Hi Friends!
I hope this newsletter finds you well. As the battle between individualism and collectivism intensifies culturally, I have returned to some of the core questions that characterized my own transformative journey: What is the sacred balance between separateness and connectiveness? At what point does our emphasis on individual development, undermine or negate a healthy emphasis on our relational nature? At what point does our focus on collective well-being undermine or negate a healthy emphasis on our individual path and process? Simply put, when should I retreat from the world and focus on ‘me’, and when should I put my primary focus on ‘we’?
As I reflect on this question, I recognize that some part of the answer has to do with one’s stage of life. For many years, I felt it necessary to focus on my individual healing and process first. I sensed that I had a whole bevy of offerings to bring to the world, yet recognized that I couldn’t bring them through in the form I was in. Something had to happen first. That ‘something’ related to clearing emotional debris, maturing my capacity for presence, solidifying myself in the deep within. If I didn’t do that, I found it very difficult to bring the offering to the world. For example, I would carve out time to write—certain that writing was fundamental to my sacred purpose—but I couldn’t find the words. I was still too agitated and immature, ill-prepared to sit inside of myself for days on end, lost in words. And so I went back to the self-creation drawing board again and again, suffering and growing and readying myself for a more collective point of focus.
As I said in my first book, Soulshaping: “If you step on the right path at the wrong time, you’ve stepped on the wrong path.” In other words, you may well have a lively calling lying in wait within you, but timing is everything.
At the same time, I am well aware that many of us are called to a more connective way of being from the beginning of their lives. They know that they are here to merge with the village, to bring children into the world, to make little separation between themselves and the other. And they don’t need decades of individual development and preparation, before they bring their offerings. There will surely be things to learn, but they are ready to join the fray and learn them from the get-go.
I recognize my still existing bias with respect to the relationship between individualism and collectivism, particularly with respect to how we organize society itself. I recognize that too much focus on individual rights and concerns is incongruent with our relational nature and with the value of building strong and supportive communities. And yet, I also recognize that much of the genius that we need to inform and improve our communities arises through individual process. That’s not to say that genius and invention can’t be co-creative processes, but it is to say that some of the most brilliant offerings that we need often arise in the heart of one person’s very private self-creation journey. The greatest inventions and insights take form right in the heart of the magnificently formed self. If we move too far in the direction of collectivism as our organizing principle, we are likely to undermine the genius that the collective needs to traverse increasingly challenging terrain.
How do you see it? What is the sacred balance between individualism and collectivism that makes sense to you? How do you understand the relationship between self-actualization and collective actualization? Where does the self end, and the community begin? What do your unique callings, gifts, and offerings ask of you with respect to personal preparation? Societal interface? Are you here in this lifetime to focus more on your own personal process, or to put more focus on your place in the community itself?
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Personal sessions with me
For anyone who is interested in working on identifying and actualizing their sacred purpose, I love working with individuals one-on-one. In a session, I work with you to both identify your sacred purpose, and to harmonize it with your outer life. Sometimes we focus on how you can actually bring your sacred purpose into the world. At other times we focus on that which stands in the way of identifying and manifesting it—challenging circumstances, difficult relationships, unresolved wounds, issues and patterns. An affordable opportunity to be supported in your quest for a life emblazoned with sacred purpose, however that looks to you.
As I wrote in Grounded Spirituality: “As difficult as it may be, the path of sacred purpose is remarkably glorious. Nothing can compare. There is no counterfeit accomplishment that can ever match the soul’s truest expression in this human life, in this world. Nothing compares to the vigor, the vitality, the heart-thumping aliveness. Once you feed it some of your life, it becomes a raging fire that spreads and consumes more. The fire burning ardently within, that nourishes and keeps you warm. It’s the light of truly living. And the gifts are immense. Sacred purpose pours and pours, until our cup runneth over. Once we start walking, our true-path becomes contagious. Witnessing the faces of the downtrodden become alight, by the nimble touch of kindness. Seeing those who live an elevated life come down to ground-level, to finally learn and grow. Sprinkling the seeds of awakening, and watching them sprout. Lighting each other’s flames, along the way. Passing the torch of possibility to those who will follow. Lighting the world.”
I can’t shake the belief that if each and every one of us finds and walks our truest paths, that we will no longer hurt each other and our planet. In a self-aligned and purposeful state, our calling become a buffer against the madness of the world. We move from a clarified place inside of ourselves, waking up every morning ready to bring the truth of who we are into form. And the world around us transforms accordingly.
Here is the personal session link, if it calls to you...
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One of the places that the balance between individuality and relationality is most challenging is love relationship. In the following quote from my new book, Humanifestations, I speak to what happens when we merge so fully with another that we can’t actually see them. There is too much ‘us’, and too little separateness. Of course, there is no simple answer for this. Many of us long for more in the way of closeness, but when does closeness become something so utterly blended that it is no longer healthy and real?
“Shifting from a co-dependent tendency to one that is healthily dependent is no easy path. If your habitual pattern of relating is to fuse to another, it can be excruciating to know reality without it. Merging has become your experience of love, and anything else feels unnatural, perhaps even terrifying. And yet, the only way to truly love another is from one step back. If you’re in too close, you can’t see them, and they can’t see you. You think you’re in love, but you aren’t. You’re in need. Because you can’t love someone you can’t see. So take a step back energetically and emotionally, and look closer at the person you are bonded to. Let them breathe into their separateness. And you breathe into yours. Now watch love take root on the bridge between your hearts.”
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The same kind of questions arise with respect to the spiritual community. Here is a quote from my book, Ascending with Both Feet on the Ground, that speaks to this:
“If All-Oneness is not built on a healthy regard for the rights, boundaries and magnificence of the individual soul, it’s All-Nonsense. Grounded spirituality strikes a sacred balance between our experience of unity consciousness and our connection to true-path, that place where we feel both connected to the oneness and deeply connected to our divine purpose in the heart of it. The idea that we are ‘All-One’ takes on a whole new meaning when we interact with unity from an individuated and clarified purpose. There is the ocean of essence, and there is the individual droplet of meaning. Every soul has a vital role to play in this dance of sacred imagination.”
In the patriarchal spiritual traditions, there is often an overarching quest for a ‘unity consciousness.’ At their roots, these traditions prioritize a version of awakening that is bereft of feeling, ego, body, and personal identifications. In other words, a version of self-realization that is fixated on something called the ‘absolute self’, rather than the individuated self. They are not realizing the self, as we know it. They are realizing an experience of self that is entirely impersonal. I get the need for this in certain circumstances, but ultimately see it as self-avoidance masquerading as enlightenment. Because detachment is a tool—its not a life. If we can move in the direction of a ‘Weastern Consciousness’—a way of being that balances the quest for essence fundamental to many eastern spiritualities with the quest for a healthy self-concept fundamental to many western psychological models—we are more likely to serve humanity going forward. Too much of the oceanic and we drown in our unresolveds. Too much individuation and we have nobody to swim with. The point of balance is somewhere in between.
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In her riveting book, Look to the Clearing, poet Susan Frybort brings it back to the calling that we are…
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Wherever you are on the path, I wish you a wonder-filled week,
Jeff
wonderful poem Andrew! thanks for sharing it.
The last 3 years of covid craziness have been revelatory for me in terms of individualism and collectivism and made me consider things I have never considered before, which has recently brought me to your writings, Thanks
Reading this article I couldn't help but think of a Kahlil Gibran poem
Love one another, but make not a bond
of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between
the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from
one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat
not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous,
but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone
though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each
other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain
your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near
together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow
not in each other’s shadow.