Reaching out for help can have an insidious side-effect.  Instead of fostering a sense of connection, it can exacerbate the feeling of struggling in isolation.  What is my reality?  What is the reality others place me in when I make the case that I need help?  After seeking emotional support from a friend, who will evidently never leave my side, he related his view of things:

Imagine that we both fell out of a boat and we’re in the ocean… I want to help you, so I go up to you and throw my arms and legs around you… and we both sink…  On the other hand, equally the same happens if you grab on to me.  So here we are, and we’re both swimming and if I’m a better swimmer, even so all I can do is continuously offer encouragement and the occasional hand.  And if things get really exhausting, I might be out of breath and then I can’t even offer that.

I was reminded of a dream I had years ago.

I am floating in the open ocean with a dozen or so people, and we are all struggling to swim and save ourselves.  Suddenly, I have an idea.  If I simply let myself sink all the way down, I can push off from the bottom.

I tap the shoulder of the person next to me.  “Hey, watch me!” I said.  I sink, and she sinks with me.  When we reach the bottom, we push off with our feet and shoot back up to the surface.

When I was submerged, I could still breath, a cue that I am dreaming.  The ocean is suddenly imbued with light, and we all laugh and play in the water.

Drifting in a sea of troubles, I have been in a panic, throwing my arms around anyone nearby, and most every time, I get the same response.  I am too heavy.  There is not enough time.  Every man for himself.  In fact, I have received that response so many times, it’s almost comical… always a good sign that the universe has something to tell me.

I am reinforcing the collective reality that we are all struggling to survive when I should be seeing through it.

But left to struggle in the water on my own, a new nightmare takes over.  I am quick to see separation and isolation.  I have nightmares of being in solitary confinement or being banished to a cold wasteland (not unlike rural Wisconsin, bleh).  Instead of surrendering to the water and discovering that the whole scene is in my head, I fight the water and feel ostracized.

You know those disaster movies where people are about to die?  Like, a giant tsunami is about to crash into the city?  I used to think I would be the cool-headed scientist working to come up with a survival plan.  I now know that I would be the character who is running down the street screaming, completely freaking out, driving everyone else crazy.  Sigh.

Feeling isolated stands in stark contrast with perceptions of oneness that have graced my consciousness over the years.  There are moments, especially during meditation, when the sameness of every being is evident, and it becomes clear that the perception of being a separate mind is a fabrication.  My awareness expands beyond this collection of cells and engulfs a greater space, and at it’s center, I feel everyone and everything.  The core of awareness or sentience that lies at your center is identical to the core of awareness that lies at my center.  Across dimensions of time and space, we share the same awareness.

Here is the biggest irony.  I make an effort to sustain this as an understanding.  Separation is not how things really are.  Then, when I get the sense that someone else sees me as separate from them, I not only feel frustrated, I feel grief.  I feel disconnected and cut off.

I’m reminded of a comment made by an attendee at a scientific meeting on self-identification: “Outside of my own social group, people really have an ‘us vs. them’ attitude.”  Only one person laughed, my devoted Buddhist compadre.  I like to think of the comment as a Buddhist IQ test, scorable on a laughometer.  Another good one: In our church, we understand that “we are the world.”

Whether or not I am in someone’s sphere of awareness, whether or not I have a place in their reality, doesn’t actually matter.  What matters is whether I go along with it.

Perhaps one way to heal the illusion or dream of separation is to avoid buying into it when someone sees me as separate from them.  That is their reality.  I need not make it mine.  With that thought, a deep heartache eases.

As I write this, I think that I’ve been projecting, seeing rejection where there is none, feeling cut off when I really wasn’t.  If separation is an illusion, everything else is just an arrangement.

My six year old does not want to sleep in his own bed.  He said, “I don’t want to be alone.”  I told him, “You’re not really alone.”  He argued, “When you don’t have people around you, that means you’re alone.”  Of course, there’s more to it than that, and yet it’s the simple-minded logic that’s been driving my recent bouts of panic and grief.

I offered him some ideas for good dreams.  You can breath under water!