Everything is Related

learning to locate ourselves in the relational field

Photo by Lauren McConachie on Unsplash...

In the language of Gestalt Practice, everything arises from and returns to the background, or field. This is why I like to refer to this phenomenon as the relational field, because everything is related. When we become aware of our relatedness, we begin to pay attention to context. And when we share where something arises from within us, we become more intimate. In essence, when we are able to share the background from which our reactions emerge, we become more present because we are better able to discern what is mine, what is yours, what is ours, and what may belong to something else entirely.

For example, imagine we are sitting together at a restaurant and have an altercation. Later, I notice that I continue to feel angry. So I check in with myself: “What in my world needs attending to?” First, I ask, “Am I hungry?” Perhaps hunger contributed to our misunderstanding. Then I turn my attention to you and wonder, “Are you hungry?” Next, I consider whether we are both hungry. Finally, we might explore whether the guests bickering at the table next to us were affecting the atmosphere. Perhaps their tension agitated us both, leaving us short with one another.

In other words, exploring context — within, between, among, and beyond — helps us locate where our reactions arise, understand them through the relationship between figure and ground, and respond to what the situation requires with both fairness and care, what I would call integrated masculine and feminine ways of attending. This is how ruptures are repaired.

However, the conflict never falls entirely within a single domain because we ourselves are always part of the situation. After all, we are participants in life, not observers. Yet it can be enormously helpful to discern where a breakdown is occurring.

The field of belonging points to our relatedness — to the reality that we are always, and inextricably, connected to ourselves, to one another, and to this beautiful planet we share.

It seems that the modern Western world often forgets this. We are encouraged to individuate in order to succeed. This is a worthwhile and necessary developmental task, but it need not be the end of the journey.

There is another step in the journey that follows, one that includes others. It involves looping back around to reconnect with what and where we come from. We all come from a woman’s body. And we also arise from the Ground of Being. While our beginnings may not have been easy, and certainly were not perfect, we are flesh and awareness and come from flesh and awareness. We must therefore reconcile ourselves with our humanity, with the fact that we are finite and innocent and, as such, vulnerable in the deepest sense of the word.

When we begin to engage reality this way, we develop the capacity to fall properly in love with it through the process of knowing and being known.

This is why, I believe, Wisdom Exchange (WE) can stand on its own, even without my skill as a facilitator. We invite into our community those who are already walking this path, those who sense the preciousness of the human heart, who understand that connection is our lifeline, and who are willing to reach toward one another when that lifeline begins to fray.

I hope my book inspires readers because I trust that if WE can do this tender work of loving one another properly, others can too, if they are willing to try. And it seems that the world could certainly benefit from more of us trying.