THE IMPORTANCE OF OUR CONNECTION

 

From the moment we come into existence, at the point of our conception, we enter life attached to another human being. We are 100% dependent on the attachment we have to the woman who carries us in her womb and she gives us everything we need for life and growth through her connection to us. When we are born, we are yet again 100% dependent on the attachment we have to our mother for our survival and we remain totally dependent on our parents or caretakers for many, many years. We were not meant to be alone. We were made dependent. We were made to need others. We long for attachment because we were designed for attachment. We will never escape this basic human need.

 

While we are in the womb, if there is a complication and something is causing the attachment we have to our mother to be compromised, we could become malnourished or even die. As we transition from infancy to adulthood, the nature of our attachment evolves, but the underlying need remains unchanged. Our physical dependence on our mothers gradually gives way to an emotional dependence on the people around us. Just as a baby's body requires an unbroken umbilical cord to thrive, an adult's heart requires a sense of emotional attachment to others to stay nourished and alive. When our ability to form healthy attachments deteriorates, we can become emotionally stunted or stuck in patterns or relational brokenness. 

 

THE CONNECTING PART OF US

 

The thing inside of us that connects us is also the same thing inside of us from which we feel emotion. Happiness, sadness, fear, pride, embarrassment, and every other emotion comes from this delicate part of our being. The connections we have with other people are emotional connections. When you feel connected to someone it is because you connected to them emotionally. They made you feel something. That feeling registered in your memory bank and now when you see them or think of them a feeling is associated with them.

 

The English New Testament is primarily translated from ancient Greek, and uses the word "psuche" or “soul” about 100 times to refer to the “inner self.” However, the word "heart" is used more frequently to convey this concept, appearing over 800 times. Both terms have similar meanings. Based on word count, the subject of the heart or soul is one of the top five subjects in the Bible. Here are a few passages that mention "heart."

 

Proverbs 4:23: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it."

 

Psalm 139:23-24: "Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me..."

 

Ezekiel 36:26: "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."

 

Romans 10:10: "With the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."

 

There are literally hundreds of passages like these in the Bible. As you can see, the Bible uses the word “heart” to symbolize the concept of inner life, emotion, and the place your “belief” comes from.

 

In the secular world, the term “Inner Child” was coined over the 20th century by many brilliant intellectuals who were developing and defining several concepts to help us achieve a better understanding of human psychology. Here in this lesson, we use “heart,” “soul” and “inner child” interchangeably.

 

Regardless of what you choose to call it, the point is, we all have a place inside of us that longs to feel genuine connection. Our soul thrives when we sense a strong and genuine attachment to the people around us. The depth of connectedness our heart feels with those closest to us really is the primary factor that determines not only the quality of our relationships, but the meaningfulness, fullness and greatness of our soul’s interpretation of life. In other words, the thing that most significantly determines your quality of life will be the depth of connection your heart perceives you have with those closest to you. Rich people are miserable if they don’t have it. Poor people are happy if they do have it. The quality of your connections determines the quality of your life far more than anything else. This is why your closest relationships (like marriage and parenting) deserve to be your top priority in life. You win at marriage, you win at life. 

 

FEELING REJECTION IS THE OPPOSITE OF FEELING CONNECTION

 

Connection can be felt as an emotion, “I feel deeply connected to you.” The opposite of emotion of connection would be rejection. Rejection is an incredibly destructive force when it comes to the development of our psychological selves and our experience of meaningful relationships. For all of us, at some point, we experience our first feeling of disconnection or rejection from the ones we were seeking connection and belonging to. This happens to everyone, but every heart is different and has different needs and different reactions to the feeling of rejection. At a very young age, without knowing what we are doing, or why we are doing it, we develop strategies for avoiding those terrible feelings of rejection, disconnection, lack of belonging and aloneness. When these strategies become our regular response whenever we feel any type of tension, disconnection or rejection from someone in our lives, they can be called coping mechanisms.

All of us have felt the pain of our heart being wounded or rejected to differing degrees. That sacred connecting place within each one of us is very delicate, very sensitive, and the shocking truth is that as we age, our heart remains like a child. Many thinkers who have written on this subject believe that our inner heart never adapts to injury, it never grows up, or grows wise or grows calloused. It simply remains vulnerable and raw, innocent, and easily injured. It needs protection. It is the “emotional” part of us. It’s the part that feels all the emotions we feel. It is the thing inside of us that believes, hopes and loves. It’s the part of us that feels shame, embarrassment, and abandonment. It cannot turn these emotions off, it can only try to insulate them by building walls around the heart.

 

The thing about our heart is that it tends to seek belonging and attachment with every other life that it comes in contact with. It automatically, innocently searches for connection, for belonging, to believe in, to hope in, and to share identity with. It's like a lonely child seeking friendship from all the other kids on the playground. Our heart is always seeking acknowledgment, acceptance, harmony and love from everyone it comes into contact with. It is no wonder it gets so wounded all the time.

 

COPING MECHANISMS

 

When we experience negative feedback and interaction from parents, relatives or peers during our childhood, we learn to hide or suppress those parts of us we believe they are rejecting and we naturally begin to create an alternative self image that behaves in a way we think those around us will approve of. By the time we are adults, we ALL have a hidden inner childlike heart, who is our truest self, and we ALL have an outer hardened shell, which is the projected image we portray ourselves to be to the outside world. As mentioned in previous lessons, the outer shell, or ego, is created as a survival mechanism that is driven by the idea that we are separate and need to compete against all else to survive. We use this separated self to insulate our inner child and protect it from trying to make full on connections to everyone around us so that our heart doesn’t get crushed over and over again by uncommitted relationships.

 

When our heart believes it has made a real connection with a trusted adult, but that adult proves in some way to be disconnected, disapproving or in the worst cases, abusive, it can be extremely traumatic and it can trigger all the emotions and fears associated with insecurity. As a result, we create any number of coping mechanisms to try to protect us from those feelings as we go forward. We will often carry those coping mechanisms subconsciously into our adult relationships.

 

While our egos and coping mechanisms aren’t inherently evil, they can be built on a false premise of separation, making it challenging for others to connect with us on anything but a superficial level. The degree to which you allow your truest self to feel and be known is the degree to which your truest self is accessible for rejection or connection. So while we operate out of a detached psyche, our hearts will be shielded from experiencing full-on rejection, but it will come at the cost of experiencing full-on connection.

 

Real connection occurs only when someone feels that their true self, not their ego, is genuinely understood, respected, and cared for. The quality and depth of your relationships hinges on how well your soul feels this connection with another soul. In general, the depth your partner feels you are connected to their internal world or thoughts, wants and emotions will determine how deeply they experience your union with them.

 

MARRIAGE IS A CURE

 

In the ancient biblical story found in Genesis 1-2, the Bible offers the origin story of the six days of Creation. In Genesis 1:3-4, it speaks of the first day of creation and it says, “And God said, ‘Let 9 there be light,’ and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good...”

 

The book of Genesis was originally written in the Hebrew language and whenever there is translation into another language, the original meaning of different passages can get lost in translation. In this case, when it says, God saw that the light was “good,” the original Hebrew word for “good” is “tov.” In this context, tov means “to be functioning according to its design.” It is not a dogmatic moral good, but a functional good. It is saying that God had an idea in His mind about light, so He created the sun, set it in motion and when He inspected it, He saw that the sun was functioning according to the design He had envisioned.

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This same language is used for each consecutive day of creation. God would think up a design, create it, inspect it, and if it passed inspection He would say, “It is good” or, “It is functioning according to the idea I had in My mind.” So the six days of creation continue; on the second day God creates the skies and the waters, and sees that they are “good,” on the third day He creates the land and vegetation, and sees that they are “good,“ and so on until the sixth day when he creates man. But when God inspects man, in Genesis 2:18, He says, “It is NOT good...” Man was not functioning according to the idea God had for him, at least not yet, and as the scripture reads on, we find out the reason God found man dysfunctional. The full passage reads, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” [so] “I will make a helper suitable for him.”

 

Wow! In all of the original creation, only one thing was NOT good. It was not good for man to be alone. Man was not capable of functioning according to his design if he remained alone. Aloneness is dysfunction. So God thought of a very interesting solution. In Genesis 2:21, it says that God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and when he was sleeping, God took a rib and fashioned a woman from it. Now we know from Genesis 1:27, that both male and female were created in God’s image. This suggests that God must embody both the masculine and feminine natures, and that Adam originally embodied both the masculine and feminine natures. When God fashioned Eve, it would stand to reason that He separated the feminine from the masculine to create Adam and Eve as two separate people, destined only to become functional upon successful reconnection.

 

Could this be the chief purpose God had in mind that He designed us for? To learn connection? Could it be true that anything less is a dysfunction or a counterfeit to our real purpose? If we read on, we will see Adam and Eve’s relationship is no picnic! And from this context, we see that their struggle (and ours) is likely intended, for the greater the struggle, the greater the opportunity to overcome and demonstrate love.

 

“Love covers a multitude of sins” - 1 Peter 4:8.

 

WE ARE INCOMPLETE WITHOUT EACH OTHER

 

This is the Bible’s very first lesson. The Bible is the story of mankind’s purpose and it begins by making the point that man and woman are incomplete without each other. In other words, without submitting ourselves to the requirements of connection, we remain broken to God’s design for us. Can you think of any greater way to prove you can love than through the connection you have within a marriage? From the days of Adam and Eve till today, there is no type of relationship that can do a better job at developing perfect love in us than marriage. Family is God’s classroom for our perfection. 

 

I find it interesting that the Bible never tells us that Adam ever woke up from his sleep. What if all of humanity’s splintered history was merely a dream? Could it be that the invention of our separated self is merely an illusion and that our aloneness is merely a lie our lives and marriages are meant to prove wrong?

 

YOU ARE NOT ALONE—EVER

 

I once had a dream in which I died and was ascending up to heaven when an angel stopped me and said, “Wait, you can’t go in.” I said, “Yes I can.” And he said, “No, not right now.” This puzzled me. “Not right now?” I questioned to myself. After a moment he continued, “This is the appointed time the Father, Son and Holy Spirit preach the Gospel to each other.” I was confused. “What?” I said, “Why do They need to have the gospel preached?...” “SHHH” the angel shushed my question, as he leaned in trying to listen. He didn’t want me to interrupt. He was trying to hear what they were saying. I instantly realized what an opportunity it would be so I also leaned in and attuned my ears to hear and I heard Jesus say to our Father, “Be blessed Father, for You are not alone.” And I woke up. That was all I heard before I was awoken. My first thought when I awoke was, “That's not the Gospel!” But the more I have thought about it in the years I have lived since that dream, I have become convinced that really is the truest Gospel there is. From God's perspective and ours. Christ connected us. We are no longer alone.

 

On page 356 of his book, Memories, Dreams, Reflections  by Carl Jung, he said, “Loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.” Deterioration in a close relationship comes when members feel alone within the relationship. This is true of both marital relationships as well as parent/child relationships. Loneliness is rarely about having an empty house, it is more about having thoughts, wants and feelings, but no one to share them with, because you too afraid to do so. Whether it is C.S. Lewis’ “The Great Divorce,” or John Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” or Thomas Aquainas’ “Summa Theologica,” there have been many brilliant theologians who have suggested the deepest levels of hell would be existence in utter alone-ness. When God issues the great commandment to love others, what He is telling us to do is to rescue the world from aloneness. Aloneness is the sickness the Gospel heals. Marriage is the ultimate expression of this Gospel. If you have each other right now, be thankful you are not alone. You can make this relationship anything you want it to be.

 

THE TRUE MEANING OF LIFE

 

Life is a test of whether or not we will learn connection and God has already sent the perfect instructors to teach us how to pass this test. The instructors He sent have the names, “husband” and “wife” and “son” and “daughter” and “mother” and “father.” Family is where you escape the hell of aloneness & meaninglessness. But they come at the cost of your ego, and at the cost of your self preservation. These relationships will demand you stop protecting yourself and instead do the exact opposite. You must sacrifice your detached “self” or else you fail the most important test of your life; the test of love, the test of connection, the test of whether you will choose heaven or hell, connectedness or aloneness. To heal, you must learn to speak what matters most to your heart, and help those around you to do the same so that you are no longer alone with in your soul. Only then can you be truly known, seen and loved for who you really are. Marriage is the antithesis of the story of utter alone-ness—or hell—or ego—or drifting alone through a sea of souls and never being truly known or loved by any of them. Your relationships can become exactly what you design them to be.