Shared Reality

In the last few years, I've struggled with the unfulfilled hunger for sharing my inner journey with people who understand me. Perhaps I've felt the same way my entire life. I remember being in college and feeling that I had to keep so much of my inner journey to myself, even with the people who seemed to believe as I believed. I was more intense, I felt more, and I understood my life events held the key to greater understanding than it seemed on the surface. I scared people. I didn't find anyone else who processed events the way I did, or who understood the nature of life and being human the way I did.

In the following years, through religion, then various philosophies, Eastern religions, and the wide range of New Age thought, I sought people who were running after life and truth with the same intensity without any luck. People came through my life like they were stuck in a revolving door. Over time, I came to expect this pattern, and so I changed my expectations for individuals. But I never got over the wound from the deep hunger caused by this pattern. Sometimes, the loss of a single person would trigger a grief that was out of proportion to the event, and I would know that I was grieving the wound.

I live a solitary life by nature and by choice. I only have time for reflection and introspection by having time for myself. My personality, my nature, my soul demand this and I'm happy to live a life that facilitates my growth. The lack of social interaction or loss of popular culture experiences seem like no sacrifice to me because they serve a greater good. At the same time, I chose to be alone at times when I could reach out to others because I am leery of the revolving door. I thought it was better to avoid the hurt than to embrace constant change. That is never a good decision, and that pattern caused me much pain, also. But this pain is caused by something I can change. And I am changing it.

In the last year, there is a dramatic change in my life in this area. I can't really say why this pattern is broken. I could list the many life changes that I have experienced that laid a foundation for this. But in the end, what matters is that this has changed. In February, I started to invite strangers to participate in my life. In April, I reached out to another stranger who has become a good friend. In July, it happened again while in Santa Fe. Through my art blog, I'm connecting with wonderful women around the world who have similar life experience and outlooks. It's such a joy to start to find my people. At the same time, I've resumed my participation in various online communities, and through them, I'm also finding new people. I'm finding a group of creative, technical people in my own town with whom I banter. I'm free to be myself, and as I reach out more, I find common grounds for conversation and meaningful interaction with them.

One of the most amazing deep changes in my character over the last decade is my ability to completely share in the joy of other people's success. I love hearing about any success in someone's life. I can feel the energy of their joy and their success spilling over into my life, fueling my own success engine. I can jump up and down with them, laugh with them, and really stand in their shoes. It is such a joy for me. I do still have my moments when I seem to be staring into the face of my own unfulfilled dreams and desires, when I can't find the joy for someone else, or I find myself gulping at their success. Fortunately, these times are infrequent and pass quickly.

As an adjunct, I have also found the ability to stand and see the beauty in the the actions, thoughts, and feelings of almost everyone I meet. With some people, I can see right into their souls, see who they are and who they want to be, and know in that moment that all is right in their world. That's really amazing when it happens as someone is spilling their heart about some sadness they face. It's as if I have learned how to see everyone from a divine perspective. It's the most amazing thing to feel and experience in the moment. I've also found that people are hungry for appreciation and acknowledgment. It has become my pleasure to speak of the beauty and truth I see in them because they appreciate hearing it. It's such a simple thing, coming from a very deep place, and with a profound impact. It humbles me to participate in such a noble course of action.

Through all of these things, my former hunger for shared reality has diminished, and perhaps disappeared. It's not a linear kind of disappearance, it didn't get smaller and smaller until it was too small to notice any more. Rather, it is a shift in perspective. It's like I turned my head, and when I turned back, I had a different vista. Like the hunger exists in another plane of existence or a different dimension, and I've found myself separate from it.

I find myself surrounded with good friends, people who get what I'm about even if they don't completely agree or have harmony with my ideas or world view. They see me with divine eyes, and from that place, we find a common ground for our very different life experiences. I find myself aware of my individuality at the same time I feel myself as part of the ocean of humanity. A self-aware drop of sea water. It's a beautiful thing.

Occasionally, I find myself still feeling like an outsider, or an odd-ball participant. I let it happen. I am learning to embrace my particular geekiness in the spiritual world. I still have moments when I'm vulnerable, but I am able to process those feeling quickly, get to the heart of my pain, and resolve to move forward. I sometimes feel confused and overwhelmed with the amount of change in my life, and long to cling to some aspect of my life that I notice is falling away from me. But I've learned to really observe myself, which quickly leads to laughing at myself because I've caught myself in the act of doing it again. Of forgetting that I'm god having a human experience. Of forgetting that everything is right with the universe and things are unfolding exactly as they should be. Of forgetting that my life is more than my current situation and my visibility into the future.

It seems that I've found my sea legs for living life from my own perspective, and have gotten really good at restoring my assemblage point to where I want it. From this place, I can't wait to find out what more I can do, how I can grow further, and how I can use this as a jumping off place to explore reality even more.

Hunger For Shared Reality

As much as I want to define my own reality, I have an equal desire to enjoy shared reality with people around me. And I don't mean the forced sharing that takes place with family and co-workers, the sharing that we assume will happen in a day. I mean the real intimacy of sharing myself and being accepted and understood by another, and accepting and understanding another.

In recent years, we have come to identify the "male bonding" experiences of watching sports (and drinking beer). Women have their own experiences, mostly shoe shopping and taking a bathroom break with your posse. Oh yes, and those endless telephone conversations. While those experiences are nice and typify shared reality, I really hunger at times for people who can share my experiences of reality and shifts in the assemblage point. I suppose that is the real reason why I'm writing this blog, other than the fact that writing reveals more of myself to me than any other process I've found. At least with this blog, there is the opportunity for shared reality. Maybe no one reads this at all, or maybe there are many lurkers out there. From the act of writing, I create a space for myself that takes the edge off my hunger.

For much of my life, I wanted to share my experiences as a way to validate them, to allow them to be real for me. It was a big shift when I started having experiences and thoughts that I just wanted to keep for myself. It was evidence that my journey had shifted inward, and was the beginning of some real depth in my character. Until that point, I could only hold one emotion at a time, and I expressed everything I felt as I felt it. Until then, I could never be angry with someone and smile at them in a moment. That kind of depth was beyond me, and seemed more like duplicity. I don't think of it as duplicity today. I understand today that there are many currents of emotions that run through me at every second, and I am choosing which stream to connect with, much like an old fashioned telephone operator chooses where to plug in a phone line to make a connection. I encounter people in my working world who I realize have not yet expanded beyond this sort of one dimensional reality, and it helps me to have appropriate expectations for them and conduct effective communication with them. One thing I have learned, still waters don't always run deep. Quiet people are not always thoughtful people. In fact, I've been shocked to discover the things that some quiet people have been thinking, especially since I had assumed they had depth.

I remember when I was finishing up college and doing my student teaching, I felt a strong wave of this hunger. I was working for the first time in a professional environment. My new life experiences were amazing to me, and I felt very much alive. I shared that reality with the other teachers and my students, so I didn't really have a need to talk about my day with my friends and close friends. However, I remember feeling that there was a slice of my life that wasn't shared. I wanted to share my experience of driving in to work each day. I still remember moments of those drives, in the middle of winter before the sun had begun to rise, driving through the countryside to the next town. Isolated homes light up the landscape as light flooded out their windows to their yards, providing beacons of warmth and connection I passed on my long drive. On those mostly cloudy mornings, I would watch the first traces of sunlight begin to illuminate the edge of the horizon, and only begin to see the light after I arrived inside my school building. It was a magical hour to be traveling, and it was that magic I wanted so desperately to share with someone, anyone.

In recent years, I have wanted to share some of my more mystical experiences of life with anyone who can appreciate my view of the world. I have an ongoing hunger to this kind of connection. It has caused me to invite people to hang out in my world that I would not otherwise have kept around me, and the lack of real compatibility did eventually untie the bond between us. There are moments when I feel this hunger strong and I fight against the overwhelming need to share, preventing me from making myself into a fool by sharing with someone who can't understand what I'm about. It's been a curious process.

It seems that no one wants to really have a unique reality. We all want to share overlapping reality with the people we love and trust. Perhaps that is why we love and trust them, because they overlap our reality.

I woke up from a dream last week where I was calling off an engagement. It seems that the relationship was a long one, and marriage was the next logical step. Right before the big day, my guy asked me if I was sure I wanted to do this. I suspect that he was really looking for a confirmation of my feelings for him. To his surprise, and to my own, instead I realized that marrying him would not be horrible, but it was not what my heart really wanted. So I called it off, and without any regrets or emotional suffering from the shift. Just a realization and boom! A decision that caused a major change in direction. No big deal. This dream left me with a lingering feeling, that I want to live the life of my heart's desire, not continue along the in the same direction just because things are lining up before me. How appropriate for the challenges I face in my life today!

I don't want to love people just because they share my reality. I want to love people because my heart floods when I'm around them. I want people in my life that allow us to create our own reality instead of so much adjusting to fit into each other's realities. This is what I want.