Do you feel "connected?"

Now I know that we are all connected, all ... one. (And all separate too of course) I've seen that truth, it has been made clear to me. But I don't really feel or experience a sense of that in my daily life very often. My experience is more of the other side of the coin (separate).

How about you? How connected do you really feel?

And, if you do answer this question, if possible try to keep your answer to your actual day-to-day experience of the results of practice rather than theory, sutras, etc. If possible

That's a very interesting question, Mike.

For me, the less resistant I am to recognizing and accepting the feelings of my body, the more connected I feel with others and the world at large. I like to think that this is the "heart" aspect of the practice. The more open I am to experiencing the world, the more connected to the world I feel. There have been times when my philosophy and approach to practice has left me disconnected from 'form' as though there was no reason to interact with something so ephemeral. But that's an escape in itself. So, the more I enter into experience without resistance, the more in touch I am with 'form' and 'emptiness' alike.

There are some practical reasons for this. For one, human beings are naturally emotionally resonant, barring any developmental issues or severe psychopathology. When others feel, we feel. And we feel it most readily in the body. When my heart strings are played via proximity to another, whether good or bad or in-between, I feel it too. The trick for me is to allow myself to feel it without judgment.

Thoughts?

EDIT: This is no way the same as Kenneth's "direct mode". I don't somehow think that nearly exclusive grounding in the body is tantamount to ultimate freedom from suffering.

Thoughts.

Do I really know what I'm talking about here?

I certainly do feel others the way you are talking about. In fact, most of the time the last year or so I feel kind of raw, you know? A lot of times it seems like I know almost too much about everything going on around me like I can not exactly predict the future, but instead have a sort of an inevitable sense of how certain things are going to end up.

But, all of this still seems very self-centered ... separate. It's like I'm intimate with myself and the world, with an emphasis on "I'M"

Do any of you feel more like a part of the whole rather than a piece of the whole as you are walking around in life?

It does happen to me sometimes, and that experience is kind of a non-experience, you know? Empty rather than connected. maybe that's it.

awouldbehipster: "This is no way the same as Kenneth's "direct mode". I don't somehow
think that nearly exclusive grounding in the body is tantamount
to ultimate freedom from suffering."

Actually, I would hesitantly say that it might be closer to direct mode than you think. I just think Kenneth's not done a good job of explaining DM, or at least, what he means to be doing with DM. I'm not trying to be an apologist for anyone, and I am turning to the DM thread on the forum here to try to offer my understanding of things there, but I just wanted to say that briefly.

Anyway, I do agree with you, the body really does seem to be the way into this openness and connectedness that Mike talks about. I noticed today, just walking out to lunch, that I have a tendency to deny my own internal processes when looking at/interacting with the world, and that I tend to deny the world when looking at/interacting with my internal processes (thought/emotion/whatever).

I get the feeling that this doesn't actually need to happen, but it is what I seem to do.

And when I either block my view of my internal or external reality is felt in the body as tension and in the mind as a kind of dull, unsatisfactoriness. Walking down the street on my way to the pizza shop today, I want to smile at people, brighten their day, or at least show them that I recognize that they exist and do not find them to be a threat (a rare thing to be shown, at least in my experience in NYC). To consciously choose the smile-and-a-nod approach to others, rather than the duck-my-head-and-avoid-eye-contact.

But I notice that when I do this, there's a tension in my body (in the chest area, I think) a kind of waiting-to-catch-myself. As if I didn't trust my natural response. And people see this and, my guess is, respond to my lack-of-trust-in-myself with their own lack of trust and look away.

I don't feel bad about the fact that I do this, I'm not down on myself. If anything, I'm thankful to have a constant reminder of how much work I still have to do. I have a lot of years of conditioning to see through to be able to lay down the duck-my-head-and-avoid-eye-contact karma. But that seems to be the way for me, at the moment. To increase my body awareness so as to see that holding-back and to be able to undo it when I want it undone. To trust my natural responses again, and to remove the conditioning that says I shouldn't.

I think Kenneth (or Mumuwu) posted a quote (either on the forum or Facebook) from Nisargatta somewhere that "whatever the self is, it hates itself." This, I think, is a very deep thing, something I need to look into every moment, and try to see that I am doing this when I am doing it. Because self-loathing doesn't help. It only causes more suffering.

Anyway, that's my current take on the "I am connected, but still feel apart" problem. Hope it's helpful.

Hi Ian. Thanks for your take on the topic. I can relate to your descriptions, both of openness and resistance/tension. Interesting stuff.

I know that what I described as a practice may not be that unlike Kenneth's 'direct mode', but I wanted to distinguish the approach in an important way so as not to get mixed in with his exposition. He keeps saying things like "the body doesn't lie", and "the body is reality". I'm not into making assumptions like that, whether our practices are similar or not.

Yeah, no worries. And I agree, nearly exclusive grounding in the body is NOT tantamount to ultimate freedom from suffering.

I would add though that finding yourself more connected to reality when you can experience the feelings of the body without judgment is similar, in my eyes, to saying " the body is reality". There are differences, yes, and your explanation is much more nuanced than Kenneth's sweeping statement, but I understand them as pointing to a similar thing from different directions.

What Jackson is talking about, I think, is just basic mindfulness. Doing the same thing one is doing in seated vipassana while walking around. One finds an anchor in the body (this anchor can move around in the body depending on what one is experiencing and it can even be in the brain from time to time) and notices what is going on without resistence and with equanimity.

Sometimes, whenever conditions are right, and this is done skillfully:
1. awesome insights can happen; or
2. painful feelings can melt away before they have a chance to develop and start to fester (pac man); or
3. there can become a sense of flow with oneself and everything else; or
4. unitive experiences occur; or
5. one keeps having one unpleasant experience after the other and it is a struggle to not resist but this changes after a while

Or, all of the above and more. This is a practice.

However, it isn't designed with the intention to stop emotions or feelings. There is no self-centered goal like that. Openness and non resistence really means openeness and non resistence.


I think that by now to a lot of us 'mindfulness' can sound kind of ordinary or boring, but sometimes and maybe even often, it can be like magic.

EDIT: and there is a body/mind connection with this process as, again, if it is done skillfully, one can see how thoughts and images follow after sensations and the other way around, which helps one to see a lot of their "mechanisms" of suffering.

Mike, I'm so pleased to know you. You have a way of posing things and questioning experience and assumptions which time and again illuminates my life for me.

I was sensitive to this dynamic last night and paying attention to see honestly what's going on. It is subtle and tricky. I definitely find this issue, as I have framed it and experienced it, to be central to my practice/life.

Everyone has said some helpful insightful stuff already; I can't wait to see what others' say too. For me, I notice that there is something very interesting going on. How can I articulate it?

The connected state that we''ve seen-- it's not a state, right? I mean, it feels like something I periodically uncover yet habitually cover up. Lately, when I'm doing certain things, it seems much closer-- like I'm more connected with that space of connection in which body-and-mind-and-world are a total (yet open) space, functioning together naturally.

I find that sometimes I'll reflect on my present experience, while I'm driving, or in the shower, or brushing my teeth, and notice that this is very clear, even though it wasn't being explicitly noticed. Other times I stop and check myself, and see that I am living in a delay-loop, and feeling kind of fragmented, but immediately upon reflection just see that activity as part of the body-mind-world activity- no problem. And then, other times, there is a story/pattern of sensations/impulse to act complex which is so tightly wound-- say, feeling angry because someone seems to not be listening to me when I feel I have something important to say-- that I can't see through it merely by "checking myself" but must actively relax or consciously make a firm decision to change my behavior in that moment, to get out of that immediate situation so my body and mind can calm down-- which usually happens almost instantaneously when I make that sincere choice.

This interpersonal dimension is where the rubber really hits the road for me. For one thing, although there are subtle things like body-mapping processes and sensate tensions which can create the illusion of separateness, the vast majority of my separateness experience comes from mental-emotional stories. And these stories are the basis for conventional social interactions! So it is challenging to relate to people-- especially those with whom I've a history-- in a way that doesn't simply exist on that story level. Because relating to my intimates without being limited to those stories means being completely vulnerable and invulnerable at the same time.

The confidence to BE in the present moment and to express my own and listen to another's relative truth-of-the-moment is a sort of invulnerability, based on a simple confidence in being rather than being someone or something. Yet the total vulnerability is there in expressing my perspective directly (which may de-stabilize another) and in being available for them to do the same (which may destablize me on the relative level). This is really challenging. This willingness to ride the razor's edge between fearlessness and total vulnerability seems to be the key for living in connectedness inter-personally.

I even experience this with walking my dog, a time I've long used for intentional practice. We have so much history. He can be a bit difficult-- and you know very well he'd say the same about me! It's difficult not to collapse in the face of certain of his gestures or habits into a subtle story which evokes all the times he's "done that before" and over-react or even mis-interpret. And on the other hand, it's so satisfying to let go of all that bullshit as soon as it comes up and rejoin each other in the present. It's similar with my partner Caroline and our son Ivan and other loved ones and friends. the choice is between letting go of my there-and-then orientation and coming explicitly back into the actual here-and-now, in which we're already connected, and everything is functioning together.

Part of being in this space for me is being free of a certain kind of judgemental reactivity, and why I find it most challenging to exist in this space inter-personally is that it means extending that non-judgemental attitude beyond my bubble of experience-- letting go trying to control my experience is one thing, letting go of trying to get someone else to be different in some way is another thing entirely, and for me at least, a much deeper letting go. And much much more rewarding.

So there seems to be a sort of vast, "cool" connectedness that is very impersonal and comes out when not in inter-personal relationship, and is fairly obvious most of the time as I walk around now without trying to look for it. And there is a very intimate, warm connectedness that is available but more challenging to live in, that is the cutting edge of my practice perhaps, which is about being able to drop the story but stay on that personal, relational level at the same time. Remembering to stop and pet the cat on my way out of the house in the morning, to ruffle the dog's ears a lot, to play with Ivan and talk with him and listen to his half-sentences which hint at his grand adventures while I was at work, to really listen to Care and speak clearly and hug her plenty and just to really be present on that personal dimension in a very direct, warm, simple way....

Thanks Jake, very good to know you as well, of course.

'To top it all off, it's clear that experience is both connected
and separate, all at once at the same time. I can lean over the razor's
edge and feel more connectedness if I want and I can lean to the other
side and feel more separateness. But it's clear at most times that I'm
thus looking at the same experiences through a slightly different lens.'-- cmarti

This is wonderful, Chris! The crude 'We are all One' version of 'non-duality' is as often as not misleading, I think. Here is where a sense of 'dimensions' is helpful, in my experience: in some pervasive way, the continuity, the lack of strict boundaries, shines through the more usual perceptions. And the whole experience is of being in a dimension that brightens and enlivens all the modes of perception, rather than overriding or negating them. Call it the dimension of Intimacy; and you know without any doubt that it is, and always has been, where you ARE. There's just the difference between noticing it and not.

All sorts of experiences can trigger it-- a tender interaction, a drifting reverie, a surprise encounter. A charged confrontation, even. I think Mike has spoken to that very well on his 'changing' thread. The heart dimension pops into the foreground, and the data-dimension becomes background. Like those ambiguous pictures: old crone/young debutante; white vase/black silhouettes facing one another.

I've been practicing with this a lot since my first post.

For me, at least, the question negates itself, because as long as "I" am feeling my experience and reflecting on it, I will be separate, not connected. "I" can't feel connected.

However, there is a way to live in a kind of flow (something that Chris mentioned) in which there is a temporary lack of separateness. Once I notice it and start to think about it, the flow ends and separateness returns.

Hi

Yes, I've been considering this for several days now. It's very interesting. I can relate to what you just said about "flow" although I don't find that reflection disrupts it so much as resistance. Up to a certain threshold there can be an identification-- an emotionally charged composite self-image-- but the identification doesn't eclipse the connectedness, but merely stands out for a moment against the background.

In fact, it is seeing the identification as literally embedded in a network of connections which helps it relax. It's like meeting someone who's lost their glasses and pointing out that they're on their head; there's just a subtle need to re-emphasize the interconnectedness.

This seems really useful inter-personally, because it allows the emotional energy of the personal dimension to continue circulating in relationship. This seems really important to me right now as it is much easier for me to maintain an insight into the "cool", impersonal or trans-personal dimension of inter-connectedness, but this doesn't feel in any way authentic inter-personally. It's what naturally arises when driving a car, walking in nature, even playing guitar. But inter-personal connectedness seems empowered and vivified by the full play of emotional energies and qualities.

It's almost like very carefully balancing between the two, playing with the possibility of identification-- of taking a more energetically colored "position" but being able to drop it and reset on a dime. There seems to be a sweet spot, relationally, where I can let my separate self sense identifications arise intermittently as part of a group dynamic without their eclipsing the interconnected background. When I do this, I seem to come off more personal, warm and ordinary without building any emotional-energetic backlog, because I don't seem to be relating to the identifications AS identifications. They're more like "personas" or masks which convey information rather than hiding something. A revealing disguise. As long as I don't forget the deeper truths of my existence, the identifications seem to have a legitimate place right. Just musing.... Does anyone else experience playing with this personal dimension inter-personally? I assume most of us experience collapsing into an identification once in a while in which its little view of life eclipses the deeper view, but I mean it arises in relationship as a connective medium on the personal level. Odd, actually-- it's like using a separate self sense to connect with someone who is perhaps experiencing more continuous unquestioned identifications.... and who therefore will feel dis-connected without that interface... hmmm, interesting. Separateness as a medium of connection...

"Odd, actually-- it's like using a separate self sense to connect with someone who is perhaps experiencing more continuous unquestioned identifications.... and who therefore will feel dis-connected without that interface... hmmm, interesting. Separateness as a medium of connection..." -Jake

This makes sense to me, Jake. Here's why...

I think that many people, when presented with a person who is wide open and spacious, contract out of fear. They don't relate to the openness in a healthy way, and thus find it threatening. I can see how allowing a self to contract into a particular role when interacting with such people may serve as a stepping stone to gradually opening up when it isn't as frightening for them to experience this shift.

We as creatures are emotionally resonant. That's why when we see someone who is visibly agitated, we also feel agitated. Thus, when someone is demonstrating openness and presence, an interpersonal effect can result in a feeling of openness in another. From my own experience and the shared experience of some of my friends, this kind of "I'm open, but you're not," dynamic can result in a great deal of interpersonal relationship conflict. This may be a problem more prominent among meditators and their non-practicing partners, particularly those who do not have a healthy sense of self to begin with.

So yeah, I think separateness can be a medium of connection for some folks, especially us Westerners.

Yeah, I'm just exploring this intensively lately, so I'm very exploratory with it. I think you hit the nail on the head r.e. some who are habitually more contracted may find an open spacious comportment threatening, interpersonally. There is a tendency to project onto the openness, to read the openness as actually aggression, lust, or whatever the other person is bringing as a projection.

So openness and relaxation could be taken as a sexual come-on, or the concealment of a selfish agenda, or even as a confrontational attitude, depending on what the more contracted person is bringing to the interaction in terms of projection. It's an interesting dynamic. I definitely notice that by taking a "position" with an understandable and "sensible" emotional charge, even if within I'm holding it very loosely, seems to give others a sense of security that they know "where I stand", yet there is still-- within me-- the spaciousness around the contextual self I'm enacting in that moment. So the space is there, but it isn't bare-- it's decorated with a personality moment, a concrete personal presence, and this seems to give the other permission to have their own position in compliment or contrast to mine. I feel there's something interesting which will grow out of this exploration, and I also have the sense that i can't know yet what that'll look like. Interesting...

Second, there is a sense of what I call "flow" that emanates somehow from the universe, or maybe just from existence, at large. That, too, is a felt sense and that brings on a deep sense of being connected to all experience, as it plays out.


-cmarti

Chris, I am interested in this sense of "flow" you mention. You described the first sense of "connectedness" as something that could be "dialed up by dropping thought and intent. Is this "flow" also something that can be "dialed up" or is a something that just comes and goes on it own, or is it something that's present all the time? Or perhaps none of these? Just curious to hear a little more about your experience of "flow".

Hmm. That is interesting, and does indeed help to clarify. Would you say this is comparable to the feeling of often described as being "in the zone" where actions just kind of flow in correspondence to reality without any intent?

"In the zone" would involve "doing" something, but not actually attempting to exert control of various aspects of the situation (including the "self" within that situation). I guess another word for it could be wu-wei. Would you say this is what you mean by "flow" or do you mean something else?

I do like hearing that it always present, just veiled, though I don't think I have had any experience of it in the way you describe it.

Also, you say "Both of these "senses" come right from the heart" and also that both come from the solar plexus. I do not at all mean this as a way of "catching a mistake" but more in the interest of hearing how these two descriptions overlap experimentally. Though I have to leave work now to go to my other job where I sadly have no internet access, and so will have to come back to this later.

Its good to be back here. The level of discussion is highly enjoyable for me. Hopefully my work load remains light and I can stick around for longer this time...

Many years ago, shortly after we first linked up, my partner worked as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant (briefly; not the best gig for a waitress!). Anyway, two middle aged brothers ran the place, Peter and I-can't-remember. The latter was the younger brother and he took care of the books and orders and such, wore a suit, and was generally pretty uptight. He was the younger brother, but looked his age, while Peter, the older brother (and I would guess maybe fiftyish?) appeared to be at least a decade if not two younger.

Peter worked in the kitchen and on the floor constantly, doing anything that needed to be done, cleaning, chopping veggies, cooking, what have you. Every time I saw him his demeanor was always the same: very relaxed, alert, smooth, calm, gentle but firm, warm in an almost impersonal way, simple and in a word consistent. As far as Care (my partner) could tell, he never "blew up" or flew off the handle, or ever appeared stressed. He didn't come off as uptight or repressed either, in any way.

One day I went to meet care after her shift. She was sitting with Peter, who was tirelessly and effortlessly shucking a huge pile of peas (is that something you do with peas? I don't know). Care commented on his seeming effortlessness, hard work, and consistency in the face of varying circumstances and asked him what was his secret. Without pausing in his work, though by no means brusquely, he glanced out the window and nodded at the wind blowing autumn leaves down the street and said with a shrug: "Natural activity." As if it were the most obvious thing (which it is, in some sense) and we were being slightly daft not to notice it (which in a sense we were, and are).

It felt like he was saying: it's all already happening. What more do you need to know? The only difference between "me" and the wind blowing the leaves is that I can think about what I ought to do, should do, should have done, should want to do, shouldn't want to do, and thus trip myself up. He was hinting that Universe "jakes" "carolines" and "peters" just as effortlessly as wind blows, and that nothing about our existence is in anyway separate from that Natural Activity, no matter how we get twisted up in our "actions" and for a few moments "I" really relaxed into the truth of that when he pointed it out-- before returning to my 21 year old dramas

I'm not sure if this "natural activity" resonates with what you're talking about as "flow" or not Chris, but that's how I've always referred to this dimension since that encounter, and that's sort of what your descriptions remind me of.

What a GORGEOUS story, and gracefully told. My Daoist teacher couldn't improve on it.

Noticing such moments of grace and ease-- the simple grace of being, in action-- is what makes me ever-more 'allergic' to grand schemes of improvement, imposing what seem to be 'good ideas' on things-as-they-are, without long, slow reflective watching to see what's there in the first place.

It's not that change is never in order, so much as that disrespectful change always creates more problems than it solves. At least, that's what it has looked like in my life.

[But, more than enough about me!]
Palabra, guys!

Thanks for the detailed answer Chris, I will have to ponder on this one for a while.

"It's
about feeling a connection between actions and consequences in a way
that is not in conflict with a fundamental sense of being and knowing."

This struck me as really important distinct, that I often do think of consequences as somehow being avoidable if I am not aware of them. Obviously not true, but still, it seems like a fundamental error of judgement that could go on at a less-than-immediately conscious level.

And yes, I did mean experientially... Apparently that word is not in my spellcheck. Thanks for this answer too, it is abundantly clear.

Maybe this will prove interesting (old, so perhaps you already know, but I recently found out about it and was fascinated):

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/23/science/complex-and-hidden-brain-in-gut-makes-stomachaches-and-butterflies.html?pagewanted=all