Monthly Archives: November 2012

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(Dis)Connectedness

This theme has been going through my mind in the past few days.

When I was part of the spiritual scene, this term was used a lot. People often spoke of feeling disconnected and looking to be connected to others, something I was annoyed by. The whole theme had that ‘kumbaya’ taste to it, something I really had trouble with and ultimately kept me at arm’s length from the spiritual community. I have always been too much of a pragmatist to go for that sort of thing. At the same time I knew that somewhere within me the notion of (dis)connectedness was important and made sense, I just didn’t know how.

In the recent past it has come up again, and it makes sense in a completely different way now. I used to think that in order to connect to other people, I had to be interested in them, like them and have the ‘you’re ok, I’m ok’ attitude. Only, this was exceedingly difficult. I would come across people that were annoying, dumb or a waste of my time with their odd or stupid ideas. Not much connection happening there … It seemed a tall order to try and overcome these judgments in order for me to connect with them, and then the question of ‘why?’ still remained. I was experiencing other people through my ego, and vice versa. There is only a very limited connection, if any, possible this way. Here you have two people, completely living as their ego, in full ego identification mode, trying to connect to another for ego reasons. It does not matter what my story about this connection I am seeking is, whether I want to meet someone like minded, I am looking to advance my own agenda, to be appreciated, liked, loved, or whether I am trying to make myself or the other look good or bad, no matter what that reason is, I will not be able to truly connect, because we are only connecting on the limited ego level at best. And, I am not connected to myself to begin with.

When we live as our ego, we are experiencing our own self through the limited idea of the ego story. We are disconnected from the part in us that we are, while the ego is actually only what we do. Have you ever had a moment where you watched yourself doing something and thinking at the same time, ‘what the hell am I doing?’ That is the being in us watching the doer. When we see this played out and choose to stay with the ‘being’ part, we reconnect to our Self. We instantly realize that there are these two aspects to us, and that the being part is the real deal. That moment of reconnection changes everything. The jig on our ego identification is up. We see it everywhere and all the time, quite overwhelming at first, and then see it all around us and in others. We see that other people are in the same boat and that they fall for the ego con in varying degrees as well. In seeing this first in ourselves and then all around, we not only feel connected to our Self again, but we also see the that we are all connected to each other through this adventure called ‘life.’ It’s the whole ‘No man is an island’ thing realized. Pretty cool actually.

Ever since I have had this increasing experience of being, which I also call ‘wysiwyg,’ my life has become simpler and clearer. And it comes naturally to see the same playing out in others, and that there is a connection at that level at all times. Whether they experience themselves in this way or not makes no difference. When we feel a sense of connectedness to our own Self, we feel it with others. Thus we can be with other people in a completely different way. It doesn’t matter who they believe to be at their ego identified level, because we are tuned into a different frequency. We are sending and receiving on a frequency that takes place on the impersonal level. The drama and details of our stories are simply that. It’s a very different and much more fun way to walk to through life and feel connected in this way.

Next time you see your Self, say hello and hang around. You might enjoy the company.

Cheers,

Ralf

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Busyness

The other day I was listening to someone talking about the busyness in their life, only they didn’t realize what they were talking about.

It is so interesting to see how we have come to look at ‘being busy’ as such a badge of honor. Someone who is busy is equated with being valuable, a hard worker, and a good person. Unless they get too busy and begin to suffer. Much like it is with having an ego. There are very different forms of busyness, we can simply be physically busy, we can be busy with meetings, chores, general appointments and things that ‘need to get done.’ This is all very obvious and there are many people out there offering all kinds of tools to be more effective with this kind of busyness. I am talking about another kind of busyness though, the kind this person was unknowingly demonstrating.

There is an underlying self-absorption going on that keeps us busy in a very subtle but powerful way. It tells us that we constantly need to think about ourselves in one form or another, because if we don’t, we basically aren’t functioning or exist. It is incessant. This self-absorption is all about me, me, me. I have to think in order to exist, and I have to express that thinking to the rest of the world in some way to show that I exist. This can take on limitless forms of course. It can also be tricky, because a quiet person in the corner that feels that no one likes them and that they have nothing to contribute may look like they’re not busy, but they are just the same. They are simply busy thinking about themselves in this particular way of unworthiness, rather than worthiness, and it shows up differently. But this is the same self absorbed thinking on two different ends of the ego identification spectrum.

This busyness eats up our lives. It won’t ever let us rest, for even when we are ‘resting,’ we are thinking about the fact that we deserve or need this rest as a break from the busyness … It is so incessant because this type of self thinking is entirely focused on my existing. There is a built in idea in our ego identification that requires this type of thinking to make me real, to make me more permanent in this world and life, which this ego sees squeezed into the life span. So it makes perfect sense to do this. This also creates a never ending restlessness and underlying urgency to all things me, because I only have so much time to accomplish whatever I choose to. This is a very hard way to live. And it’s always dramatic to varying degrees.

There is a whole other way to be in this life. It requires a willingness on our part to have some perspective, a perspective that goes beyond the time bound and limited idea of ‘me.’ Every religion or spiritual tradition that humanity has ever created is pointing to this perspective in one way or another. Funny enough, even Atheism is ultimately pointing beyond this life as well. Whenever we step into this perspective, something inside shifts. We have a bigger sense of space inside, more time, more peace with everything. The urgency drops off and we can see our own lives a bit more impersonally. This sense of the impersonal, looking at our own lives as more of an episode in a larger stream of all that is this life and beyond, expands us. With this comes a decompression, quite literally, because we see ourselves more as an aspect of something larger rather than this small me compressed into what I call my life. Busyness has no place in that. Here we are simply taking action when required and have the thinking necessary to deal with the life situation at hand, no more and no less. Decisions come easier, choices are clearer and life in general loses a lot of its drama. I begin to participate in what I observe to be ‘my life,’ rather than being that life. It really takes a load off.

I hope you will play with this perspective and see what happens.

Cheers,

Ralf