Self-Connection: How can I connect to myself to host deeper connection with others?
Connecting to my vast inner world with kindness and clarity is soothing to myself and my relationships. When I am in connection with myself with conscious care, it creates the conditions for success to cultivate the rich and beautiful soils of connection with others. I seek the practices that enable self-connection to connect more deeply with the loves in my life. This story is a reflection on self-connection — by Moze.
I am someone who has often experienced life in disconnection. Something clunky, intense and awkward about me always feels a little shy and on the edges of belonging to groups and community. This is why my most intimate relationships and friendships mean so much to me. There have of course been many glorious moments of belonging and connection and mostly I have this sense that I don’t quiet fit in or belong. Strangers who have become friends have told me that before they knew me they thought I was cold, actually I was just shy (a shy extrovert and shy none-the-less). I have also always felt a little disconnected from my body, I think this was something to do with growing so tall so young, it took a while for the rest of my senses to catch up.
Once I turned 40 and the gifts of middle aged starting rolling in, I turned my focus inward in a healthy way for probably the first time. It has taken a while to get there and I still have many slips, trips and falls and overall as I head toward the end of this decade of the 4-oh’s I have learned that my belonging and connection is directly related to how strong my sense of connection to myself is. It is a vast world inside me, and connecting with what is in me has been as expansive as sunsets over the sea.
Life certainly gifts me plenty of opportunities to be in the practice of love, my central driving practice and purpose for my life. Without the structures and beliefs of a religion or a cause this has largely been an inside job. Although I could be more specific and note that parenting has given me plenty of chances to practice. Parenting in all her various guises — parenting, co-parenting, step-parenting and not co-parenting with another parent has taken me on a journey of relationships in ways I could never have imagined, and most importantly with myself in terms of how I view myself and how I relate to my experiences in the emotional, spiritual and physical world.
As an others orientated person, I still tend to take the criticisms and condemnations (or even perceptions of these) of others as the truth. So easy to believe the harsh opinions and thoughts of people who usually don’t know me, knew me in a moment, knew me a long time ago or use their threads of knowing me to weave something about me that I don’t always recognise. Being others orientated is not always a healthy place for me unless it is balanced with some self-orientation and I have spent the last few years shifting my focus from others to self with some really delightful outcomes in love, play, work and relationships.
Still, it is easy for me to be tilted off my axis through the words and actions of others and does not take much for me to completely fall out of my own centre. I get so disappointed to watch my self plunge into a spiral of self-doubt and self-loathing after I thought I had moved through this need to be validated by others anymore. I can become a bit of a train wreck if I am honest and even though I try to recall all my learnings and lessons, I can get stuck and can’t find my way back to my heart. Sometimes you just have to go through the darkness to come out the other side and that is why we can’t afford to spiritually bypass — it will catch you in the end. Although sometimes this bypass is important to just get through today.
What I have learned (or perhaps relearned) the most, is that when I am off centre, I loose connection with myself and I loose connection with those around me who I love and yearn to stay in deep connection with. This of course results in a catalogue of crappy behaviours….passive aggressive, over eating, over drinking, sullen, moody, closed, angry, yelly and sad. In disconnection with my self I unplug from others and can cause harm to relationships.
Disconnection from my self not only occurs when I slip back into a frame where I take on other peoples’ truths, it can also occur when I deny my own experiences and truths. Sometimes we have to do this — we don’t have the luxury to pick up and examine every stone of bypass. I get so frustrated with myself where I notice I still sink into other peoples coaching of me in how I should be or how I am. We need the input and stimulus of others and I notice I am still so easily influenced.
If all we have is our own truths, what do we do when ‘your’ truth that I am a total shit, rubs up with ‘my’ truth, that I am just a person doing my best? I think the only reason the ‘your’ truth can hit the mark and tip me off kilter is because part of it is true. Of course I can be a shit, we all can and it is not the whole truth. The clear antidote to what others speak of me is that I am simply in my truth, a truth that holds capacity to see all of me and most importantly a truth that keeps me in connection with myself.
I find myself back where I started. Exploring the practices of self-connection with my heart, my body and my mind I can find ways to be at ease with my inner world which in turn supports a connection to my external world and the people I love and care about. I still don’t know how to stay in connection with myself when I am under attack or out of my centre and I practice several things to support me in this quest:
- I seek to be in awe — there is nothing as supportive for my connection to my inner self then big skies, big moons, big seas, big trees, big spaces and big beauty. This also applies to observing the small world of a tiny bug or flower or butterfly and marvel at how big that small world is and the infinite perfection and beauty that exists in that tiny world. The smallness of me in these spaces connects me to something bigger and that also connects me to me. This really supports me to release my inner ego world of hurts, connect to the wonder of the big outer world with awe and wonder and this really holds me to connect into my treasured relationships. It is all so deeply connected this connection to self and the universe.
- Boundaries also enable me to connect to myself — in many ways I have to know myself very well, with kindness and forgiveness, to create the boundaries that serve peace in my inner world.
- Practices of physical self-connection support me too — conscious movement be it through yoga, walking or dancing. Awareness of my body and how she moves through the world is self-connecting and integrates more of me to me.
- I consciously surrender to radical acceptance of what is and what I can’t change. It is not my work in the world to change or teach others. We all have our own path home after all.
- I also practice some self-acceptance, self care and that cringe worthy idea of self love. Self-acceptance does not mean I stop working on myself, it just means I take care of my own wild heart and listen to what she needs to be back in connection. I take what is useful, to grow, to move forward and keep trying to do my best without judgement or self-recriminations. To quote one much wiser than me:
“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” Maya Angelou
