Where do we find deeper meaning in life? Where do we find profound experiences in the mundane? If you’ve read some of my other blogs and articles, you’ve probably heard me talk about a curse I feel we’ve created in our world; not because we’ve done anything, but more so because we’ve become complacent and haven’t done something. The curse, in my opinion, is the loss of connection that we’ve given up almost willingly. We can point to that loss as being directly responsible for some of our societal ills as well as a major contributing factor in many more. Loss of connection can easily be seen in things like mental health statistics in our nation as well as increasing hostilities and hate among different groups. What might be surprising is that I also believe things like our worker shortages and supply chain problems are also a result of breakdowns in connection. Seeking to find connection is, in my opinion, one of the keys to elevating even our daily lives to that of the spiritual.

It might sound like the evil I’m talking about is more suited to the new-age self-help category as opposed to the metaphysical and occult community. The loss of connection affects us just as much, if not more so. In any kind of magick working or ritual, one of the keys is being able to tap into the subtle energies of the universe in order to effect the changes we seek. If we have no direct connection to the mundane world, it is quite obvious that we will have no connection to the world of subtle mysteries. How can we see another’s unconscious when we have a hard enough time seeing them as even the physical and emotional embodiment of soul? How do we align with the energies of nature when we have forgotten nature in its most basic forms? Connection is definitely a topic of self-help books, but it should be at the top of our concerns as magus as well.

But what does that word connection mean? The answer to that is different for each individual, but I offer this following series of posts in an attempt to at least shed light on what connection meant to our ancestors throughout the ages, and what it should hopefully mean to us as well.

At this point, you might be shaking your head a little and thinking that we are way too connected. You may feel like there’s never time to yourself; like you are always plugged into some kind of techno-gadget that haunts you 24/7. You can’t escape the emails, text messages, and social media. Please understand, however, that our usage of the word ‘connected’ often falls under that category of connection that has become synonymous with webs of people all linked together on whatever platform you may choose, but rarely ‘connected’ by anything more than a sharing of space and time in some virtual world. There is a lot of information transfer, but typically no connection on a physical, emotional, or spiritual level. It’s not just human connection either, what about the other things that are necessary for life such as water, food, and the earth herself?

In order to form a better working definition of connection, let’s take a look at our current connections in life. As previously written, when it comes to our connections to other people, we might think it acceptable to send a text message or an email and consider ourselves connected. If you use social media, and someone sends you a friend request, you accept it with a click of a button and now you feel “connected” with that person because they appear in your friends list and you in theirs. In these cases we might be in contact, but not truly connected.

Think about our connection to food for a minute. For some the connection is no deeper than pick up with hands, insert in mouth…connected. There are some who are more mentally involved in what they eat, taking note of the ingredients and looking at how they were produced and shipped, but I would argue that they still aren’t connected on a spiritual level. Even when we think of things like our connections to our home, it might be that we feel a connection because we have a piece of paper that says lease or mortgage on it. Nevertheless, how much connection is there really in any of these scenarios?

For many the idea of connection is an outward manifesting thing. I have names in a contact list, therefore I’m connected. I touch my food and I’m connected to it. I pay my mortgage and therefore I’m entitled to, and thus connected to my home. Sometimes we are even ok with the outward connection being not between our physical being and another person or thing, but between our virtual persona and other entities, for example my social media persona. For a more spiritual definition, let’s consider a three-fold idea of connection, one that transcends the merely outward notion, and moves deeper to an internal component and one that includes the following things: inward manifestation of connection, reciprocity, and the number of other connections that the one connection brings. Let’s explore each one individually.

 

• Inward manifestation – Let’s say we are putting up a circus tent. We take a pole, put it on the ground, cover it with the tarp, and maybe secure the pole with a few different lines so it stays upright. Is it secure? Maybe temporarily, but how much stronger would it be if you buried the pole in the ground first? We can interact with people and things on a daily basis, keeping them outside and “on top” of us. But using the tent metaphor, how much stronger would those bonds be if we internalized them and dug them into ourselves? Connection doesn’t stop on the outside. For a truly spiritual connection, one must open up and allow the flow of energy and understanding to continue to the psyche, to the heart, and ultimately to the soul. That is the most powerful bond you can have.
• Reciprocity – Another key ingredient to spiritual connection is the idea that what we get from the connections are returned in the same order. I’ve heard people, wanting to sound altruistic, talk about how they don’t expect something from another person or maybe liken friendship to a scoreboard and say that they don’t need a one-for-one accounting. It’s a great ideal in theory, but hardly ever works in practice, not only because we are human and at some point the other party is going to feel like their needs aren’t being taken care of, but also because the connection never becomes as strong as possible when both sides aren’t equally carrying the weight. Just like the tent earlier, if we try to support the tent without anything to rest it on, it’s obvious that it will fail. The energy and boundaries must exist, and flow, from both directions. The reciprocal flow of energy isn’t just limited to personal connections, consider our relationship to nature. We can internalize our connection, but we must also return the energy back to our planet.
• The number of connections coming from the initial connection – Although there are some people for whom the first two parts of this list are vaguely familiar, this is one that can sometimes get overlooked even though it should seem obvious in a second. As an example, we make open a new path to a connection with another person, we internalize that connection, and then we actively try to return all that is given us. But, in the end, the connection might still be in peril if there is no greater ground to stand on. Once more using our circus tent metaphor, let’s say there’s a tightrope walker performing. They might be well balanced on that one little wire, but that wire only goes one place and has limited capabilities to provide strong support in any other circumstance. If the performer steps off that path, even a little, there will surely be disaster. We see this in friendships or relationships where the initial connection, even if incorporating the other two pieces, are doomed to fail because there was no other common ground to stand on. In order for a true connection to be made, the original coming together of the two into one, must then also foster other connections based on the above principles once more. Finally, we can again use this in a context beyond human relations. You find a deeper connection to food (more about this in a future article), you return energy to your food by means of possibly cultivating your own or at least being more active in the preparation process, and then one can extend the connections by maybe connecting with a local farmer who will bring other connections.

This has been a more theoretical introduction to the idea of connection and a starting point to learn that what we see as connections in our world, may be just illusory in the grand scheme of things. In the future parts of this series, I’d like to explore more real-world examples of connection with not only other people, but with such things as food, home, work, play, and even time. This series also has a homework assignment. Be forewarned, this assignment might take some time to accomplish, and the glimpses it might provide may be uncomfortable. Nevertheless, I feel the insights are invaluable and can lead us in a direction of not only acknowledging our lack of connections in our world, but provide a template to use our magick to foster the kinds of connections that can make us happier, healthier, and more capable of tuning into the subtler energies only tapped by the deepest connection to our universe.

To get started, take a moment to write down the questions below, or download this PDF and keep it with you for a few days. Take some time throughout the day to honestly answer the questions in a journal or on another piece of paper. As you start to read through the questions, you will start to see some of the topics that I’ll be discussing in future posts. As you’re doing this assignment, you might start to feel something uncomfortable in the pit of your stomach. It’s hard to look at these questions without reading meaning into them and then taking it one step farther and trying to read meaning into your own life. Quite often, people start to get depressed as the list of things they haven’t done start to stack up. That said, however, these questions are only meant as a starting point. If you do experience that uncomfortable feeling, please understand that you are not alone. We, as a society, have not only allowed this to happen, but have, in some respects, promoted this kind of disconnect. If this was a solitary problem amongst one person (the person staring back at you in the mirror), then it wouldn’t be a story at all. Also please understand that finding connection and a deeper meaning in life doesn’t mean addressing every one of the topics on this list. Finding the spiritual in life means first acknowledging the problems, and then doing one little thing today that you didn’t do yesterday to move one step closer to that spiritual center.

So, with all of that said, take a moment to copy these questions or download the PDF, put it someplace where you can easily access it throughout the day, plan a few extra minutes throughout the day to answer the questions, love yourself throughout the day, and then CLICK HERE FOR PDF to learn how you can start taking those little steps forward.

Questions to Ponder:

• Did you wake up this morning by an alarm? Was the sun up? If not, did you watch it rise? Did you take note of where the sun was throughout the day? Do you know which way the wind was blowing today? Was it raining or snowing? Did you watch the sunset or notice what time it got dark? Will you go to bed tonight at a specified time, or whenever you get tired?
• Who was the first person you had contact with today? Was there physical contact; hug, kiss, intimacy? How well do you know that person? Throughout the day, how many people do you communicate with? How many of those people are via social media, texts, or emails? How many of those people were you in physical contact with? Did you have an in-person conversation with a stranger? Did you share in-person time with family or friends? Did you have a deep conversation with someone in person today? Did you laugh? Did you cry? Did someone else you were with laugh or cry? Were you intimate with anyone today?
• Did you feel your body today (interpret that however you like)? Did you take time to check in with any parts of your body and see how they were feeling? Did you get your heart rate up? Did you feel that you had to push your body for some reason today? Did you feel the water on your skin when you took a shower or bath? Did you feel the rain, snow, wind on your skin? Did you take pleasure in your body?
• What did you eat for breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? Snacks? Did you have to do anything for the food you ate; collect it, pick it, process it, cook it? Did you plan on everything you ate today, or was it spur of the moment? Do you know all the ingredients in your food today? Could you buy all the ingredients easily at a local store? Did you share a meal with someone today? Did you spend more than an hour at any one meal?
• What did you clothe your body with? Where did you buy it? Who made it? Did you make anything that you wore today? Do you know what materials are used in your clothing?
• Did you work today? This is a little more involved discussion, but take some time to describe what you do in a day. Who did you work with? Do you use a computer for the majority of your job? Are you part of a team? Do you do manual labor?
• How did you get where you were going today? Did you have to exert any energy to get there (walk, ride a bike)? Did you go the same way yesterday? If you took a random detour, would you know where you were in a mile or so? Did you stop someplace today that you’ve never been?
• Did you hear any news today? Did you take some time to research a topic that you’d heard about? Did you post to a website or social media something that you’d written that you’re passionate about? Did it take you more than a couple of hours to write that? Did you have a debate with someone and learn something? Did you have a conversation with someone and agree to disagree?
• What did you do for entertainment today? Did you watch television? Did you see a live band? Did you play a musical instrument for yourself or others? Did you paint a picture? Did you read a book?
• Did you journal today? Did you meditate? Did you pray to whomever your Goddesses and Gods are? Do you feel like you have a direct connection to the deities, or do you have to go through someone else (pastor, priest) to communicate with them? Did you do magick today? Did you give thanks or make an offering to a deity today?

Check back with us in the near future for discussions about specific connections in our world, and how we can seek to foster the deepest connections in our universe.

 

©2021 Marcus Everett & The Victorian Society of Metaphysics & Magic