7. Connections

Thus far, everything that we have been talking about has been from the perspective of you as an individual, about something we do on our own. In this section I want to look wider than this at the impact that developing our spirit will have on our connections to other people, and what to do about it. None of us is an island, we all exist as part of a web of relationships that began with family, no matter how good or bad that was for us. First, let’s make a distinction between relationships, community and organisation. Relationships are informal, unstructured, and person to person, or one to one. Community on the other hand is a collection of relationships, around some common interest. An organisation, is the most structured form of relationship, and implies some kind of leadership and firm boundaries or rules of membership. I am mainly going to focus here on relationships. However, instead of using the word “relationships” I am going to use the word “connections” as a matter of preference.

For this section I am going to come back frequently to the differences between spirit and soul. They are two different levels of being. What that means for us practically, is that there are a number of different types of connection to others that are possible. There are soul-to-soul connections, spirit-to-spirit connections, and then spirit-soul-spirit connections.

Soul Connections

Let’s take a look at the connections our soul forms with the souls of other people. Before we start and during the early phases of this journey of spiritual development, soul connections will form the majority of the connections that exist in our life. I say the majority, because even though with many of us our spirit is disengaged, it can still guide us to make certain connections and friendships. However, even those spirit-initiated connections have probably eroded to become soulish over time as our spirit has not been developed much.

Soul connections are very seldom very deep, although they can be. Generally, no matter how good our friendships are with others, deep inside many of us know that they are not based on “the real me”. We simply do not expose the deepest parts of our self to other people - for good reason. What we do is put our best foot forward, as does the other person, and we build a connection that is based on that. Gradually we trust more and disclose more, and that soul connection can deliver some fulfilment.

At the same time, in comparison with spirit connections, I would call soul connections “surface connections” in that they are based on how our souls have been formed, and either our natural desire to be together with others, or circumstances. Some people we like and form connections with because they are similar to us they have similar values and interests, and some of the connections we form are based on proximity, sharing time together over a long period because of things like work, college, etc.

Please note that I am not knocking soul-to-soul connections. They are an essential part of life, and it is a great advantage in life to learn how to get along with other people on this level. The problem is that each of us has a deep spiritual desire for friendship - our spirit aches to form connections of its own - and very often, we are trying to fulfil this desire with our soul, which is basically incapable of that level of connectedness.

Spirit Connections

This brings us neatly to the kind of connections our spirit makes. One thing I can guarantee, as we engage our spirit, we will start to experience a strong desire for a new kind of connection - a connection (or deep friendship) between our spirit and the spirits of others. Our spirits were designed for connection, and they will be restless and unfulfilled until they finds it. Because of this, the more we engage our spirit the stronger this desire will become.

Spirit-to-spirit connections are as different from soul-to-soul connections as our spirit is different from our soul. Our spirits are free from the insecurity, posturing, and pretence that we struggle with at the level of our soul. That is because our spirit functions at a different level. It is not subject to the same restrictions that our soul is. It can see things as they really are and a spirit-to-spirit connection is totally transparent. There is no pretence or deceit. There are no fears that someone won’t like me, or any of that kind of insecurity. There is no worry that tomorrow that person might not like me the same as they do today, or wondering if I have said something to upset them. Instead, there is a complete openness because our spirits are not able to hide things from each other in the same way our souls can.

For all of this, spirit-to-spirit connections are not going to be very satisfying for our soul. They tend to transcend social niceties and be uncomfortably real and they can sometimes not fulfil some of the valid emotional needs of the soul; they do not scratch where our soul itches.

Rebalancing our Connections

Having had a brief look at the difference between the connections our soul makes and the connections our spirit makes, I want to look at the impact that engaging our spirit will have on our existing connections to family, friends, and acquaintances.

There are three possible things that will happen to our existing connections and friendships.

The first possibility is that our existing connections will get stronger and take on a spiritual character. This is a great outcome, and very satisfying when it happens. These connections will move into the spirit-soul-spirit category and will require special attention to develop, because some adjustment will take place. But they will also delivery huge rewards.

The second possibility is that our existing soul connections will remain neutral, in other words we will continue to connect in much the same way as we always have. This will usually only be true for either very shallow connections where engaging our spirit won’t matter that much, or dysfunctional connections, such as broken family connections where we are connecting out of a sense of duty and obligation and our heart is not in it anymore.

The third possibility is that we will lose some of our existing connections because they will disintegrate as our spirit gains dominion. This is the hardest type of outcome to deal with, because it will cause our souls pain. There is no easy way around this, but the bottom line is that there is very little we can do about it, even if we try to hang on as long as we can with our soul.

I call this whole process rebalancing, because it rebalances all of our connections. It is vitally important, because in order to make room for spirit connections, some of our existing soul connections will have to go away. This is the same principle as we discussed earlier about making time. There is only so much time, and either our soul will get it, or our spirit will, or they will learn to share it. It is what is know as a zero-sum game. The same with our connections. There are only so many connections we can sustain, and either our soul will take them all, or our spirit will take them all, or the they will be shared.

Community of Practice

I want to end this section on a practical note. In the previous chapter we looked at a series of exercises that we could begin to practice in order to start engaging our spirit. In that chapter, it was assumed that these were things that you did by yourself without involving others. What I want to look at in this section, is the idea of a community of practice. In other words, building connections around a common interest; in this case, that interest being learning how to engage and develop our spirit.

If we revisit the process I outlined, it will probably occur to you at some point that while there are certain parts to the process that we need to do by ourselves, there is also a lot that can be gained by working together with others. One of the reasons for this is that we tend to learn and develop faster when we combine solo work with group work, than if we just work on our own. When we are working with others, we can share experiences, encourage, troubleshoot together and help get through some of the adversity we will encounter a lot easier. As a side bonus, we will also get to discover the diversity of gifts that God has put in the spirit of others, which will greatly encourage us. Finally, working together with others is a great way to form spiritual connections around a common interest that will satisfy our spirit’s need to connect.

How does this work in practice? You will recall that the first principle we looked at is noticing our spirit, or paying attention to our spirit. In a community of practice, one of the things we can do to extend this is to start paying attention to other people’s spirit. This can have a massive effect on our spirit, as getting attention from one source is good, but getting attention from two sources is ten times as good at negating the damage that it has been subject to.

Next, we talked about making time for our spirit to engage the world around us. This is mostly done by ourselves, because a lot of it is about learning what our spirit likes, but it can also be done with others. Then we talked about affirming our spirit. This is another activity that is accelerated when working with others. When we affirm another person’s spirit, our spirit grows, and their spirit does as well.

Finally, we talked about spiritual design. Here especially, working with others can yield tremendous benefit. We are often blind to things very close to us, that others can easily see. And if we allow spirit-to-spirit connection to take place, the spirit of another person can see things about my design that are extremely helpful to me as I will tend to be blind to them. The bottom line is that when we are looking for design clues, two or three eyes are much better than one!