Our Multilayered Connection with Everything

We are connected, already, within our most authentic selves, to one another and all of the cosmos. This connection can be cultivated, and has multiple dimensions:

• connection with our deepest self
• connection with others and the collective
• connection with nature and the cosmos
• connection with Source / Divine / Self (however we each see Reality)

Okay, so that all might sound great, but in what way are we actually connected in each of these dimensions or layers? 

It is easy enough to say that we are all connected. But unless we can get our minds and hearts around this, to actually experience a deeper sense of connection, it will remain merely conceptual. And our ability to live full, compassionate, creative lives will suffer for it. So let’s dive in, one layer of connection at a time, to begin naming and exploring more of our connected Reality. 

In this introduction I will overview each of these layers of connection. And then in the following months we will look at each aspect of our interconnection in more detail. 

As you listen, notice if you are drawn to a particular layer where you want to cultivate or experience deeper connection. And notice what ideas feel inviting, and if there are any that give you a sense of aversion or pause. At the end I will invite you to sit with what you have noticed. 

So let’s get started with our connection with our deepest selves.

Connection with Our Deepest Self

There are many ways to talk about our interior lives and identities. There’s no way of getting around the fact that humans are complex, full of mixed motives, ambitions, desires and longings, hopes and fears. And that we generally are not aware of most of those things at any one time. 

We often live disconnected lives, unaware of what is happening inside ourselves, why we are feeling the way we do in the moment, why we act the way we do, and unsure of what we really want, playing roles to meet what we think people want from us, rather than living out of our authentic or deepest selves. 

This is because so much resides in our unconscious awareness. It is our shadow self, as Jung termed it, where we learn at a young age to place all of those aspects of ourselves that do not seem to fit with external or societal expectations. Or, in the language of Internal Family Systems, there are many parts within us, each playing different roles and relating to one another in an emotional system. 

With all of that going on inside of us, it can then be difficult to answer the question, “Who am I?” or discern and make decisions around “What is mine to do” in life. 

First, at a practical level, knowing ourselves is a journey of deepening connection, self-understanding, and self-compassion. It involves getting to know how we are “wired” - our motivations, compulsions, triggers, hurts, pains, hopes, and longings. 

But “Who we are” is a very old question, which has been answered in various ways throughout history. For some, our deepest self is an enduring soul that has some sort of spiritual substance of its own. For others, this deepest self is actually in union with, or ultimately the same as the cosmic, divine Self that holds everything together. For Buddhists, there is no self, at least in the way we think of a self as a separate being that exists on its own. 

However we each view this, contemplative and mystical traditions each seem to say in their own way that in our deepest selves we are intricately connected with Reality. We are not separate or distant from our Source. Or framed differently, we are inextricably woven into the fabric of everything.

And it is possible to cultivate a deeper realization of this connection that is already there. We can live whole and integrated lives, full of compassionate and creative energy.

Connecting with Others and the Collective

How we connect with others and the collective naturally flows out of our ways of connecting with ourselves. 

Our attentiveness and self-awareness directly impact our ways of attending to and connecting with others around us. Our depth of listening, empathy, and connection depends on our ability to see the person in front of us and pay full attention. Our hearts have to be open, full of compassion, and that’s also not truly possible without having compassion for ourselves. Those who are rigid and critical or judgmental outwardly are often far harder on themselves. The work of softening begins inside. 

How we understand our own experience of what it means to be human is going to shape how we view the dignity of others too. 

If we can experience ourselves as integrally connected with Reality (capital R), it means we can begin to see others also as reflecting that. This is true whether we think of our humanity in terms of 

• being a suffering sentient being, one with consciousness, to be compassionately liberated, 
• human made in the image of God, 
• one with the Divine - a drop in the ocean
• a lover made for union with the Divine beloved
• a creature made by a Creator
• or an integrated part of the cosmic whole. 

There are certainly worldview differences between these, but the point is when we can experience something of this for ourselves it can change us, and it draws the contemplative into loving action on behalf of others and the collective. 

Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk known for his work in interreligious dialogue and social activism, famously had a mystical experience in Louisville at the corner of Fourth and Walnut streets. Here are some of his own words:

"I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness…

"This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

"If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . ." (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander). 

This experience on its own was surely wonderful and enlightening. But it also marked a shift in his focus and writings toward greater social engagement and action outside of his cloistered experience as a monk. He became involved in peace and civil rights movements, and sought out interreligious dialogue with Eastern religions, with a humble posture that truly sought to learn and understand. 

This type of mystical experience naturally leads to the question of how we are connected with the collective, by which I mean wider society and ultimately all of humanity. 

First, we are not just connected with those who are alive now. Many cultures and spiritual traditions intentionally honor our connection with ancestors. There are multiple ways of thinking about this connection. For some it is quite experiential, with expectation of more direct communication in dreams, visions, or other intuitive ways of sensing. There are also many cultural ways of celebrating, remembering, and honoring the dead. 

Regardless of how we experience and honor our ancestors, there is an undeniable connection purely in terms of our family lineages, which are interwoven with our ancestors, their histories, communities, and wider families. We have surely been shaped by them. And through them we also might see that we are bound together with others living now too, far beyond just those genetically connected with shared family history. 

And if that’s not enough, we also may count among our ancestors those individuals known and unknown who we look to as models to emulate, or founts of wisdom to drink from–people who have shaped culture and history and our lives in unmistakable ways. 

Underneath all of this though is the question of whether we are connected in some more all-encompassing way. Is there a collective unconscious, an underground stream of life, heart, wisdom, guidance, ideas and influences? Of course we are increasingly connected technologically and culturally, and are more globally aware than ever before. But ontologically is there something that actually exists? I’ll come back to these questions in a bit, talking about the layer of our interconnection with Reality.

Of course I’ve made all of this connection with others and the collective quite complex and theoretical. At the end of the day, most of us need to start with learning to have healthy relationships and boundaries that serve connection with our father, mother, siblings, grandparents, cousins, friends, spouses, etc. Our connection with others is lived out in the concrete, in the ways we compassionately listen and offer ourselves. 

Compassionate practices and creative prompts can help us to surface and heal the blocks in our own hearts and lives to live in deeper interconnection with those who matter most to us. And the more we cultivate our ways of seeing everyone with compassion we will increasingly see and name injustices and work for healing on the collective level. 

Connecting with Nature and Cosmos

Of course, all of our human interactions are embedded in our connection with nature and the cosmos. That’s the next layer. And humans, as self-aware mammals, are entirely dependent on nature, as much as we like to forget it. 

One helpful lens for processing our interconnection with nature and the cosmos is the idea of “interbeing”. Thich Nhat Hanh describes it this way in his book, The Other Shore: 

“If we… look into the sheet of paper, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. Without the sunshine, nothing can grow, not even us. So we know that the sunshine is also in the sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. Looking more deeply, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. We also see the wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his daily bread. So the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. The logger’s father and mother are in the paper as well. Without all of these other things there would be no paper at all.” 

Thich Nhat Hahn continues this line of logic, suggesting that we are also in that paper in the moment our perception engages with it. 

And he concludes, “Everything–time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat, and even consciousness–is in that sheet of paper. Everything coexists with it. To be is to inter-be. Cannot just be by yourself alone; you have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.” 

In other words, we are enwebbed in the arising of life, always interdependent with all of the other natural systems. 

To deepen our understanding of interconnection with nature and the cosmos, we can also look to the many and multifaceted indigenous traditions as sources of wisdom that point out the need to live in harmony with nature, as part of a wider community of creation. We are in a living universe, sharing kinship with all things. There is a relational reciprocity and responsibility to care for one another, tend the land, and receive everything with gratitude. This is quite the corrective to our ways of unsustainably using and destroying life and resources. 

The work of physicists also points to our interconnection with everything in the cosmos. Here the language of entanglement is used to describe the ways that at a quantum level there are connections and interactions that are beyond the ability of Newtonian physics to explain. And, importantly, this entanglement is not just across the distance of a petri dish, but is cosmic in scope. So while we may not feel much connection with a star system 14 billion light years away, quantum theory is saying there is actually a much more complex web of connection and forces woven through everything. 

Whether we are drawn to the conceptual and scientific descriptions of our connection, Buddhist reflections on our interdependent arising, or to the embodied wisdom of nature-based spiritualities, there are rich resources to help us gain a deeper understanding of how we exist in relationship, and to cultivate a sense of the Sacred throughout it all–in the mundane and the cosmic scope. 

While there are many more spiritual streams and worldviews that could be shared here, let’s turn to the layer of our connection with Reality / Divine / Source.

Connecting with Reality / Divine / Source

In many ways each of the layers has asked the same question, which is what is the underlying nature of our interconnection? Is there anything More, any wider frame of reference, any ultimate Reality that connects everything? And if so, is it the fabric of the cosmos, outside of it entirely, or something in-between? 

One way of answering this question would be to say that the only things that exist are material. This stance still allows us to embrace many of the nuanced layers of interconnection, quantum entanglement, and interdependence that are found in the cosmos, natural systems, human relationships, and complex human-made systems.

But to return to the question raised earlier of whether there is a collective unconscious, is there something else happening here that is woven through ourselves, humanity, and potentially the whole cosmos? 

If all of Reality emerges out of a primordial consciousness, then it would not be a surprise to see unconscious connections between people at all. In that case, our conscious awareness is not actually separate from consciousness itself anyway–that is our deepest self, which is not a separate self the way we usually think of ourselves. And of course in a worldview where all form is a manifestation of consciousness, it would be no surprise to find that all of the cosmos, including all of nature and human relationships, is intricately connected throughout.   

In theistic approaches, if God is the ground of being in which we all live, move and have our being, then it is not hard to conjecture that there is deep connection between all of humanity and the cosmos in God. There are some options here though for how this connection is understood. 

One is to see the Divine totally separate from the cosmos, but relating to it and present everywhere. In this case, perhaps Spirit could still be the connecting tissue, the intermediary between people to connect hearts and lives, to make humanity one as the Divine is one. A practical example of this, however we each might explain it, is the common experience when there is an emergency of having a sense or an intuition, a draw to prayer or sending love or calling the person. 

Or, in a panentheistic approach, everything is held together in the Divine, but there is still an ineffable and transcendent Mystery beyond the cosmos. The question here is how separate are we and everything else from this Love running through everything? Many contemplative and mystical figures across traditions flirt with the line of separation as they pursue, or are drawn into union with the Divine and experience sacred Reality throughout nature.   

It is even easier to view our vast interconnection if we view our deepest self as quite literally an expression of the Divine. If our sense of self is in the Self, and everything is somehow an expression or manifestation of this cosmic Self at play, bringing the universe into form, then we are fundamentally connected with everything and everyone. In many ways, this is a theistic mirror of a consciousness based view of reality. However there are nuanced differences, and myriad external forms of practice and devotion. 

And there are of course many other ways of conceiving of our connection with the collective humanity. For example, Jungian archetypes note the recurring images and metaphors and roles across human cultures in many times and places. And so it then raises the question for us of whether these archetypes are a real force or energy that we have access to, or a way of describing what seems to be happening. 

The point in briefly surveying a few of the main ways people tend to view our interconnection with Reality / the Divine / Source / The Universe is not to tell you where to land, but rather to name some larger categories of possible spiritual streams and approaches. For each there are vast heritages of practices to further cultivate our sense of connection, devotion, union, non-dual emptiness, or oneness. 

The way we see it, which hopefully leaves room for many ways of personally understanding it, is that

Reality / Source / Divine is
Love, Compassion, Grace, Kindness, Tenderness, Beauty, Creativity, Joy
that connects and flows
through our creative and spiritual selves,
through all of us,
through every thing.

Our hope in all of this is that each of us is able to more deeply connect at each of these four levels, and to experience that you are never separate and unloved. 

Closing Practice

So to close, I want to invite you to pause and reflect on what you noticed in yourself as you listened. Was there one or two layers of connection that you feel most drawn toward? Are there new things you are curious about? A confirmation that you already have a strong preference? 

Whatever is coming up for you, listen to it and see what invitations there might be there to more deeply explore and cultivate that connection.