Finding Meaning in Interconnectedness

Sunday, August 5th, 2012

As I grow older, it becomes clearer to me that as human beings we have an inherent need to make meaning in our lives. Based upon my experience as a psychologist and a Jungian analyst in private practice, working with people are in the process of deep soul-searching, finding meaning is the single most important reason for living. Meaning comes through connecting with something that is bigger than us that we experience through our engagements in our inner and outer worlds. It comes about through play, expressing our creativity, and exploring spirituality. We often sense deeper meaning through being in nature or sitting quietly in meditation. Meaning is also found in altruism, by “giving something back.”

In the West, we often attempt to make meaning by engaging with new ideas, establishing important goals, developing our personal and professional identities, and through formulating our own individual belief systems. Depending upon a proclivity towards introversion or extroversion, our attention either is focused on activities out in the world or on centering and reflecting internally. Our understanding of connection is determined by our own personal nature and the life events that come our way — and the way we understand these experiences using our minds.

Making meaning also occurs through being in relationship with family, friends, animals, communities. In the case of Q’ero shamans, making meaning happens through experiencing the connection with mountains, in a state of connection, using their hearts.

My own personal quest for meaning led me down the path of becoming a stockbroker, then an artist, psychologist, and Jungian analyst using my mind. Finally, my search for meaning led me to the jungles and mountaintops of Peru, to work with indigenous shamans in the Andes Mountains. In Peru I learned to use my heart to make meaning. Shamanism is a way of the heart – and through heart connection, one finds meaning.

According to Inca cosmology, meaning is made by being in ayni (right relationship), or munay (unconditional, universal love) with the collective. In shamanism, the definition of “collective” is much broader than how it is generally understood in modern Western culture. Besides referring to “mass culture” and society, the term collective refers to the energetic relationship that exists among all living things. Shamans experience the collective through their hearts and in their bellies using a “felt sense,” instead of their thinking function.

For shamans, this includes Pachamama (Mother Earth), plants, animals, and humans living in the physical realm, as well as the Apus (the great collective mountain spirits) and Santa Tierras (feminine spirits residing in the earth). As this blog continues, I will say more about these interconnections and the shamans who work within them.

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