The Way of Connection

The Way of Connection helps people to explore their innate connection with others, and with the Universal Consciousness and to experience the transformative power of unity.  Transforming sadness and disempowerment into profound effective joyful action.  Action that goes beyond fixing problems to inventing a way where these problems perhaps don’t even need to arise.  This leads to fast powerful actions that make long rooted problems and challenges resolve quickly and easily.

The 5 phases of the way of connection

These 5 phases form a cycle that spirals us towards more and more effective, powerful action.

Insert Content Template or Symbol
  • Deep Celebration - We celebrate what is, and we connect to the universal joy that surrounds us and connects us.  From this place of peace, and love and harmony  we can build peace and love and harmony around us.
  • United Purpose - There is always a united purpose that all people can agree on.  If we have trouble finding it then we are not looking big enough.  Find the grand uniting vision.  Often this takes looking 100 years in the future beyond any of our lifetimes in order to get beyond personal differences and attitudes
  • Compassionate Understanding - We find a place of compassion and understanding for all involved.  Only when we can see that all people and things and even systems involved are doing their best and are coming from the most loving space they can, do we see clearly and truly understand the situation, and find effective solutions to it
  • Creative Inspiration - Look for new ideas and possibilities that go beyond our familiar assumptions of what is possible.  Play with the impossible and crazy in order to find what is possible and wise.
  • Synergetic Action - look for ideas that create synergy where everyone gains.  Where there is enthusiastic agreement we can work together in unity and strength, and move towards a world where we share in the joy and benefit for all.

    • The Art of Deep Celebration

    When we are connected, when we join together as one then we feel a deep sense of joy.  This is the natural state of human beings, this is how we thrive, this is how we build community, and this is how we effectively solve problems together.  In order to create this feeling indigenous societies, and traditional communities around the world have always had ways of finding and sharing this deep connection - traditions, ceremonies, celebrations, songs, dances etc.  To find techniques and traditions that can be used for modern day deep celebrations look for inspiration from cultural traditions.  Traditional songs and dances, religious traditions can be useful too, but there is a danger of them becoming too serious and losing the spirit of joy.  In creating your own celebrations look for that feeling of joy and connection, of light heartedness.  According to ancient Egyptian tradition our goal in this life is to go through it with a heart lighter than a feather.  This is how it should feel.  Beware of concepts like setting intentions, worship, or love that can put the joy and peace outside of ourselves.  It is a deeper intention to be in an ocean of joy and peace than to think about your intention for joy and peace.  It is a deeper worship to be in an experience of divine love and joy than to recognise the divine outside yourself.  It is a deeper experience of love to be in an ocean of joyful love than to say ‘I love you’

    The Art of United Vision

    There is always a uniting vision.  There is always a way that all people can look towards a common goal.  In order to find it we need only to look up from our daily struggle and see the bigger picture.  It can be useful to get people to name their idea dreams for a long future (100 years in many cases is a good time frame but it depends on the situation).  If people cannot see a common goal than make the scope bigger - a longer time frame, a larger area.  If there is conflict about a farm, then can we think about our vision for the city?  Or for the region, or for the world?  If there is conflict about which toy belongs to which child can they agree on what game they would like to play, or on what kind of superheroes they are?  The united vision creates the buy in, the commitment to work together in positivity and exuberance.  To look for points of agreement instead of disagreement.  Ask people to put their energy together towards this dream.

    The Art of Compassionate Understanding

    When understanding a situation there can be the temptation to blame someone or something.  While this may feel good psychologically in some way (probably because it makes you feel innocent), it also puts you in the position of being a victim and therefore powerless.  A much more powerful way to look at things is to see how everyone is doing their best, and is coming from the most positive place that they know how to.  From this perspective it is possible to begin to understand what it is that they are aiming towards, and what it is that they need.  This is the beginning of true understanding.  If you think you understand something, look to see if that understanding creates compassion for all involved.  If it does not then you do not truly understand.  The main way to achieve this is to look at needs - this is not the same as desires or intentions.  People often claim they need something - ‘I need to have the television on’ - but the true need is only expressed if you ask why - why do they need the television on?  ‘Because I have a ringing in my ears that is really disturbing if I don't have some kind of distraction’ and this deeper need is what must be addressed.  The interesting thing is that the deeper needs are generally not in conflict with each other, they are just different, or sometimes they may even be almost the same.  Do not list the needs as one against the other - here are your needs, here are mine.  Rather list the needs as things that we all need together in order to solve the problem together.  We are aiming to avoid any temptation to conflict, and rather to lead towards the next step where we can look for integrated solutions.

    The Art of Creative Inspiration

    Sometimes I’ve believed as many as 6 impossible things before breakfast

    Alice in Wonderland

    People will tell you that it is not possible to solve.  You might even tell yourself that, but the creative mind does not give up so easily.  It embraces the impossible, and explores imaginings that may be completely implausible.  This is a game to the creative mind.  Explore the craziest ideas you can come up with, use them to find other ideas that are maybe a little less crazy - explore the territory of possibility and impossibility.  Often this is done in a brainstorm session.  It is important to set the basic rules in a brainstorm session - no critiquing ideas - we want the crazy impractical ones.  Try to make people laugh.  Later on we will criticise and choose between them.

    The Art of Synergetic Action

    Look at these crazy ideas - let’s see if there are any that we actually like.  Only if we can achieve Enthusiastic Agreement should we take on a direction - most of the ideas or indeed all of them may not achieve that at this point, but maybe you can craft from the best ideas that you came up with, combined with your knowledge of the needs - some concept, some direction that all can agree with.  It will likely not be so simple and straightforward as the ideas that you had at the beginning of the process, and it may seem daunting, but remember that this idea has no resistance, and so even if it seems more difficult, in truth it is not.  The support and energy behind it will be very powerful.  This leads to the process of taking these ideas into action and seeing what can be achieved together.