On Relatedness

In a video conversation between Iain McGilchrist, Daniel Schmachtenberger and John Vervaeke, McGilchrist said that “relations are the foundation of everything” and “relationships are prior to relata.” I don’t necessarily agree with the second phrase, since in the less than trillionths of a second after the Big Bang there were some “things,” though that soup is often called plasma. But it is clear that there could be no “things” without relations since at a minimum each thing must be distinct from some other thing in order to be recognized “as a thing.” But the statement seems at least experientially true.

I will here provide some examples that I think point to the fundamental nature of relatedness.

The first is part of one essay from my book (read the words We, communion and communal as a form of relatedness).

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“Falling in love” does, in fact, have a sense of motion associated with it, which is why this term exists. It’s like our depths are naturally in resonance with the depths of another and our normal experiential range feels that gravitational pull into the deep. Since our own depths underpin all of our daily conscious experiences, all of those experiences feel the stability of those longer wavelengths.  The motion we rightfully call “falling” seems to bubble up through every experience we have and the normal solidity of our sense of self becomes more transparent and we “fall” through its dissolving support into the newly revealed depths.

 I felt that instantly when I first met my wife. I just knew that we were related. We “fell” for many years and at some point, long ago, reached a relative energetic equilibrium.  As I see it, our depths are no longer experientially deep. Rather they are very present for us in our everyday lives – as we are in orbit around each other like binary stars. That feel of falling is no longer experienced since we are in proximity and there is no longer a distance over which to travel, or “fall”. We are in communion and that communion provides the solidity of being close; we are a “We”.

 It is true that we do naturally resonate more easily with some people than with others right off the bat.  The co-mingling of frequencies occurs on an unfathomable number of wavelengths and the ones that lie in our depths are just closer to some people’s than others. With these sorts of connections, we do have an easier access to those very deep communal spaces but, given our common ancestry in growing out of this planet, ultimately we arise from a common source so that the closer our experience comes to that source, the more “We” experience blending into a singular I.

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On my very first visit as a Hospice Volunteer, I called one hour ahead, as was must always do, and my contact told me it was okay to come over. The purpose of these visits is to give the caretaker a two hour break to run errands or just to get away for a while. We are typically left alone with the patient. When I arrived, a young man, who was not my contact, answered the door. He looked puzzled so I introduced myself as the hospice volunteer. He introduced himself as the son of the patient, and told me that his father had passed away just two hours before. I could hear talking in the kitchen, and back where the bedrooms seemed to be, so I was aware that a number of others were there. I teared up and said “I am so sorry,” then opened my arms to hug him. We each took the two steps to embrace. After a few moments I said “I don’t know what to say,” and I thought that I would just let him break the hug when he was ready. It lasted 30 or 40 seconds and as he released me I said “I’m glad the family was here.” He said “Yes, we were all here” paused for a moment and softly said “Thank you for your presence,” and I left.

I sat in my car for a while and noticed that there had been no real thoughts. It seemed like I had quickly passed through a layer of grief into a direct and profound relatedness with this young man. So, I was not leaving with his grief. I was imbued with the simple and deep presence of another human being, one that I did not know. The presence of grief seemed to have lowered the normal mental congestion and allowed us to be intimately related, so in a sensory way he is still with me, though indistinct.

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Another hospice patient I visit is a 93 year old, whose memory is almost entirely from long ago. I arrived after being away the previous week and she greeted me by saying “Hi! You haven’t been here in a while.” The caregiver said, “You know, the social worker was here this morning. She does not remember the social worker and she does not remember the nurse, but she does remember you.” In hospice volunteer training it is emphasized, we meet them where they are. I just sit with her and talk to her when she feels like it. I have no job to do other than to be present. So perhaps it is not what you are doing or saying, but just being present with anyone, at the deepest level that you can sense them, is what generates the experience of relatedness.

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About a week ago I got a call from my sister, immediately after she had a conversation with one of my brothers. His son had tried to commit suicide by driving his car into a brick wall. The circumstances that caused him to do this are almost too tragic to fathom. I did speak to my brother later, and at that moment he was broken. Words were useless. All I could do was listen, and allow the deep relatedness that has always existed to emerge in its fullness, sensed but unspoken. It seems to me now that he needs to be grounded in relatedness before he can move forward in a way that will reconstitute his agency in the world; take in the apparent dissolution of agency and start over from a place of being fundamentally related.

It seems to me that we are all growing out of this Earth and thus must be related. What this brought to mind is the possibility that the Earth’s gravity may very well be the same gravitational pull that I have experienced beckoning me in the direction of wholeness, toward relatedness and the feel of home, for at least my entire adult life. It must be true that our individual variability and distinctness creates infinite pathways toward relatedness, and at many levels we may always be moving toward more distinctness or more relatedness. Distinctness has the feel of particles to me, in a quantum sense, which I have most often experienced as joyful and as coming more from our star than the Earth. But from other ways of sensing, distinctness may generate the feeling of difference, and an experience of a motion away from relatedness. The possibilities in the oscillating dancing toward and away from greater unity must be nearly endless. But the Earth in its wholeness will always be the home from which at least our bodies all arose and in which we all necessarily belong. Our star is another matter, but we are related in these environs, no matter how we may dance in this frequency soup.

Find joy in the dancing, and your partners, as often as you can.