Shared Reality

I’m inspired to share about an experience I had yesterday on a Zoom call. I think it illustrates well an aspect of this work that lights me up.   

I was meeting for the first time with someone who reached out with curiosity about me and my work. It was pretty clear from our emails that this was not a “discovery call” to see about potential 1:1 work. We were meeting to generally connect. I always look forward to these calls… just opportunities to see what arises when someone reaches out from a place of openness and curiosity.   

Almost immediately, I noticed a distinct sense of comfort with this person, though not for any easily identifiable or tangible reason. We didn’t start the call with a meditation or any specific plan or intention. We knew virtually nothing about each others' backgrounds and hadn’t even had a mutual friend connect us. We just sorta showed up, and ease seemed to accompany us. Shortly after we started chatting, I started noticing my body softening quite a lot, and subtle resonance coming online… a sense of connectedness that is hard to describe in words (turns out we were both feeling it).

The best way I can describe the experience is to say that we were landing together in shared reality. 

This has become a favorite phrase of mine. Shared reality seems to be able to arise when what is most real, important and alive to me is what is most real, important and alive to you. Without any effort, we can land in that space of overlap and settle into it.  When the mental maps through which we filter reality start becoming less and less salient, we can arrive in this less filtered space together.   

Shared reality with others is something that feels like a birthright to me… not just a deep desire or privilege, but something beautiful that is meant to come with this human experience. 

The shared reality that I am most interested in is this subtlest form of it that seems  totally non-reliant on connection through words, activity, emotions or even values / mission (I was about to add humor to the list, but connection in humor is something that I’ve got to leave chalked up to Mystery). The thing is, I love connecting in all of those areas above and view them as darn important, wonderful parts of life. Stimulating intellectual discussion, emotionally supportive chats, physical bonding and collaboration on projects / ideas all naturally create some semblance of shared reality. I feel more in shared reality with someone when there is mutual interest in a topic of convo than when there is not.

The shared reality that I experienced on this call yesterday is something more mysterious (at least to me). In fact it hasn’t gotten any less mysterious the more I’ve experienced it. Though we had very interesting discussion, the connection that we eventually both acknowledged we felt had seemingly nothing to do with that. This mysterious, very subtle connective space that we dropped into together can pervade and enrich all these other forms of connection. That’s what is so amazing about it. It requires no-thing and yet it includes and enlivens every-thing it pervades. 

Needless to say, it’s a two-way street. This shared reality that I am talking about required that we were both landing/landed in this space. It is mutual contact. 

Amazing things can happen in this space of shared reality. In my experience, true healing happens. As a human being with unresolved emotional imprints, I come to interactions with some amount of protection. Sometimes I am very aware of those somatic contractions… contractions that seem to be protecting me from the emotional pain or confusion that these young, tender parts of me fear will be touched if the connection does not go well, to put it simply. Entering into connection is like entering a dance… How vulnerable do I make myself? How much of my heart do I reveal? How safe do I feel with this person? What is their intention in entering this dance? Is my full, wild dance available here? What about that last dance we had that didn’t go so well? What if I need space from the dance? Given that younger parts of me are negotiating safety in every interaction they enter, these questions (and countless others) float around and give rise to / reinforce protective contractions. That tightening in the front of my throat that comes online to some degree with most people I encounter has something to do with protecting my heart from the pain I may experience (the hurt/pain of being judged, misunderstood, rejected, etc) if I were to let myself be totally soft and unprotected… naked and spontaneous. Unprotected and spontaneous didn’t always go so well in the past. 

When we begin to find ourselves in shared reality with others, we find the natural arising of profound safety. Shared reality communicates things like, you are deeply supported and seen here; this person is with me; I belong here. Protective holding patterns soften and our being starts to learn that being with others can feel profoundly safe and deeply nourishing. Connection in this subtle shared reality is a corrective experience for the parts of us that hold relational wounding. It is not the magic cure for everything, but it is certainly powerful. 

It is all the more powerful when we are invited to bring our humaneness into shared reality… into safe, deeply resonant spaces. We are human whether we like it or not. Whether we want to acknowledge and feel it or not, we are endowed with innate human qualities of power, love, sexuality, voice and understanding (as well as all of our acquired conditioning). And while the shared reality that I am speaking of does not require our full-fledged humaneness, it can beautifully support the awakening and flourishing of these human qualities. We can sit in share reality with a group of people and, to some extent, withhold our humanness. We can stifle the pure power that wants to pulse through our being, for instance. We can hold back our authentic voice. Or, we can drop into shared reality with others and gently invite our power or our voice into the safety and connectedness of that space. We can not only sit there and dwell in the general nourishment of mutual contact, but we can also use the uniqueness of that relational space to bring forth and help us more fully embody these innate human qualities that exist within our being.

This opportunity is part of why I am so deeply moved and inspired by spaces in which Realization Process practice is a centerpoint. Through RP practice, we are invited to settle together into an embodied experience of shared reality. And then rather than simply dwell there (which, again, can be absolutely lovely) we are invited once again, through gentle, carefully crafted, trauma-sensitive attunements, to uncover and deeply feel/embody these human qualities… qualities that we may unconsciously keep dimmed or hidden in spaces that don’t explicitly invite them. We can work with trauma-based imprints that may be associated with these different qualities in the healing container that is the relational field. While shared reality cannot be forced, we can create the conditions that make its natural arising more likely. We can open to it.

I’d love to explore shared reality and our beautiful humanness with you if you feel so called. Check out the offerings page on my website.