationships. Connection in relationships is felt compassion, it’s feeling the feelings of another by experiencing them inside yourself. It’s picking up on their feelings, not their thoughts.

You are meant to connect inside and feel a deep inner unity and peace. Inner connection is prior to outer connection.

Ideally we first experience deep resonate connection as infants during eye gazing with our primary caregiver. This is where we learn to regulate our nervous system and establish secure emotional attachment. Our caregiver was to vibrate with the frequency of love, connection and safety, and we were to match this vibration inside, and get so good at vibrating with it that we could feel this way even when they weren’t around.

If that wasn’t your childhood don’t worry, it wasn’t mine either. You can still learn to connect today. First you’ll learn to connect inside, feeling all your feelings. You’ll offer your mature present day self as that caregiver you needed as a child to the parts of you who are still waiting for that experience.

Next you will use that newfound ability to feel feelings and offer connection to others.

Connection is what others want and need from you. For example, if your daughter comes to you upset, and you intellectually talk through her situation with her and she says “You don’t get me” she means “I feel something in my body and you don’t feel it or know what it feels like to be me right now.”

If you are comfortable with your own feelings you can “feel towards” her as she is sharing and let your body attune to hers and begin to resonate with her feelings, then send back a resonance of acceptance and understanding of those feelings through eye contact, touch or just being with her in that space, whatever feels safe for her. Use your words to describe what you feel when you attune to her, and ask her to let you know if she feels understood. This is only possible to the degree you are able to feel your own feelings. If she’s feeling something that your system doesn’t feel safe feeling you’ll be blocked from resonating with her and connection won’t be possible.

Connecting with someone experiencing a dysregulated nervous system is called co-regulation. They may be stuck in fight/flight, freeze/fawn or a combination of the two that presents as extremely uncomfortable anxiety. When they sense your stable energy, which remains stable even while feeling their upset energy, they can find their own inner regulation.

Co-regulation can be part of balanced interdependent relationships. If one partner depends on the other for constant regulation this will not be sustainable. As we go our inner journey we learn to be our own primary source of emotional regulation, with our relationships being a secondary, backup source of regulation.

Like blooming flowers, each of our hearts is opening and becoming receptive to everyone. Yes, everyone. We will discover we love our enemies when we love ourselves.

Loving our enemies doesn’t mean interacting with our enemies. An open heart can fully acknowledge the harm committed without minimizing in any way. It can express the full range of feelings, including rage. It can set and hold extremely firm boundaries around that person and never see them for the rest of their life… and still have their heart open. We can acknowledge the pure consciousness beneath a personality so twisted it would do such harm. When I recognize that it could be me in that offender’s body and that what happened was a tragedy for all involved, I free us both.

When you don’t feel connection, ask yourself “How open is my heart” and feel the non intellectual answer. Ask how open your heart is towards yourself, and towards them. Don’t judge the response if it’s closed, instead be with the part of you who holds the pain and fear and offer it connection. When all your parts feel safe doing so, practice opening your heart to that offender. “Feel towards” them - literally extending your sense of feel towards that person (with them not present). Keep working with the parts of you who feel unsafe, listen to and validate what happened to them, and let the grief flow.

None of this means you need to interact with someone who harmed you ever again. You can and must set appropriate boundaries that protect your own inner ecosystem. But they need to be the boundaries and needs of one who knows thyself. What are my essential, most authentic needs and boundaries?

Whether interacting with enemies, friends, close relationships or even parts within ourselves, learning to be connected includes learning how to say a “connected no.” Set boundaries with your heart open. Once you’ve met all the parts who come up around this relationship, you should be able to “feel towards” this person with compassion and curiosity.

From that place of connection, you can offer a firm, loving “no” simply because their need, while real and valid for them in terms of where they are at in their inner work, wouldn’t make sense for you to fulfill. Understand deeply that because we are all connected you are telling yourself “no” when you say no to another. And of course we should tell ourselves no sometimes, but there’s a loving way to do it.

We are to connect inside and connect in relationships. We are to connect in community and we are to connect in nature.

In the natural world all is connected, changes to the environment or the extreme actions of some members effect all members. Humans like to pretend they exist outside of nature, but we do not. Everything we do effects everything else and visa versa.

We are going through an Altruism Revolution and humans are waking up to the reality that we are all part of one life force permeating our planet. We must take care of everyone for our selves. And we must take care of our selves for everyone.

We don’t need to worry about making sure everyone has enough food, water, shelter and safety, we need to worry about everyone having enough connection. When everyone’s emotional needs are met and everyone feels connected the rest handles itself. There are plenty of resources to go around but disconnected people don’t realize they are one with the whole, and innocently horde from this place of ignorance.

Providing for physical needs while neglecting the emotional means people get neither. People who have their emotional needs met automatically meet their physical needs and those of those around them.

Connection is their deepest need. Connection is your deepest need.