Disconnection and Connection

On love, of course.

Image: January 2026, in the middle of the ice, Cootes Paradise, Hamilton. By me.

This story does not begin with love. It begins with an inability to connect.

To the internet, that is.

In the wee sma’ hours when I got up to meditate, after my meditation today I confidently reached for my computer, tried to load substack and… no internet.

Tried. And again. Restarted computer. Tried phone. Tried to re-set the router.

All to no avail.

Right, I said to myself. I can begin this article offline as a Google doc and paste it in later, when I have a connection.

So my story of love begins without a connection.

If I were to go further back in the story, there was a connection, of course.

You could look at it as a personal story of one human, in the womb, connected by an umbilical cord to my mother. Safe. Serene.

Or go back further, to the Beginning when there was only Presence, but no matter, and then… so much matter, and Presence was there with it all.

Wherever I look, then, the story begins originally with connection.

But the felt story begins in disconnection.

The old story of a Garden, and two people ashamed and hiding, and, “Where are you?”

A baby born into a world that feels too bright, too cold, too harsh, no longer in the protecting shelter of the womb. The umbilical cord is severed, and she takes her first breaths, and cries.

I cry. I am alone.

But then there are arms to hold me and I begin a journey that continues to this moment. Feeling connection, secure in it, safe. Feeling disconnection, loss, seeking, where is mother, where is love?

Where is the internet?

(I look up hopefully but the red light of disconnection continues to flash balefully.

Back to my story.)

Disconnection

Every story of love begins, from the perspective of the separate self, in a felt sense of disconnection. Once, there was Juliet asking mournfully and painfully why her Romeo was who he was, because his identity meant to her that they could never enjoy a life together.

Before I fell in love with my now-husband, I felt alone, not seen, not heard.

The human story starts with expulsion from the Garden and an angel with a flaming sword standing grimly between the humans and the place they were so beautifully connected to each other, creation, and the Creator.

The red light continues to flash.

Disconnected. Disconnected. Disconnected.

Seeking The Way Back

The story continues with our hero, our heroes, trying to find a way back to that blissful sense of connection and unity.

The funny thing is that each attempt seems to end in tears, whichever story thread you follow.

Presence Being With humans in the Christ, as a human, suffocating to death on an instrument of torture, crying out the pain of felt separation.

“Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?”

Humans having left the Garden seeking to build a life, build a Tower, build an ark, build an empire. The Tower is destroyed, the ark floats alone on vast waters until it comes to rest on a remote mountain, and every empire comes to a violent end.

The little girl loses her mom, finds her again, loses her, finds her, and, no longer a little girl, is slowly losing her mom to the dementia that just. Keeps. Coming.

But the story does not end with disconnection, right? Every myth tells us that perseverance through every setback and loss will eventually lead to what our aching hearts long for the most.

(Disconnected. Disconnected. Disconnected.)

The suffering the world is going through right now will end in peace.

My personal story will end with my return to connection to Source.

So the hungry mind and heart continues to seek connection. Finding a like-minded person to partner with. Traveling a spiritual path of oneness not division. Reveling in deep, heartfelt connections with dear friends.

Each one a living hope of resting in Love.

Valentine’s Day

Quite apart from all the commercialisation, the hype, the flowers and chocolates and cards and and and, isn’t today, February 14, ultimately about our longing for connection?

Do we not want to believe in a love that will remain for us?

The ‘reality’, the felt reality anyway, for countless humans, is very different.

Valentine’s Day so often is a break up day, or a day that holds painful memories of deeper losses.

Perhaps it is not an accident that this day which is supposed to be a day of love, joy, and fulfillment often turns out to be a day of heartbreak, grief, and desolation.

When you want so badly for life to be different, for love to be true, the ordinary contractions of human existence can feel unbearable on a day with far too heavy burdens of expectations upon it.

Image: Tobago house, August 2022. By me.

Love. Presence.

The nondual path reminds me over and over again that this felt separation is the lie.

I have thought, time and time again, I have feared, that my dream of Love must be the fantasy, as I have felt so very alone.

But as I think on it at this moment, the blinking red of disconnection continuing to flash, the ground holds steady and comforting beneath my feet. The chair holds me up and does not let me fall. I breathe in a breath, then another, and on and on, and the air is sweet. The insect sounds of the early morning dark wrap me around in their comforting chorus. The water bottle is a friendly quiet presence at my side whenever I need a drink.

Every sense brings back messages, reminders that no matter how much I may feel disconnected or fear I am not loved at times, Love never stops holding me for one tiny fraction of a section.

The tropical rain begins at this point, a further reminder of the generosity of Life, pouring down on everything, filling it to the brim with what it needs.

Presence doesn’t depend on the appearances of disconnection, the tragedies and losses humans experience, the terror of being alone in a vast and hostile universe.

Presence continues without the smallest instance of non-presence.

Waiting in infinite patience for the human to realise how fully she is loved, and held, and known, and that there is not, has not been, and never will be a time when Presence is not there.

If you have read this far, first, thank you for persevering through the twists and turns of my musings today.

I have no idea what your felt experience is today. Are you feeling enwrapped in love? Achingly alone? Numb? Overwhelmed by everything that feels wrong in the world?

Wherever you are today in your heart and mind, I hope that today and every day you may have more than a glimmer of how much you are not alone.