Why is it so hard to connect with other people?
Often people come to awakening to find a deeper connection with themselves, spirit, and other people. Sometimes one of those areas is easier than another. We as human beings are now collectively in a state of “separation” consciousness. And hard as we try, we might notice that we still fight ourselves sometimes, get annoyed with others, and feel exiled from our connection to spirit.
Nothing’s wrong. That’s how it is to be human right now. And the more we go through life consciously, the more opportunity we have to grow, feel, and awaken. It happens, as you know, through your everyday experiences, the ones that feel like connection and love AND the ones that feel like abandonment and heartache.
It’s helpful to acknowledge that to even have a desire for awakening, to feel that call in your heart – that ache for something more – is a sign of a higher stage of human development. I’m not trying to be arrogant or elitist, I’m talking about developmental levels of our humanity. A five year old is no less sacred, honorable, divine, and worthy of love and care than a forty five year old. But one of the two you might let drive your car and go to the store to get something for you, while the other you might not let out of your site.
Abraham Maslow came up with a hierarchy of needs that you might be familiar with. Whenever we are talking about higher levels of development it’s important to remember the principle of “transcend and include.” That as you move up the hierarchy you go beyond the lower level AND include it. To be a forty five year old person you must have once been a five year old. You transcend or go beyond being five, but you carry with you the experiences of being five and you grow to the next level beyond. In Maslow’s pyramid it’s important to integrate all the lower levels into your field of awareness and care as you pursue the higher levels of “self-actualization” or awakening.
It’s also been my experience that as much as I “tried” to have a particular level of psychological development, safety, love, belonging, and esteem, it wasn’t until I experienced the first shift in my awakening to consciousness that I actually felt all the lower levels in a much more relaxed way. A safety that wasn’t dependent on controlling life. A belonging that didn’t depend on being included in the group, a sense of esteem that wasn’t conditioned by my career success, there’s a way in which after you awaken it fundamentally changes your relationship with all of life.
Another model of Human Development
Robert Kegan from Harvard, has done a lot of work in the field of human development and has reported that new levels of development are continuing to come forward in our species. We’ll talk more about this when we meet next, but it’s important to realize that as human beings we have two different elements going on in our awakening at the same time. On the one hand, you are perfect, whole and complete as you are. And on the other hand, there is an emergent wholeness, a way in which you are continuing to evolve, change, grow, and develop.
In our awakening, the invitation is to surrender into a deeper process underway and cooperate with that. Sometimes unconsciously we are actually holding ourselves back from the next level of growth because it feels scary, we are afraid of letting go of where we are. It may even feel like we are going crazy, especially if everyone else around you is at a particular level of development and doing things a certain way that is starting to not work for you.
To be a human being who is awakening is to be on a great journey to unknown lands. Sometimes just hearing about the new land you are on the cusp of traveling to can create an inner excitement, relaxation, and willingness, to finally let go , and open into what’s next for you.
Independence has been a quality revered in our culture, and a necessary phase of human development, but there are stages beyond that, perhaps you are feeling a call of your heart and soul to move beyond this phase, but you don’t want to “regress” into a lower stage of co-dependence or group think.
In our next session we’ll discuss this in more detail. For now, check out the video and journal about what it brings up for you and where you feel your soul calling you.
Putting it all together
Often when dealing with other people we come from different levels of development, different ages, different desires and it can be challenging to relate to each other. It’s helpful to recognize sometimes the limitations of our connection on one level with certain people who might like to keep conversation more surface level and avoid transparency. Not because they are bad people, or less valuable, or not as smart, or not as good, or not as awake, but because they are being who they are.
Awakening is invoking in us a greater capacity for compassion, skill, and a fierce call to grow ourselves in a way that feels authentic.
Jean Houston has traveled around the world surveying people and asking them what level of development – age wise – they think the human race is at. She said that her very unofficial pole results came up with a general consensus that human beings are operating at the level of teenagers. From Africa to Ireland, from Israel to Taiwan, people all around the world feel like the general level of human behavior is that of a teenager.
And in this there is great hope for our species, for as she says, “we are not a bad species, we are a young species.” Awakening is an opportunity to wake up to our unity with all of life, AND to grow up and develop into the person we came here to be – not like our brother or father, sister or mother, but uniquely who we came to be. It’s an emergent unfolding which means that it comes from the “inside” but it can be stimulated from the “outside” to awaken some part of you that is ready to grow, be, live, and open. Some part of you that longs to find union and longs to bring forth the next level of your own humanity by being who you are, and simultaneously and creatively becoming the next emergent version of you. Not a forced type of growth, but one born in a dance with the Mystery through your awakening process.