Connection is our birthright
published in its original form on 1st March, 2012
edited into its current form on 8th October, 2023
Just over a decade ago, I felt unsettled, left unsteady by a drive to clarify and refine my mission: why am I here? what is my practical purpose in this lifetime?
That was when the penny first dropped: I am all about deep connection, within the self, with other people and beings, with Life itself; not as an action, but as a way of being, a way of unfolding.
Experiencing separateness
We often experience ourselves as separate. We seem apart from one other, and from other beings and things: ‘I’ am separate from ‘you’, from this bed, from that dog, from the ground on which I walk; you and I have different backgrounds, religions, genders, skin colours, abilities, desires — so different that we find it difficult sometimes even to imagine how to connect with one another.
We even experience ourselves as separated from ourselves, split into different personae: this is the ‘me’ that shows up at work, this is the ‘me’ that goes to bed with my lover, this is the ‘me’ that goes to dinner with my parents.
Or we think of ourselves divided into ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ traits, some of which we embrace and some of which we try to get rid of, or into ‘me then’ and ‘me now’.
Too often, we feel fragmented, lonely, frustrated and angry.
Above all, if we’re honest with ourselves, we feel unsafe and afraid.
But this separateness is not true.
Deep connection is the natural state of affairs, even if that’s not how we experience life. We can see the truth of that in our breathing: we breathe in air, and all the organisms and molecules in it; we breathe out carbon dioxide, which enables trees and plants to breathe and live; the trees and plants in turn breathe out oxygen, which enables us to breathe and live. We can see it in our eating: we incorporate other lifeforms into ourselves, literally into our bodies.
We can see it in our society, economy and culture: as much as the dominant way that each of these three operates seems to keep us separated, fragmented and unable to connect with one another, in fact they all rely completely upon our deep interconnection, not only locally, but globally.
Through the work of scientists, we now know that deep connection is even the truth of how physical reality itself is made up at the most fundamental level.
Deep connection is our birthright.
It is as natural as breathing, as essential to our well-being and as central to our existence.
Looking back over my life, I realise that everything I’ve done that has meant a thing to me, everything, has been about recognising, deepening and living connection: from protesting nuclear weapons, to co-founding Birmingham Bi Women’s Group, to being in a workers’ collective delivering locally grown organic vegetables, to working as an aromatherapist, to teaching, to writing poetry, prose and fiction, to celebrating the changes of the seasons, to conflict resolution and transformation, to working in community development, to marrying and burying people, to storytelling, to teaching, to founding and directing We Make The Path.
Connection, connection: only connection.
No-one can give you deep connection, nor take it away. It is yours, irrevocably, regardless of whether the experience of it flows freely or is blocked.