Relationship is Radical
And it's at the root of spirituality
By this time, (hopefully) we all know that we live in an interrelated Cosmos. Everything is connected to everything else from galaxies to the quantum level. Nothing exists independently, or, as Buddhists say, everything is co-arising simultaneously. Interrelatedness is one of the fundamental Cosmic Laws.
At the same time, we know that humans are social/relational beings: we are designed to be in community. According to evolutionary biologists, our survival as a species is because we evolved traits such as language and mirror neurons that enabled us to relate to each other, cooperate and express empathy. That is why we are at the top of the food chain (for now). We form groups; we work together; we co-create.
Everything in our lives is relational. Everything…and every moment. If you are reading this, it is because someone made the parts of the computer or phone you are looking at (and which I typed this piece on); someone built the chair you are sitting on; someone mined the minerals to make the microchips; someone milled the wood that someone cut down; someone drove the truck; someone made the truck; someone flew the plane; someone cooked the food that fed the pilot; someone grew the food that someone cooked to feed the pilot; and you work at a job that does something for someone else, which is how you can afford to buy a phone or computer and subscribe to my Substack, which, in turn, enables me to write and buy a cup of coffee, grown and roasted by someone, made by the local barista, etc. And on and on. We are all interconnected in all kinds of unseen relationships every moment of every day.
The same is true if we look at this through a radical spiritual lens. Without trying to list all the myriad, mind-blowingly impossible factors that make this moment possible, the simple fact that you are alive, reading, and I am alive and writing, and that ANYTHING AT ALL exists, is because something (no-thing), God, Source, Dao, whatever you want to call it, birthed, created, or manifested this whole interconnected happening-that-is-happening all the time.
In other words, Life, by its very definition, is relational. Not only does life depend on other life, but it depends on the source of Life itself and our relationship to it.
Life, by its very definition, is relational. Not only does life depend on other life, but it depends on the source of Life itself and our relationship to it.
Our wisdom traditions were all built on the relationships between us, each other, our world, the planets and stars, and whatever we saw as the Source of Life. Indigenous traditions always saw life as interconnected, reciprocal, and relational; we are one family dependent upon the life-giving Great Spirit. YHWH, the God of the Hebrew Bible, made a relationship contract with the people of Israel and gave them laws about how to be in good relationship with Himself and others. The God of Jesus loved people so much he supposedly gave his son for us and instructed us to love others in the same way. Even the non-dual Buddhist, Daoist and Vedantic traditions acknowledge a deep indivisible, interconnectedness that demands compassion and kind relationships with others.
At the same time, the religions that grew up around these relationships are profoundly communal. In most Indigenous traditions, there is no private prayer, it all happens in community. Jews can’t pray or celebrate unless there is a minyan – 10 people. Christians and Muslims can pray individually but emphasize coming together in community to worship. Daoists, Buddhists, and Hindus may cultivate privately, but gather to celebrate, worship and practice together. One of the great contemporary spiritual teachers, Brother David Steindl-Rast, says, “‘Private Religiousness’ is…a contradiction in terms.”
There is something important that happens when people pray or worship or practice together; they form deep relationships and a community. They share values, beliefs, language, and an orientation. They join to support and help each other. They know each other personally, and they recognize their interdependence with one another and with whatever they call sacred. In many ways and in many religious traditions, the community itself is the sacred. Or at the very least, it’s the reflection of the sacred.
The community itself is the sacred.
Yet, in the West, attendance and participation in these communal spiritual gatherings has dwindled. By and large, we don’t go to church or synagogue. We pray, practice or meditate alone in our homes. Maybe we go to a yoga class once a week. We might nod hello to the other participants, but when we are done, we wipe down our mats, say a perfunctory Namaste and hurry back home. Rarely, do we form genuine community with our fellow practitioners. And, thanks to the Pandemic, we don’t leave our homes at all, but increasingly attend worship services, classes, or retreats virtually. We don’t even really know the names (or even faces) of people we pray or share our practice with. They are just boxes on a screen.
I’m just going to say it clearly: modern spirituality has lost the sense of the relational. It is all about the individual journey, separate and distinct from others and even from the sacred. We are each in our own spiritual bubble, focused on our own self-realization, oblivious to the real purpose of spiritual practice, which is the realization of our Capital “S” Self, or our relationship to the Divine and all Life. We are all walking our own spiritual paths, which is important and necessary, but our paths don’t really intersect. In many ways, we aren’t even on the same mountain.
Now, I am not saying that we all need to believe the same things, do the same practices, pray or worship in the same manner, but our general orientation in modern spirituality is away from the communal, the relational, or the greater good in favor of individual attainment and personal happiness; it’s the spiritual equivalent of the “selfie.” IMHO, it’s part of an increasing, almost pathological emphasis on the individual, and it’s to our detriment.
Our general orientation in modern spirituality is away from the communal, the relational, or the greater good in favor of individual attainment and personal happiness.
In the 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville, a French diplomat, came to America to explore how our democracy worked. In his classic book, Democracy in America, he noted that while formal government structures provided the groundwork for a political democracy, it was the communal aspect of the churches that gave America it’s strength. America, he said, is a country where the dominance of the individual and the personal pursuit of material wealth, pleasure, and power leads to social isolation, economic inequality and injustice, which are only countered by the communal nature of the churches. When people gather with a spiritual purpose, they get stuff done for the good of all. That was the backbone of our society and what saved us from the worst aspects of our “democracy.”
Fast forward to today. We have, as U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy once proclaimed, “a loneliness epidemic” in the U.S. It’s true. Psychologically, we are increasingly more isolated, more depressed, less satisfied. Our wealth gap is galactic, our relationships fractured, and injustice and political division are rampant. What de Tocqueville warned us about is happening.
Simultaneously, there is a huge decline in civic group participation, especially by younger generations. Even in my generation (early Gen-X), few people are involved with their local civic organizations. We rarely see anyone under 40 at any civic meetings.
The older generations that formed our communal support groups grew up before TV, the Internet and Zoom. They had a strong in-person communal ties and activities, whether through family, friends, hobby or mutual aid groups. And, they had communal, relationship-focused spirituality, which helped them endure tough times together and work toward a better future.
Yes, that spirituality was based around religious institutions, but I go back to the purpose of spirituality: to bring us to greater connection with others and the sacred. In other words, relationship. When we know each other personally and have a deep sense of our interconnectedness and mutual interdependence, we work to strengthen those relationships. We go through the hard stuff with each other, we celebrate the joys with one another, and we co-create communities of mutual respect and support. We realize that we cannot do any of this alone; we need others, and we need the sacred at our backs. Most importantly, we act on it.
Our modern spirituality pays lip service to interconnectedness and the sacred. It puts on a good show of relationality, but fundamentally, it’s everyone for themselves. And it’s not really working. We are more isolated than ever. And yet, we want community. It’s the buzz-word. That’s why we have a multitude of chat rooms, Facebook groups and weekend zoom retreats.
But, as we all know, and rarely admit, they are unsatisfactory. We crave real, face-to-face relationships that develop and deepen over time, and that remind us we aren’t alone. Relationship is where we encounter the holy.
We crave real, face-to-face relationships that develop and deepen over time, that help us know we aren’t alone. Relationship is where we encounter the holy.
I am a huge advocate of the personal spiritual path, but I also believe we need ways to gather and share those paths with each other beyond a Zoom room or chat thread. It’s not enough to talk about compassion and kindness in the abstract if we don’t practice with each other. Nor are we really relating to the sacred if it is nothing more than a statue on our home altar. We need to rediscover relational spirituality in which our face-to-face encounters with each other lead us to recognize and act on our interdependence, our interconnectedness, our holiness and that of the Source of Life itself. We need to be in true spiritual relationship, and we need to do it together.
Even Buddhism, the distortion of which I partially blame for the rise of Western individualistic spirituality, says that one’s own enlightenment is not just for oneself, but for the benefit of others. The purpose of our solitary meditation practice is so that we can relate with greater compassion to all of life, not to claim spiritual superiority.
Likewise, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali teach that the path of yoga is one of union or interconnectedness, not just with our own self, but with the Self that is One/All. The purpose of your yoga practice isn’t just greater flexibility or your own peace of mind, but to develop compassion, friendliness and “good relations” with others.
Relationality MUST be central to our modern spirituality. We must remember that the goal of spiritual practice of any kind isn’t just our own “self” improvement or to get what we want from the Divine, but to give us the tools and the capacity to be in better relationship with others, and ultimately, with whatever we call sacred.
Without this sense of the importance and primacy of relationship, our spirituality becomes hollow, materialistic, narcissistic and even more isolating. Without relationality, we are all in exile, on our own in a cold and disconnected Cosmos, which is the exact opposite of what spirituality is for.
We must remember that none of us exists independently. To cultivate your interconnectedness, I invite you to find ways to bring the relational to your spiritual life, whether by participating in communal spiritual practices and relationships or by deepening your relationship to whatever you call sacred.
The truth is that they are interrelated: one leads to the other. Through our relationships with others, we relate to the sacred, and through our connection to the sacred, we learn to relate to others.
This is the real work of your practice; to lead you to greater and greater radical relationship.