When I look at a forest today, I see something different from what I saw many years ago. Back then, there were trees, plants, animals, soil, light and water, each recognisable in its own right and distinct from the others. Now, I notice much more clearly how little of it could truly exist on its own. The tree needs the soil, the soil lives through countless organisms, water connects different areas, insects carry pollen, fungi form underground networks, and dead matter becomes the foundation for new life. I do not need to explain any of this mystically in order to recognise the connection. It is visible, biological, material and completely ordinary. And every time I think about it for longer, I inevitably arrive at us as human beings. We like to see ourselves as separate individuals with our own lives, our own will and our own stories. And we are. At the same time, very little of what we are has truly arisen from ourselves alone.
My own body already reminds me of this. The air I am breathing now was outside me only moments ago. Water, food and countless substances from my surroundings become part of my body and eventually leave it again. Even on this entirely practical level, the boundary between me and the world is less fixed than it feels in everyday life. I am not sealed inside a closed shell, but remain in constant exchange with my surroundings. This changes the way I think about connection. It does not have to begin only where I speak of invisible energies or spiritual relationships. It begins with the breath. I can experience myself as separate and still depend in every moment on something that lies beyond myself.
I feel this connection even more clearly in my encounters with other people. A single sentence can change a day. A small act of kindness can remain with me far longer than the other person ever realises. In the same way, indifference, harshness or a careless remark can trigger something that continues long beyond the original moment. I have often thought about how rarely we truly know what our presence awakens in another person. We may meet someone for only a few minutes and then move on, yet our behaviour can become part of their next decision, their mood or the way they see themselves. In the same way, I carry traces within me from encounters whose significance the other person probably never understood. Connection therefore reveals itself to me not only through closeness or deep relationships. It is also present where our paths touch only briefly.
This brings me to a thought I am taking increasingly seriously: much of what I regard as entirely personal has, in truth, arisen through relationship. My language did not come from me. My values, beliefs, fears, desires and ideas about what a successful life might look like did not emerge in an empty space. Family, culture, experience, the spirit of the times, books, conversations and social expectations all played a part in shaping them. This does not take away my individuality. If anything, it makes it more interesting to me. I am not a finished being who came into existence independently of everything else, but a person who forms something of their own out of countless influences. My decisions then flow back into this web in turn. In this sense, we are both shaped and shaping.
Our modern world makes these connections visible in a particularly strange way. In the morning, I may use an object whose raw materials came from several countries, wear clothes made by people I will never meet, read news from another continent and eat food whose journey to me is almost impossible to trace. What appears naturally on a shop shelf is the result of many hands, decisions, transport routes and natural conditions. Precisely because all of this feels so ordinary, I sometimes forget how dependent my daily life is on people and systems that lie beyond my immediate field of vision. The idea that everything is connected suddenly no longer sounds merely spiritual. It takes on an economic, ecological and human dimension. My life reaches further into the world than I usually notice in an everyday action.
At the same time, I want to be careful with this idea. The phrase “everything is connected” can become very sweeping in spiritual contexts. It can begin to sound as though every event must be linked to every other event, or as though everything that happens to me must carry some hidden message specifically for me. That is not how I experience it. Connection does not mean to me that coincidence is no longer allowed to exist or that every event must somehow be energetically destined for me. Nor do I want to replace real causes with spiritual explanations. Precisely because connection fascinates me, I find it important not to turn it into an answer for everything. There are demonstrable relationships, personal experiences and areas in which I simply do not know what is connected and what is not.
In my exploration of Reiki and energy, I have experienced connection on another level as well. I have found that my perception changes when I do not focus only on what is happening within me, but also on how I experience a room, another person or a situation. Some encounters feel open and light to me, while others create tension or unease. I cannot claim that every such sensation has an objectively measurable energetic cause. Mood, body language, memory and unconscious perception also play a part. Even so, the experience has remained with me that we perceive one another far more subtly than our conscious thoughts often realise. In New Reiki – Back to the Source, this touches on an important idea for me: not to understand connection first as a theory, but as something that can be explored through one’s own perception.
The longer I engage with this, the less connection means to me that we are all the same or that our boundaries should disappear. Quite the opposite. Genuine connection needs difference. A forest does not exist because everything becomes the same. It is precisely because each living being has its own form and function that a larger whole can emerge. Among people too, I do not experience closeness most deeply where we become completely alike, but where difference is allowed to remain without immediately meaning separation. I can be connected with you and still think differently. I can love someone and still have boundaries. I can care without living their life for them. This kind of connection feels more mature to me than the idea that we all have to feel the same in order to belong together.
And then something else changes for me when I truly allow this thought to come close. My actions begin to seem less self-contained. A word does not always end in the moment I speak it. A decision does not always affect only me. Even what I fail to do can have an effect. For me, this does not mean living under constant moral pressure, nor does it mean that I could ever foresee every consequence of my actions. It simply makes me more aware that my life does not end at the surface of my skin. I exist within relationships, cycles, stories and a world that is constantly influencing me while I, in turn, help shape it in some small way. When I sit somewhere quietly in the evening and really allow myself to feel that, it does not seem as though I am losing myself in something larger. It feels more as though, for a moment, I recognise that I was never quite as alone as I sometimes believed.