In any form of communication there is the potential of four levels of connection: physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. These four are related to the four components of man: body, heart, mind and spirit. The connection between two people can be seen in the following diagram:
Spirit
|
Mind
|
Heart
|
Body
**
**
Body
|
Heart
|
Mind
|
Spirit
The first level of connection between any two parties is the physical. We see, hear, smell or touch the other person. The connection then deepens to heart, mind and finally spirit. When there is a roadblock at any level, it hinders deeper communication from occurring. For example, if one has an emotional roadblock, two parties cannot connect at the emotional, mental or spiritual level. If one has a mental roadblock, one cannot connect at the mental or spiritual level, and so on. The deepest connection between two people is the spiritual connection.
At each level there are common roadblocks that occur. I will refer to them as curtains. When two parties drop all their curtains a spirit-to-spirit connection occurs. So, what are those roadblocks and how do we drop them?
At the physical level the biggest curtain is an overemphasis on the physical. Ever hear a woman tell a man, “Look at my eyes!” The man has become too engrossed at the physical level and he is not connecting at a deeper level. Ever see a speaker become so nervous they just read from their notes? They have become so focused on all the physical symptoms of stage fright that they have broken off their physical connection with the audience. When a speaker doesn’t look at their audience, they quickly lose them.
At the emotional level the biggest curtain is fear. Fear overwhelms its victim. Ever seen someone go through a period of depression. Depression is what’s left of a person after they’ve been beat down by fear. If you’ve ever known someone severely depressed, they come across as a zombie. You don’t connect to them at a heart-to-heart, because fear has trampled their heart. Ever see a public speaker who is afraid? What happens is their emotions come through in muted tones. As opposed to their emotions being color, they are now black and white.
At the mental level the biggest curtain is the ego. The ego could simply be defined as our mental focus on ourselves. I have seen and experienced two opposite, but equally detrimental, manifestations of the ego. One is self-defeating thoughts. I think of this as my inner heckler. The other is self-protecting thoughts, which sometimes manifests itself as my inner perfectionist. In order to protect one’s image one strives to be perfect. In a speaking situation, what happens is one’s thoughts turn inward. They spend a great deal of focus reading the perfect little script in their head, but they never make a deep connection with their audience. In relationships, it is better to be imperfect but connected.
At the spiritual level the biggest curtain is a lack of love. When you truly love someone, it becomes far easier to make a spiritual connection. The amazing thing about love is that it works from the inside out to make all the other connections easier. Love causes us to forget about ourselves. All of a sudden ego is pushed to the side. Love conquers fear. Love means we don’t just want a physical connection, so we look someone in the eyes to find something deeper.
Our education system conditions us to focus on content when we communicate. The focus is placed on making a mind-to-mind connection, but the other components are overlooked. This is one reason why our education system is such an abysmal failure. We can’t connect to the mind unless we first make that physical and emotional connection. But, our society has become so hedonistic that we view physical and emotional connections in terms of sex. For fear some pervert may do something wrong, we have put in place all kinds of safeguards that stop us from treating another person like a person. There will always be perverts and they should be punished, but we have allowed fear of misdeeds to stop us from experiencing normal, healthy physical and emotional connections with others. It’s no wonder our kids can’t do math. They’re starved for human contact!
So, when you communicate with another person look them in the eyes, cast away fears, push your ego to the side and love them. However, don’t just do these things externally. Learn to love people from the inside-out and the curtains will begin to drop.
