Longing for connection

Being intimate with Expansion and contraction

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We are closely connected in a single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you are never what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.

– Martin Luther King –

We live in a time when many people feel isolated and lonely. Even though we are more connected than ever through the internet. It has been proven that the areas that light up in our brain when we feel lonely light up in the same regions that register physical pain. Loneliness literally hurts.

In the pyramid of needs in nonviolent communication, the need to feel connected and belong is very high up. We are social animals and we all share this need. People who live with a sense of belonging and connection are less stressed and more resilient. When we are in a state of “being excluded,” we may feel: “I won’t survive this.”

Belonging does not explicitly mean belonging to a group. Belonging is freedom. It is a belonging to our very own nature. To the nature of our nature. It is a deep feeling of being embodied and experiencing with your cells that everything is interconnected and nothing exists independently of each other.

The word “Yoga” means connection. Everything is Yoga that connects you back to your deepest “just being”. Perhaps this is the mindful practice of physical exercises, perhaps meditation on the cushion, the conscious drinking of a cup of tea, or a walk in the forest.

We think that the practice of meditation is about observing our breath or recognizing and naming our thoughts, emotions, and feelings. In reality, this practice is about awakening from the collective trance of separation. It’s about belonging. It is a practice that brings us home, that shows us the way to the self-evident belonging to everything.

We all share the longing for aliveness. We share the desire for authenticity.

What if we didn’t have to choose between light and darkness? If light and shadow could both be there? If we could allow all our parts to belong? And that would be a path to freedom?

Here you can watch a five-part lecture series on this topic. Each video lasts 60 minutes and includes a lecture, half an hour of meditation, and finally I answer questions on this topic. I am researching the question of how exactly we do it, that we feel separated, how we separate ourselves from ourselves and, above all, how we can find our way “home” again.