Want Happiness? OK, let’s bottom-line it. The most important thing you need in order to create happiness in your life is the ability to connect. It’s pretty simple. In fact, nearly every major issue looming over us today is created from our inability to connect with the earth, with other countries, and in our relationships with each other. So what is so fearful about connecting and why aren’t we doing it?
Rainer Maria Rilke says, “For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult task of all…the work for which all other work is but a preparation. It calls us out and calls us to vast things.” Since love, which is the ground and foundation of all connection, is the most powerful energy in the universe, it is also the scariest.
Our society supports an attitude of being increasingly more removed and separated from each other. Why sit down together when we can text message, web cam or email? We have lost respect and a sense of value for our families of origin and feel very little desire to connect with them to do soul work. Why connect with people who don’t live with us and have become irrelevant in our lives? We fill our children’s lives with so many activities they seldom have time to connect to themselves, much less with us. Isn’t achievement more important than authenticity, inspiration and creativity?
We are often so enmeshed in our careers and survival needs that couples seem out there on their own trying to stay connected against all odds. In addition, the very landscape of relationships has drastically changed. Relationships that were once vertical, and hierarchical with one person having greater power, control and decision making authority than the other, have now toppled over and become horizontal relationships that demand, equality, partnership, cooperation and compassion. It’s wonderful and, at the same time, a bit disconcerting to those attached to the old way of being and doing things. Rather than becoming discouraged, however, we should be patting each other on the back for being pioneers in a new era of relationships that are bound to work better because they are more honorable and equal.
This issue of connecting is not just about what we do across the dining table or in the bedroom. There is a collective imperative here to learn to bridge the gap between masculine and feminine, between the young and older, between generations, between societies and countries and between this planet and us. The separation we are now experiencing is literally killing our relationships and us. Our relationships to each other, and to ourselves are really the vehicles through which we heal the pain on this planet. Connection is the instrument of our evolution and the evolution of the planet. Without it we cannot survive. Where we currently are is tantamount to being in a relationship and saying to your partner, “I love you but I don’t want to hear your real feelings, or know how my actions are affecting you and you may not have any input into our decision making because I don’t care about what you think.” This lack of connection has created a narcissistic nightmare.
Connection is born out of intimacy. Having an intimate connection with yourself gives you a chance to stand at that gap just before you say or do something and examine your own feelings and motives. If you do that with a desire to create deeper understanding, healing and compassion, your action or response may be different and you will create an outcome that is more positive. When I am willing to ask myself what am I feeling and whether what I am feeling is coming from a place of fear and woundedness or power and path – there is an opportunity in that exquisite space to make new choices that create deeper connection.
Chogyam Trungpa says, “When you experience your own wisdom and the power of seeing things as they are, you have access to tremendous vision and power in the world. You find that you are inherently connected to your own being, and that is magic.” Hat magic extend further out. You also find in that same instant that you are inherently connected to the rest of the world, your partner, your planet, your friends and family and every living thing. In that connection all things are possible. In that connection is infinite healing and love. If you have no reference point for how that looks or how to get there, don’t beat yourself up, just make it a priority to find a teacher or a teaching that can give you the tools. There are a lot of us out here…and we are waiting for you. Our lives depend upon it
© Dr. Dina Bachelor Evan 2013