Thought for the Week: Connection
Ken Orchard writes about learning to accepting and embracing our vulnerability
One of the commonest big questions that people ask is: ‘What is the meaning of life?’ I think they’re asking the wrong question. This question presupposes that in the beginning there was a meaning and that life came about in order to fulfil that meaning. I think the question needs to be turned on its head, because I believe that life came first and it’s down to us to find meaning in it.
So, if I’m right, the more accurate question is: ‘What gives life meaning?’ And, for me, the answer to that question is ‘connection’. It’s in our connections that we find our spirituality – primarily in our connections with others and with ourselves, but there are other important connections as well, such as those with nature, with music and with art. These points of connection are the places we are most likely to find our God.
All our fears are ultimately about lack of connection. Even shame is a fear that if other people see us as we really are they will decide we are not worthy of connection. So, we hide. We hide the parts of us that we believe are unacceptable; but, actually, we cannot selectively hide bits of ourselves. If we try to hide the bits we believe are unacceptable, the bits we class as negative, we break our connections and end up hiding the positive qualities as well. It is this very belief that we are not worthy of love and connection that prevents us from finding it.
However, there are some people who have actually come to believe that they are good enough. They’re not necessarily any better than anyone else, but they have developed an acceptance of and a compassion for their own imperfection. They have been able to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be the person that they actually are. People who have good connections have them as a direct result of this authenticity.
But to accept our imperfection and to reveal the bits of ourselves that we find distasteful requires us to accept our vulnerability, which is extremely countercultural in our success-driven society. We have developed a range of tools to keep vulnerability out of our field of vision, one of the primary tools being certainty. We feel more comfortable and secure if we have certainty. We display certainty about our religions, about our life choices and about our opinions.
If we are to find the connection that we all seek, then we need to find the courage to let go of our certainty and allow our vulnerability to show itself. We need to stop trying to control, stop trying to understand and stop trying to predict. We need to be prepared to sit with the fear of not knowing. We need to be prepared to sit in that vulnerable, uncomfortable place.
For most of us this sounds truly scary, but it is only when we allow ourselves to be really seen – warts, vulnerability and all – that real connection, real intimacy, becomes possible.
We need to learn not only to accept our vulnerability but to embrace it. We need to see that it is our very vulnerability that makes us beautiful. When we see that, we will find that vulnerability is the birthplace of joy, creativity, belonging and love.
Comments
I agree that direct spiritual experience is found in having a deep, embodied sense of the connection both with other people and with aspects of the world that cognition alone cannot understand and therefore cannot connect with. For as long as we feel we are surrounded by a world that is incomprehensible to us, we feel isolated, as if we don’t belong. We feel rejected by and rejecting of people that seem incomprehensible to us. This experience of relative isolation and alienation is the opposite of a spiritual experience.
Acceptance and compassion allow us to be open to each other and the wider world, to experience a kind of union with that which we can’t cognitively comprehend.
This needs to start with those incomprehensible, unacceptable parts of ourselves. How can we learn to accept in others those things that we cannot accept in ourselves? How can we reach out to others, of whom we know so little, thus making ourselves even more vulnerable, when we are afraid of aspects of our own selves?
We cannot achieve this by reason alone, not even when aided by imagination, longing, and willpower.
But we have access to other inner resources: the seed within, the life, the inner light, the fountain of life, as early Friends variously referred to it. The way forward, to feel those external connections so many of us long for, is to first find this inner connection.
Methods such as Experiment with Light and Gendlin’s ‘Focusing’ can help us with this: help us to face our vulnerabilities by learning, gradually and safely, to be compassionate towards every aspect of what we find within ourselves. As this happens, over time we find that spontaneous changes occur in our relationships. Relationships between the different parts of our selves. Relationships with the people we know and love, people we previously found impossibly difficult, people we meet by chance. We find space within ourselves, space which opens up previously unforeseen possibilities.
Experiment with Light is probably known of, to some extent, by the majority of Friends and was originally developed by Rex Ambler (ref. Light to Live by, 2001) and now has a well-structured and well supported following amongst Quakers interested in recapturing something of the experience of early Friends.
Focusing is far less well known amongst us. It has many similarities with Experiment with Light, but some differences too. Although partly inspired by Quaker practise, it was not intended specifically for Quakers. It was developed by Eugene Gendlin in the 1960s, and is still being developed today. Ann Weiser Cornell is probably the author who is currently writing most clearly about Focusing. (ref. ‘The Radical Acceptance of Everything’ 2005). Gendlin and his successors have also sought to finding that inward connection with something that is much more than personality, will or ego. The method now used has been achieved mainly through researching and teaching how to access the ‘felt senses’ – bodily sensations that are also distinctly ‘meaningful’. Alongside this it was also necessary to developing effective ways to increase safety, so that even severely emotionally damaged people can eventually learn to know and be compassionate towards their vulnerable parts.
Experiment with Light and Focusing have many commonalities. Of the differences, the two main ones are how the resource is tapped into, and the wider range of safety ‘techniques’. The Experiment with Light method emphasises utilising images and words rather than the felt senses and therefore relies rather more on cognitive abilities Initially, kinaesthetically-aware Friends may therefore find Focusing more helpful. Also, in Focusing the wider range of available techniques for maintaining safety may aid progress towards self-acceptance and compassion for some experimenters in the face of acknowledging particularly painful vulnerabilities.
When I read of the extraordinary commitment, enthusiasm and energy of early Friends I cannot but believe they found an experience of something far more moving and exciting than that experienced by most modern Friends.Unfortunately, it was extremely difficult for them to pass on their method to future generations, particularly through the written word. Undoubtedly some Quakers of every generation have found this profound inward spiritual resource for themselves. But for many it has been unattainable, and I suggest this is why the Society as a whole has become increasingly secular.
However, I believe we are very fortunate that Experiment with Light and Focusing make it possible for more Quakers today to rediscover the divine source known to early Friends. To reconnect this to our Quaker way and discipline is now a very real and exciting possibility for many of us.
By mkay on 8th August 2017 - 16:34
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