This is the first post of a 2 or 3 part series. A deeper dive into “Love.” This post is about “love as connection.” We are going to wander around a bit. But this wondering is laying down new tracks. The new tracks are not just a set of tracks for coming and going like arriving and departing on a train nor manifesting something. The new tracks are for being. And in a sense, “being” is supported by a net. More elegant than the internet, neuro-net or AI. It’s more like mycelium. Mostly unseen, connecting by nodes that form self-organized crossings (collectives). These SOCs (self-organized collectives/crossing), may seem to be a random and chaotic. But are an elegantly organized efficiently that is highly resilient? A couple of examples of these types of nets. Perhaps our brain’s neuro network and celestial galaxies are similar. On a dark and clear night have you ever gazed upon the heavens, closed your eyes and noticed you are the same as the heavens?
Connection
You can look at practically everything that happens as a matter of connection. Connection is the act or event that causes something to happen. Once the connection has happened, we have access. Access is at the form of experience. Experience becomes the connection. Connection and experience collapse to being the same. They are melded together and become part of the net. Is this a view of entanglement?
What is the Driving Force?
“Love is!” Love is the driving force of connection? If we love something or someone, we want to connect and experience. Love is the connection, and the experience become the bond. It is collapsing, shortening, or going more direct. I wonder if this is the concept of entanglement from the metaphysical perspective?
Academics of Love
The study of connection can be view as academics. For example, sociology is the study of groups and how, why, and where they connect. Economics is the study of how people connect with money and via money, manage connections to resources. Physics is the study of how things influence another, whether classical or quantum and beyond. Chemistry is the study of interaction between atoms and molecules. Communication is about the study of how people communicate and in relationships. Marketing is connecting buyer to seller. Psychology is the study of the dynamics and functions between mental, emotional, and behavior interactions and a person’s connection to their environments. In psychology it is both experiences related to their internal states and their interaction behaviorally to their external world. We study connections at the biological level of DNA, neurotransmitters, brain anatomy, behavioral, social, mental concepts and beyond into the psychic realms. You get the idea. However, “academics” regardless of the specialty, is a third-party filter that uses (or inserts) paradigms, metaphor, instruments, and accoutrements to get a handle on “experiences of connection.” That is to understand, communicate, teach, model and test the experience. In fact, statistics is a measure of the correlation (not causation) between two things; which is known as statistical confidence.
However, experience is at a whole different level. For example, the experience of dancing differs from describing, teaching, instructing, studying, the history of, and seeing a dance. By-the-way, anyone can dance, you don’t need a degree, certification, nor understand how to dance… nor even a reason to dance. Whether the dance appears wondrous or terrifying is in the seer’s eye. For the artists the goal is to just dance, and the dancer disappears into the flow of the dance. Does one enter the kingdom of heaven by being as a child?
Fear
There is also fear. Fear is also a connection. Which is still a relationship, either attraction or repelling, like in magnets. The connection is attracting or repelling… but none-the-less a connection. When distance between two magnets becomes further apart, the magnetic force weakens. Despite the connection weakening by space and time, there is still the residual or template of the connection of the entangled experience. We see this in the psychological dynamic of PTSD. When there has been a traumatic experience, even long past, a simple, smell, sound, or visual triggers a “flashback,” (a residual template) that connection to the experience. In severe PTSD, it is a subjective experience of the trauma happening “now.” But this also is the case when we’ve had a loving experience. Whether we label it as a memory, flashback, or even crossing a dimensional reality, such as seeing a ghost, chatting to a deceased loved on like they were here, déjà vu, or the seemingly karmic experience. The label denotes our perspective view. Is this energetic entanglement across space and time?
Whatever is happening in the current world, using the lens of “connection” can be useful for insights into our relations, i.e., connections. Relationships, whether on the level of personal relationships, at the geo-political level or planetary level of resources, climate, and species extinction (the hot topics of the day). A re-emerging idea is that earth is also a living being. Despite Rene Descartes’ near-lethal bullet of scientism, almost killing the notions of proto-historic pantheism (pre- historic). Perhaps the indigenous and Aboriginals have maintained the connection that earth is our mother by their linage and connection to the ancestors. This is at the symbolic, intuitive level of totemistic beliefs compared to the scientific empiricism of Descartes. https://psychology.fandom.com/wiki/Totem.
Some critics note that this is a regression back to the proto-historic tribalistic symbolism to socialize the family/community/tribe. One can see similarities in the current narratives of the populist movements and a warring between tribes; whether between nation/corporate/states or philosophical/academic/religious tribes. Ken Wilber, a transpersonal theorist, one of his significant contributions was the notion of the “pre and trans” fallacy (see Links below). This is salient as we move in to the psychic realms. We use very similar language, ritual, and symbolism, but they are at two different levels. The first level is at the proto-historic pre-ego state of tribal socialization. Which involved using “magic” symbols and rituals to bring about a common tribal understanding and relationships amongst the family, tribe, and nation-state. Note: this was a stage where there was not a sense of the modern idea of an “individual or individual sovereignty.” Then, emerged the era of the rational ego/individual/Cartesian/scientific paradigm of individuals, differentiation, connections, and relationships. Versus the trans or beyond the ego level. In the past 20 years we find an emerging awareness of the “unity/diversity/we-are-all-one stage. Which according to Wilber, we are entering the next phase or branching of evolution. Which is now popularly referred to as the “energy, frequency, and manifestation and all is divine unity” stage of development/evolution. What is changing is the focus or task of each stage of development. For this discussion, the first was the community, i.e., the “tribe.” Next was the “individual, ego, self.” And now we are entering the “unity of being.”
Side Note: The old school notion of the “psychic realms” which was embedded in the occult/spiritualism/esoterica as early as 500-1000 CE, throughout the middle-ages and remnants extending into the Victorian age. However, others note references to psychic realms and abilities were noted in the ancient Vedic scriptures. And yet others, view that 4-5 thousand years ago, we emerged from the matriarchal organization of community centered on hunter/gather and very early agrarian culture. Then with the innovative success of farming and domestication of animals gave rise to urbanization, patriarchal/tribal/nation states warring over resources. Now with 5-6 millennia of warring, we are perhaps nearing crisis level extinction; (well that is a narrative… it might have some truth… or not. So now are we to grow into the unity psychic awareness stage of development? Or are we just plain nutting around in unicorn and rainbow land? By-the-way, Ken Wilber the transpersonal/integral theorist notes we still have at least two more stages/levels of the subtle and causal realms… hmm, ya kids, we ain’t there yet!
Ken Wilber’s books “Atman Project” and “Spectrums of Consciousness” or if you can find his contributions to “Journal of Transpersonal Psychology” are the basis of his thoughts. These writings are dry and dense, but these concepts have been invaluable as a topographical map of consciousness.
Metaphysic Psychic
Emerging is the awareness of the metaphysical/psychic realm, which is still about connection. How to manifest lawyers, guns, and money… lol, Warren Zevon. Attracting, manifesting, and connecting with your spiritual tribe or with your person. It’s all about connection whether internally or externally, off-planet, other realms, and dimensions. But it is the level of learning about energy, frequency, and psychic consciousness.
The Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Level
At the interpersonal level, it’s about finding the person who you aspire to be with. A person who matches, similar backgrounds, values, goals, etc. In religion, it’s finding your like-minded tribe of your religion amongst many differing religions that are merely a reflects their embedded ethnographic-historical region. Of course, each has their own language, symbols, accoutrements, and conduct of interacting.
At the intrapersonal level, as in metaphysical and spirituality it’s about connecting to the God, the divine, source, field, etc. Whether the connection is via art, music, meditation, dance, yoga, animal husbandry, gardening, politics, banking, etc., it is about understanding the connection.
Tantric Perspective
Let’s suppose when we come into the reality of planet earth. The reality is we are the culmination of the mother and father, the sperm in the egg at the time of conception. The male and the female consorts connect, conjoin their energy, frequencies and manifest an opportunity (portal) of conception. It is the connection event where we start to be and the gestation of coming into being. Growing within the mother. The end of gestation, we are born as a complete self, but emerging into a separate new world. Life is then striving to connect to air, water, food, resources, thoughts, feelings, inclusion to be a member of the club, to have a family, etc. The question is to connect to what? To find our way back (regress) to the blissful state of the womb? To join a new (external) world to be? To connect within ourselves? Or by living life, i.e., connecting, we continue to discover and expand our being?
Metaphors of Growth
A couple of easy metaphors are the tree and mycelium. A tree grows roots reaches down into the soil for nutrients and water and to support the tree. The trunk supports branching and a canopy of leaves to gather light and carbon dioxide for photosynthesis to grow.
Mycelium is the mass of interconnected fibrous connections that are underground and unseen, that eventually supports the fruit known as mushrooms. The task and skill it’s about connecting, branching, and connecting and a node forms. The mass of mycelium becomes an interconnected network of community with many nodes. In a sense, this mass of connections with many nodes becomes a distributed network that is more efficient and resilient. There is no weakness of a central command or a hierarchal structure. Is this the phase of “the eating of the dead?” The invisible process of breaking down the dead into the gritty elements? The process that releases the nutrients that are the essential foundation for the next cycle of growth. Is this merely a repeated pattern, the fractal of life emerging? Flora and fauna of mother earth and reflected in the moon and the celestial cyclical/spiral movement of the heavens? Is this also the pattern of atoms and their relations? “Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ”… all my relations Lakota (across time/space).
Are we seeing a world that is at the fulcrum point? A tension between wanting to connect and yet in the death throes of dying and getting torn apart. It helps to view this as a process of growing, a matter of connecting and branching. A process of expansion into new relationships of a network, inter-dependence with nodes of self-organized (directed) communities (SOCs). In nature we have this similar process. A tree dies, falls and then the mycelium begins its colonization of the dead wood. It is a natural process of composting and recycling elements of the tree into a new form of life… mycelium and mushrooms. Which the mycelium supports other forms of life. It’s merely part of the cycle of life and death. A repeating and expanding fractal. Are we at a point of evolutionary “speciation?” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation)
Pre and Trans
The proto-historical naturalistic perspectives of the Tibetan Bon rituals of pre-Buddhism, the pre-Vedic and Aboriginal cosmology we have the male/female, light/dark, fruitful/famine, tribal symbolic consciousness. From the modern mind perspective, these “practices” were ritualistic, magical, and superstitious. But were they? Perhaps they were acting out, symbolically, what they knew to be true from their observations of the sun, stars, moon and the ebb and flow of our earth’s (mother’s) cycling? What if these proto-historical cultures knew something about life and “re-new-all” through their connection? Whatever the connection there is an intuitive sensibility, even though ancient, might be of value in our rather disconnected (or is it an overwhelming connected world) that we may bring forward for our future?
In other post there is a thought that we are now at a point where the linear sense of time and space are easily collapsed and expanded in each endless moment of the “NOW.” Is now the opportunity to bring in something new into our reality from our future past? Whether it’s a new idea and new baby, a portal for a soul, or whatever, it is about our ability to connect. Whether the connection is on a scale of cosmology, between the earth, light, quantum physics, the tantric male/female, a connection amongst species or just a plain relationship between self and other. The dualistic presentation when opened creates the opportunity for another reality. There are two realities: a branching of both an internal reality and of an external reality. Are we at a moment of understanding that we can access multi-dimensional realities both internally and externally? Do we have an innate connection via using our heart and consciousness? Is this the new physics or the new age? The emerging metaphysical, psychic, woo, spiritual of the past 20 years is now chattering about using consciousness, effects whether a particle or wave appears, to access and change how our DNA works, accessing the akashic record, channeling, and many things. Are we seeing and experiencing the turning of paradigms… from old to new?
An interesting side note: There is increasing chatter between of the divine, masculine, and divine feminine, and how it is both a perspective, a model, and a way to connect in divine interaction. Of course, this is nothing new as in tantric Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist ideas of yin and yang and cosmology of the Lakota Sioux. As are the gnostic traditions of Magdalene and Jesus. Are these ethnographic experiences embedded in the perennial unfoldment of experience? It is merely the play of the dualistic nature or reality on planet mom?
In Defense of the Ego
The thing is, as human beings, we can become self-aware. And in being self-aware, i.e., being sentient. The possibility of using our “superpower” of free will, we have the responsibility to choose when, where why and how of both connecting and branching.
There is no going around the ego. One must go through the ego to understand its power, limits, and deficits. At some point, a person realizes the ego is just a tool of the self but is not the self.
This gets back to the concepts of sovereignty, integrity, compassion, and grace is on us. It is our responsibility (or not). The salient issues are conscious creation, connection, and destruction. Does this sound like the ancient Vedas and later the Upanishad scriptures of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer of the Hindu religion?
Apologies
Apologies for covering an enormous timeframe and mixture of concepts. Admittedly loosely, liberally and without due reference. The point was just to connect some wandering/wondering dots. At an elevated perspective, there appears a perennial or enduring and recurring pattern that is seen across time, cultures and at varying levels; like an ever-emerging fractal.
To be continued…PART 2 Why the Drive for Connection?
Blessings,
Tim