Peace: Connecting to self, connecting to others

Before you read this post, take a second and check out this mind-boggling visual reminder of the immensity of the universe (thanks to Kirk Rogers).

Got that? If you're like me, after you pick up your jaw off the floor, you experience a fleeting feeling of hopelessness that sounds something like this: What's the point? What's the point of the hurts and achievements that I find so important? What's the point of anything I do when in this immense universe I am so small?

With that much perspective, the stuff we sweat the most and assign so much meaning to -- our late bills, our irritations, our cherished things and our longings -- don't seem so meaningful, do they? I'm beginning to believe that the real possibility for us to create meaning -- the one thing of value we might actually leave behind -- is the connections we make with others.

To get there, you've gotta go in first. My first taste of how making connection with myself can lead to better connections with everyone else was when I began working with Marshall Rosenberg's Non-Violent Communications, using it in work with my coaching clients and in my own life. Rosenberg is the Jeffrey Sachs of peace; he's been working around the world for 40 years, painstakingly helping everyone from married couples to warring tribes and governments make true progress away from conflict and toward peace. He teaches a radical approach that jolts people out of their accusatory, inflammatory ruts and gets them speaking openly and listening. Read more about him here. He's not just preaching about world peace; he's showing us how it's done. Check out his book, Speak Peace In a World of Conflict.

If you could use a little more peace in some of your relationships, but are still using the insanity approach (having the same conversation over and over and expecting a different result), take a look at the Center for Non-Violent Communications site and cruise the needs and feelings lists; shop around for your current favorites right now. I promise you it's worth your time. And if you'd like to hear what Marshall says about real possibilities for peace, check out this video. I see those deep lines on his face are proof of his credibility; he's someone who's seen big suffering and still demonstrates peaceful ways to relate to each other.

So let's get back to those planets and suns. My personal experience is that I am less likely to feel my existence is pointless when I am connected: to myself, being really aware of what I'm feeling, what I need, what I aspire to, and when I'm connected to others, hearing and understanding their needs and feelings. The tricky part is that it's more difficult for me to connect with others when I'm not connected to myself. I can be in a conversation and look like I'm there, but it's really more like parallel play; I'm still stuck in my own unconsciousness and not truly meeting the other person in the moment. That's not connection.

This is why meditators and spiritual leaders around the world so heartily recommend meditation, prayer, contemplation, solitude and quiet in our lives. They afford us opportunities to step out of the human-doing-achieving aspect of our lives and check in and see what's going on in that mind/body/spirit confluence we name "me." This connection to ourselves opens many opportunities to better relationship with others; this quiet step for each of us toward self-awareness could actually lead to more of those moments of "we" instead of "me" and "other," more possibilities for the global, peaceful "us" we were talking about in "World Peace: Changing the Conversation to Connection" and in Liz's new column.

If I had to answer the question, "What's the point?", I'd say the point is meaningful connection, and the evolutionary possibilities for peace that our deepening, increasing sense of interconnectedness can bring.