Healing Metaphysics Home > Archive> Disconnectedness and Health

Article by Michael Finn
Copyright Michael Finn

Disconnectedness is certainly not "detachment" nor "indifference" but rather, a sense of alienation, one of many states, which, if enduring, become the very groundswell of chronic poor health.

This state vacuums in and deadens the innate human spirit, which will not harmoniously thrive, if deprived of the nourishment of essential relationship.

'.........as Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell and other observers of the social and anthropological scene have suggested, our culture has lost the mythic road map which helps locate a person in a larger context. Without a tribal vision of the gods, and their spiritual network, modern individuals are cut adrift to wander without guidance, without models and without assistance through the various life stages. Thus, the Middle Passage, which calls for death before rebirth, is often experienced in frightening and isolating ways, for there are no rites of passage and little help from one’s peers who are equally adrift........

.........What the rites of initiation hoped to achieve was separation from the parents, transmission of the sacred history of the tribe to provide spiritual grounding, and preparation for the responsibilities of adulthood. In our own culture there are no meaningful rites of passage into adulthood and thus many youth prolong their dependency. Our culture has become so heterogeneous, and has lost its mythic moorings in any case, that we can only transmit twentieth-century beliefs in materialism, hedonism and narcissism – with some computer skills thrown in. None of this provides salvation, connection to the earth and its great rhythms, meaning or depth to one’s journey."

(The Middle Passage, James Hollis, Inner City Books, 1993) www.innercitybooks.net

Do you ever get the disturbing feeling or sense that you take your body to work and leave your spirit, e.g., interest, enthusiasm, creative urges, passion, etc., at home? This is one instance of a disconnected experience of oneself. Missing is the verve, the unpredictable and the numinous.

Alienation is a state of disconnection, fuelled by underlying deep-seated belief systems, some of which limit or restrict spontaneous, everyday interactions, reactions and personal expressions, including the ease or ability to share deeply, congruently and authentically of oneself.

Seems the more alienation pervades one’s demeanour, and the lesser connected one feels to everyday phenomena, other types of compensatory marriage are born - religious affiliations, sporting gods and an obsequious penchant for wealth, amongst others.

What frequently evolves is the adoption of a god, saviour, redemptive promise, or vision of salvation, which exists outside of normal life and time; i.e., at some other time and place. The sacredness of life is tripped over constantly, a holier grail always the preference. Many folk dedicate their lives to the lure of greener pastures.

I find it paradoxical that masses tend to personalize their gods, deities, spiritual figures and objects of worship whilst continuing to lead lives which accentuate and perservate the impersonal, the disconnected. So do people receive spiritual succour at the expense of interpersonal alienation?

In this sense, the projection onto 'other powers’ and one’s inability to become truly personal, polarize one another.............

The upshot then is a deep and abiding 'inner-spirit’ disenfranchisement which cannot celebrate or witness the richness of our actual underlying connections with the animate and inanimate world, precluding intimacy on so many levels, in our lives.

Don’t think for a moment, that one can disregard, disidentify with, or disavow, her or his essential spirit (with all that involves), and expect to maintain really high-end wellbeing.

A fragmented organism is constantly in a state of disorder. A troubled spirit will not anchor a body, as it navigates the many minefields of daily living.

Our immune responses, which are acutely influenced by state of mind, the wiring of the nervous system and overall contentedness are predicated on the entire system working in harmony (homeostasis).

The organism we call the 'human being’, becomes preoccupied with efforts to manage on-going health crises, low energy reserves, the devastation wreaked by stress, and the tremors of the ageing process. One is rarely able to venture out from behind the eight ball and take proactive measures to achieve higher vitality.

Contentedness and happiness are states which an absolute majority of people profess an ardent desire for and, accordingly, design their lives around.

The acid test of the authenticity of this search is to ask,

'If you are today or have already been, the happiest you will ever be, is that okay?

Most people answer with a resounding, 'No!’

What I deduce from this, is that ultimate happiness is a holy grail which is ever and always put off to another time, and for some, another life, presumably, the next.

As such, people are never really, nor are they going to be, happy.

An inability to actually live, actively, presently in the moment, results in one’s missing all the energy and life therein.

The truth about life, is that we only really ever have this moment.

Healing Metaphysics Home > Archive> Disconnectedness and Health