In comments following a recent post, many of you saw addiction and religion as different versions of a similar enslavement. Then last post we talked about the terrifying loss of meaning at the finish line. But today I want to show that these parallel prisons arise from the same fundamental longing — one that’s almost noble in character.
In your comments, many of you wrote that religion, like addiction, can be viewed as an extreme form of attachment, with all the bells and whistles: the narrowing of attention and emotion to a small range of rewards, rigid adherence to methods for getting more of what you need and rejecting anything that gets in the way, blind commitment to something that satisfies your needs, at least in part, and attempting to put all your needs into that basket and neglecting whatever doesn’t fit.
And then we got to the fear of meaninglessness that confronts the addict contemplating abstinence.
Well it seems that this implosion of meaninglessness is just as terrifying for a deeply religious person who no longer can believe in his/her religion (e.g., in God) as it is for the addict staring into a life of total abstinence. James Joyce and Graham Greene wrote fine novels about the malignant anxiety facing 
priests who could no longer believe. And about their nihilistic attempts to keep going through the motions, living off the remains of a dying addiction to God.
For both the believer and the addict, that loss of meaning is terrifying. It’s a loss of everything that filled one’s thoughts, dreams, and hopes. In fact, I’d say it’s much more about loss than it is about meaning per se.
So what is it that we so greatly fear losing?
There’s a flip side to this ungainly partnership of religion and addiction. What we want so badly, and what both religion and addiction appear to offer, is a sense of connection that binds our lonely little selves to something else, something bigger, something that offers certainty in a world that is beyond control. This longing for connection and “ongoingness” is pretty fundamental. So much so that it embeds itself in the neural circuits responsible for desire and goal-pursuit — yes, the infamous striatum (including the nucleus accumbens) that I’ve referred to so often. We wish, and we seek, and we crave, and we long for that thing we seem to be missing, because our brains are made for seeking what we don’t have.
In the talk he’s preparing for the Dalai Lama, Kent Berridge emphasizes something very important about the brain. The neural machinery of desire is this rather extensive network of brain matter — literally, it includes a large area in the middle of the brain, and its tentacles reach into the brain stem, the amygdala, and the prefrontal cortex — that’s a lot of territory. Whereas the neural machinery of pleasure is this little hunk of tissue about a square centimeter in size (e.g., a part of the ventral pallidum). In other words, desire is much more important than pleasure, when measured in terms of neural real estate. That’s how central it must be to our survival as a species. (And so, no, I wouldn’t call it “The Beast,” in the parlance of Rational Recovery.)
So it goes. We are built for wishing, for wanting, for craving. And the fact that what we sometimes crave is a sense of connection is why so many of us turn to religion, or addiction, or both. But the wish itself is not an evil thing. It’s a very human thing. It even seems noble, or courageous. It expresses a need we know intimately in ourselves and that brings out our compassion for the vulnerability we see in others.
We can respect the religious person, and we can respect the addict, not for the way they live their lives, but for appropriating the machinery of desire for the pursuit of connection. Not money, not power, not even pleasure — the paltry goals of everyday life — but something very special.
No one expresses that longing better than Eddie Vedder in this song. (Warning: you probably have to be extremely weird to like this song as much as I do). Here’s the first verse:
And I wished for so long… cannot stay.
All the precious moments… cannot stay.
It’s not like wings have fallen… cannot stay.
But I feel something’s missing… cannot say.
Informed by unparalleled neuroscientific insight and written with his usual flare, Marc Lewis’s The Biology of Desire effectively refutes the medical view of addiction as a brain disease. A bracing and informative corrective to the muddle that now characterizes public and professional discourse on this topic.” —Gabor Maté, M.D., author of In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction
Yes Marc. From the Christian perspective there are three relational needs that were lost in the fall – spiritual connection, individual significance and social security. It is these three connections that we seek daily. I would argue that this is true no matter what our belief system. Where we often get it wrong is that we tend to derive our sense of individual significance from our social security – and as we know, drugs often become a relational regulator, either making us feel socially secure (often early use), and eventually surpassing the need for social security (late stage). In either case they inform our sense of identity, or individual significance.
If we reverse this, and see our sense of individual significance as coming from “spiritual connection” we have something more solid and trustworthy. Spiritual Connection is that connection with “God” or inner “god” – that sense of something bigger than self – the gestalt. It is this discovery of a firm foundation that allows us to build the structure of self that creates a feeling of individual significance.
Unfortunately most religion is built on the concept of social security rather than spiritual connection – consider the prosperity gospel, or the pop-psych approach of the modern evangelist.
You ask “so what is it we fear losing?” In my opinion we fear losing the sense of individual significance. And by trying to create that by seeking social security we are creating a structure that can only collapse. By finding some deeper bedrock – the spiritual connection – we are able to build a self that is solid, and then we find that social security is a natural reward, or at least, no longer as important.
Hope I am expressing this in a way that others can understand!
Really cool perspective, Shaun! I liked the distinction you made between “social security” and “spiritual connection”. In my experience, when the need to form a distinct religious “group” and assert that group as having the “right” doctrine, as compared to other groups, that’s when religion becomes toxic.
You should make a diagram depicting the balance between social security and spiritual connection. (It’d be really cool to see how you conceptualize this!). I’d say both are extremely important aspects of religion. Participating in rituals, discussing theology, attending studies, etc… these are so fundamental to achieving a sense of “self-transcendence”, or feeling part of a greater entity. I also think it’s important to participate in religion with others in order to gain a wide range of perspective as one’s individual spirituality develops. Without that external challenge, it would be hard to develop a sense of spirituality that isn’t inherently selfish.
So, we need the community, but we cannot rely too MUCH on the community. The too much makes the religion more like a drug, I suppose?
This is very clear, Shaun. At first you made me think of Stephen Hawking. He says that if you take the basic particles of matter and raise them to a super-high level of energy they become indistinguishable — or symmetrical — something like that. But social security (at our level of existence) really does seem like a poor cousin of spiritual connection. Too bad we mix them up.
We recently saw a documentary called “In search of the wrong-eyed Jesus” — where poor Southern (U.S.) Baptists really do fuse the two together.
Anyway, I’m just rambling. Great comment.
Beautiful post. And it’s nice to feel noble for a moment rather than a wretch… Thanks for suggesting it may be so.
And that song! Wow…
Glad you like it!
I haven’t seen the loneliness and existential isolation that drives addiction summed up so well…the idea of the craving for connection as the addict’s driving force makes perfect sense. We are all looking for that ultimate intimacy, and, as you point out, the search can be thought of as a noble pursuit. Human beings can turn out to be a huge let down in fulfilling that drive, however- “cannot stay.” So God or drugs seem to be “the answer”?….
Yes, “cannot stay” — what a heart-rending line. We get close, maybe we feel we are almost there, and then we slip away after awhile. Impermanence is the fundamental reality in Buddhism, but we sure have a hard time with it.
Thank you, this is well said… but to be fair, religion ≠ faith in God… religion just means taking something seriously (i.e. religiously), which need not relate to a higher power at all – hence Buddhism. I think it would be better to pinpoint faith as the narcotic, not religion. The rapturous feelings that come with certain types of meditation/prayer, etc. can be addictive as well, along with the views about the meaning of said experiences – Sam Harris makes an important case for distinguishing religious experience from the assigned meaning given to the experience, in The End of Faith.
Desire is a tricky word – I imagine many things might look like desire from without, but I’d suspect that one need not desire in an addictive sense in order to carry out ordinary acts like eating, walking, or talking. Or meditating, for that matter.
I would also like to point out the buddha’s view of AVERSION, being yet another cause of suffering…
Pema Chodron has a great teaching about in meditation or life (as all life can be vied as a meditation if one can master mindfulness) about welcoming the little demon of an addictive thought; show it compassion (hug it and welcome it do not be aversed to thinking you are bad/judging oneself…suspend judgement) and be mindful the little demon-thought shall or shall not return…compassion once again being the “cure.”
The demon is neither good nor bad he is just the untrained mind. And a untrained mind is what we work to train…a beginners mind has just as mch enlightenment as a masters…we just need to realize it…nirvana is something each of us have already we simply need only to realize it.
Or so I understand.
namaste
Our brain as science teaches us is pre-bio-programmed to judge-instantly else we should not have probably evolved…the scared little chimp person who judged the faint sound of tiger in the jungle evolved-the one which didn’t is no more….
again just my understanding…i could be wrong.
peace.
No, you’re right. It’s called the amygdala, and we’d be lost without it.
I think that “faith” and “desire” are very much related. Faith is a form of wishing, isn’t it? And perhaps it is also belief. But wishing and belief are indistinguishable in the brain. You have to wish for something you expect to find. So, no, I wouldn’t say that faith is the narcotic. It is the wish for and belief in the narcotic…or something else. It is the addiction, not the goal of the addiction.
Yes, very much related…
I’m surprised to hear that wishing and belief are indistinguishable in the brain… if I believe I am safe from all harm, is it really the same state as wishing it were so?
Re: faith as a narcotic – I don’t know the physiology of it, but I think faith is clearly addictive; a person who is accustomed to a belief will suffer withdrawal when doubt arises. This is easily observable in followers of faith-based religions; they experience great anguish when their faith is threatened.
I mean that ongoing conceptualizations — beliefs — are never independent of feelings. Wishing, wanting, is often considered a feeling. In brain terms, perceptual and cognitive representations get hooked up with networks that also connect to “emotion centers” amygdala, brain stem, orbitofrontal cortex, etc. So…I suppose I took some artistic license but that is what I meant.
Re faith as a narcotic: maybe we’re just mincing words, but I’d call faith the access to the drug, the drug being a sense of belonging or whatever it is. Indeed, when access is threatened, we go into a tizzy.
maybe I should post this url…much better writer here:
http://imcw.org/Portals/0/Supplementary%20Materials/Article,%20PChodron,%20Ambiguity%20of%20Being%20Human.pdf
Very nice stuff. I didn’t read it all, but it’s alive with wisdom and compassion.
I liked the Pema Chodron document very much.
As a follow-on I wonder if the search for meaning isn’t a snare?
Is meaning (ie. an unchanging frame of reference to ground our values) even logically defensible? I would say no if you accept a hard Darwinian (Dawkins/Selfish Gene) view of the natural world.
I know Dawkins and his ideas make a lot of people squirm, but I’ve never heard his main points convincingly refuted. It is true that there is no comfort to be found in this perspective, but that is not a refutation.
My view on these this subject is ultimately they arise from the superstition instinct or the “need to know” instinct. Answers can be found, in general, from two sources, fiction or non fiction. Fiction would be the religious-like belief type answers where as science would be the non-fiction. Honestly, most times belief in something that’s not factual tends to feel best. The old “miasma” stuff of Dr Semmelweis times (childbed fever, germ theory). Depending on alleles, we tend to lean in one direction over the other. Being atheist, I’d say I lean towards the non fiction side. Between agonic & hedonic, I lean towards hedonic.
I have just been writing about this. Connection is such an important point in it all I think. There is that line from Larkin, that always terrifies me, “the love not given, time torn off, unused”.. I know very little about the brain chemistry of it all, but I know about the heart, and I think that connection is something that fundamentally we lose the ability for in active addiction.
I feel cheap copying posts, but this is what I wrote this afternoon before I read your blog:
One of the strongest and most difficult parts of the therapy that I have received over the past year and half, and has been learning to connect mind and body. I was rubbish at yoga, too embarrassed about dance, way too skittish for acupuncture, and curiously it was a form of mediation that began to help. Rather than listing to wave music or strange poems, it was a sequence that I was guided through, and now still guide myself through, which begins with feeling into the left foot and gradually making your way up around the left side of the body and then back down the right side.
So back to childhood memories, which I suspect may be part of why it works, in the Arts Tower at the university my father worked at when I was around seven, they had a lift called a paternoster. Not so much a lift as a succession of cubicles that ran up and down the building and turned over 180 degrees at the top. You had to jump onto a cubical to get on, and jump off, to well, get off. If you went round the top, you were in trouble. Which my father was once.
I woke this morning with the phrase “only connect” in my head. It has taken me a good few hours to realise that no it is not George Elliot, it is EM Forster, Howards End.
It means many things in HE, and phrases such as this leap and straddle beyond their textual context. As it ran through my head today, there were two meanings that began to surface. As an active addict you do not connect, you do not connect with people, you do not hear, you do not understand, and the terrifying thing is they most often do not notice, you care nothing remember nothing about their lives, about their fears and dreams. The second one is a repeat on a micro level, it is connected with yourself, you do not hear or understand that either, it is your conversations and the fun the “connection” you believe are still there, and it is your own fears and dreams that you do not notice.
“Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.”
Hi. I thought I replied to this. About the presentation coach whose overall advice to me (to counteract my solipsistic speaking style, mumbling to myself, shuffling around the stage) was to say “only connect!” And it worked like a charm. Did I put that on your blog as a comment? Can’t seem to find it.
Anyway, it’s hard to keep up with you guys. I may have nothing profound to respond with, but I almost always read these comments.
Indeed, the active addict epitomizes disconnection with others — and with oneself. I think most of us have come to that conclusion in one way or another.
ps the Eddie Vedder song is amazing. The Larkin, is Aubade:
http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/philip-larkin/aubade/
(and i misquoted – astonishing poem)
H Marc
Beautifully written piece. One of your best in a long time. BUT as usual the “grenade Guy” (I like that better with the addition of a touch of alliteration.)
I have done a lot of thinking about that very subject. But I approach it from a different angle (being an Econ guy) and that would be ideology.
Ideology allows people to answer the tough questions without having to thinkand search for the solution themselves. BY signing on to an ideology whether it be political Religious whatever the answers to the tough questions are there, ready at hand, no messy brain function to be used.
I consider these slavish followers intellectually lazy. Thinking is hard work, much harder than a tennis game or watching football on TV half-rack of brewskis at hand.With a commitment to an ideology, in this example mostly political (unless it interferes with the game time then it’s most likely religious)
Allow me to quote a short explanation by Theodore Dalrymple (pen name) the British prison physician turned writer. Just substitute “ideology” with “stereotypes” and my point will be made by a much superior writer.
“For most people, the willing suspension of disbelief is difficult and requires effort not when, for example, they see a film or read a novel, but when they hear or read about events in the real world. And the belief that they cannot,will not, or desperately do not want to suspend is their disbelief in the picture of the world that they have formed for themselves.
‘For them the world is an assembly of stereotypes the abandonment of any one of which threatens the whole worldview that is precious to them and causes them discomfitingly to doubt their ability to understand the world.”
I would only add that intellectual laziness besides fear plays a role in this dynamic.
JLK
PS I hated Eddie Vedder until I saw him doing a duet with Tom Petty on Petty’s “The Waiting”. Great voice!
Well, ok, lazy in a way. Saves having to do all that work yourself. I’ve often thought that too. But why are they lazy?
Maybe it’s because it is such hard work to maintain a sense of connectedness or even to find it in the first place. Usually the only way to do it — I mean materially — is by being in love with other people. But being in love is hard work, and it often fails. So what are we left with? Fatigue and defeat — can I just relax and stay connected and be a part of something larger — please?!?
And that’s where religion and/or addiction comes in. Sure, just sit down, take a seat, and you get what you’re looking for. Granted, it’s the food-stamps version, and you’ll have to pay by the installment plan.
HI Marc
I love the term “food stamps version” being a 12-hour-a-day guy during me “career years”. (Now that I am 66 I have back to 6-8 for the 2 “hobby” companies we own) paying well into 7 figure in Federal taxes alone. So chow stamps, except in cases like this put a grimace instead of grin on my face.
Unfortunately though after 62 years of observation (yes I have been hyper- curious since I was maybe 4?) I am not nearly as optimistic about motivation. I don’t know what makes some people lazy and others a whirlwind of activity with no focus therefore achieving similar outcomes to the lazy half-rack-and-a-football game. The 3rd kind is a person is more structured, organized AND a whirlwind.
Wife and I were discussing this phenomena the other day and came firmly down on the side of “born with it”.
What is happening now in the US is almost a petri dish for this type of experiment although granted there are many people who can be made comfortable with a “food stamp” lifestyle”. We now have a record # of participants with no end in sight.
I prefer not to go back to the 1930’s soup kitchens BUT the more the govt makes available the more people will rationalize embracing that lifestyle.
In the many years of my life ( maybe with the exception of 1967-1973) I would never have guessed that so many people would opt for govt checks instead of work. And yes there is work out there but the college grads who leave school with a masters in Gender Studies will be sorely disappointed.
So I guess the conclusion I would make after all this babbling is that roughly 20-25% of Americans would choose an “Entitlement Lifestyle” because that is how they think(blame it on the rich etc) another 20-25% can be changed to that mindset because they are weak-minded (in this sense of the term) to begin with) and, so far any a slight majority has too much pride in American work tradition to participate.
Let’s see how it evolves during the next 3 years and then you have a pretty good idea if this mindset comes from nature or nurture.
JLK
Pre-warning: I am a plumber/handy man/ lackey, and not a writer. I offer no harm otherwise. Words and letter series which follow may offend, and therefore are not the real nature or intent of the assembler. Be advised. Plainly…i forget rules of proper english/punk-uation andor/ grammar. End disclaimer.
Mr Skinner, Clean Slate-forget author, posits alternative to the Mr (Dr?) Dawkins, selfish gene, if memory serves. I listened to the audiobook only once. I could be wrong/partially. I very much enjoy Dawkins two books I have read…especially the young adult book on evolution. Maybe you can post after perusing?
ML, mem-ideology to me, is the study of ideas. The context in which his has been used here is to me should be dogma…not ideology. which it seems is a modern accepted word abuse (as in substance abuse 🙂 From my little dictionary:
2 archaic the science of ideas; the study of their origin and nature.
Which brings me to the “ideology” of economics. No offense, still, have a resentment to this science yet remain open to mind change on the subject. Economics, which I hope to be able to change my mind about, is a science i hope to see placed into the realm of numerology, cosmology and finally phrenology. It is a perversion of accounting. It is a way to dehumanize human suffering and stands as one of largest impediments to civilization. that is i props up the modern consumer psychosis (lie) that the planet somehow has a shortage of basic human necessities. the fact is there is enough if we can somehow put on the table the concept of commonwealth…and put aside the idea of private property, for the most part. It seems to me nothing will intrinsically change so long as the “economics” tells us there is a “reason” why children starve, when food is in abundance and people die without healthcare when healthcare is readily available for some and not others-economic dogma is now merged with nationalism/religion and politics..it is used as a glue. And this is wrong according to basic natural law and accounting…which I consider a valid science, a subdivision of the math department. 🙂 These things all glued together are threatening the life of the human species….it maybe the final addiction. the addiction to attachment and or aversion. is the way taught that I best understand.
The lazy idea, is best applied to the teacher and not the one being taught…as a father is see most students/kids/young people are not being made to understand in a way which is most conducive to learning how to learn. we are taught the addiction to more, material stuff…$1 trillion plus every year spent on advertising stuff will make you happy, sexy and economical successful…an example.
And this brings me back to what the buddha taught me and many forget…it is/was my inability to tame my thoughts. I used drugs to help do that. I disagree that drugs keep me from connecting. I never felt more connected than when on LSD. When using drugs, I loved to do a lot for people and myself…stimulants/booze my doc. But there came a time due to whatever reason, that i could not function at all without them. that was the real problem. i “needed” to do anything to get more.
A good blast of a big joint used to make me so mellow and connected…it was great. that is not the case today. the overuse or the trauma induced onto to me by the society (police beatings and brutal conditions of state-sponsored gitmo wannabe’s) changed my ability to use/abuse to flat out psychotic trip of paranoia.
taming my thoughts remain the challenge. on a cellular level i know what is human and civilized and on that same lavel i know the society to which i participate is mostly not. could it be worse beter, yes. can i do anything about it but change me…not really.
I keep needing to read buddha teaching while having a self taught education in all religions, to remind myself what those teachings mean …because they worked-the buddha a very few of the religious teachings…very few…they are just touchstones.
After all the buddha last teaching, and i for one do not consider the buddhism to be religious…it is an ancient form, for me of psychiatry/mental health/philosophy of thinking (ideology)…his last teaching was and many forget was take everything you have learned and burn it…find your own truth.
my add-mileage may vary, past performance does not predict future success. buyer beware, mea culpa
postscript:
i think dr mar and the science he specializes in may be our best hope as a species….the idea i learned in the very awful XA cult…was what neurology will one day address successfully the addiction to “more…bigger….better…more.” And the biggest part of that is/was my inability to see the addiction as PROBLEM.
Here’s the fun part. blast all the all the money and gold and shiney/pointy things in the direction of the sun….now tell me your not addicted and how we are all going to die without it…or simply wish we were dead…
🙂
help us science! lol
Summation…sucky writer i am… Neurology/Neuroscience and very basic Buddhism have a lot in common in addressing addictive thoughts and the resulting behaviors. Other philosophy or religious text as well as many other modern academic disciplines aggravate the condition.
as support I point to the wiki version of much forgotten idea behind medicine, curing and continuing to cure or prevent human suffering:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath
thanks for keeping this book and discussion alive you all – it helps me bunches.
Too much here to comment on, here, Kevin. I think you’ve expressed your whole outlook on life and society, but I don’t actually know what your main point is. Anyway, glad you’re finding an outlet…
This comment is about your original post about vulnerability. I have found from my own personal experience, that a recognition of vulnerability can terrify and confuse people. They experience a sense of unease, of potential personal fragility, a possible trajectory in life with a corresponding strength that crawling out of it requires. There are many people for whom recognition of vulnerability implies responsibility, people for whom a distinction between family friend, self – projection, care provider is blurred.
So yes this is again back to why I like this blog. I have been thinking again about people i have come across met on this journey that have not made it. This was one from several years ago. As you know I am interested in Trauma, it is far from gender specific.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLLlSDpdPdE
I think I’m losing you. Are you talking about the suicide of the band leader? I guess he just danced the way he felt….or what? Was this a function of personal fragility? I don’t really see the connection between this act and the fragility of those seeking ongoing connection through drugs or religion….
Yes, I am.
The link began with the idea of connection – I think that often the desire to connect through drugs or religion (etc) stems from a feeling of isolation or dislocation from “normality”. A sense that something is different from what most people “expect”, and the fragility of life I think is often the trigger. It was Pascal that said “Le silence eternel de ces espaces infinies m’effraie”. This is why you start to “dance the way you feel”- no one else can see it. Connecting via drugs at least is isolating — religion as well when taken that far is to dissaociate from society. It is a hard balance to manage though – which I think is why Charles jumped.
Okay, very eloquently put. But there still must be huge individual differences in people’s vulnerability to that fragility. Some can take it and move on. For others, it’s enough reason to jump. And where do those differences come from? Like some other psychologists, I think there are important differences in the biology of early life — differences that are easily magnified by difficult, stressful, or traumatic experiences. Like, say, addiction: the cure that augments the ailment.
JLK’s quote from Theodore Dalrymple makes me think of this as well -it is a great quote, It is rare to hear about Trauma from a male perspective, the charity CALM in the UK is making massive headway with trying to establish a platform and a reference for men that deal with depression etc.
Back to the quote – “the willing suspension of disbelief is difficult” – and can become impossible with mental health issues such as trauma. The world becomes unknowable, unintelligible as JLK says – which prompts a desire for connection in something controllable such as drugs – or for faith.
I just heard a description of addiction in a course I am taking in Grad school described as: cynacism + idealism = addiction. Meaning, that the addict is actually seeking the ideal, the connection, but idealism encapsulated in “how it should be” without connection to the real world leaves one jaded and seeking in the wrong places. While the addict is truly looking for the connection, they won’t find it without illumination.
Hello. First of all I love Eddie Vedder. Glad to be in the weird club. I came across this site yesterday (too late to participate) when doing (re)search for “addicted to connection.” I think your argument actually achieves the opposite perspective than the one you are making if taken one step further. As you write, humans are “built for wishing, for wanting, for craving.” I would like to suggest this could mean that – differentiating us from animals – we are designed with the capacity to connect with what exists “out there” and “in here.” (let’s be honest – no one really knows- its all hypothesis) … That – in fact – it is not misguided or misappropriated. That very yearning and desire is, when appropriately directed, is what differentiates human beings from lower beings, making us capable of having a connective relationship with a supernal being. Rather than viewing religion or God as a “transitional object,” please consider this perspective: humans are designed to access this supernal connection. This is not to discount our very important human to human relationships. Animals are also proven to have the capacity for connection with other animals, and of course, humans. And vice versa. The perspective I am offering suggests humans are capable of accessing a connection with the supernal – whether we chose to or not. This is the next step of the evolutionary process. In my experience, those who have achieved this stage of development are living beautiful open-hearted engaged full lives. I see it all around me.
Hi Marian and welcome to the blog. Note that comments to older posts will not be read by many…so catch up with us.
I don’t disagree at all. I sometimes feel this connection when meditating. I just think that it’s hard to disambiguate craving from connection sometimes. We can imagine the connections we crave. We do so in dreams all the time. And then, once in a while, when we’re still, focused, present, we do in fact connect with something very different — perhaps supernal as you put it.