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Happy Hour: The Joy of Interconnection

Introduction

You're very international today! It's lovely, which is perfect for the theme, because the theme I like to explore tonight in our guided meditation and in our time together is the joy of interconnection. It's the joy of interconnection, and just seeing all of you and hearing the various places you are calling in from—oh, and here's Lisa from Bali, this is great, this is awesome!

I don't see everyone, by the way. Just so that you know, because this is also streamed live on YouTube, for privacy reasons, I only have my image spotlighted. I can't get into gallery view, so I can only see a strip of a few people. I have to keep going back and forth to see you. Also, if you raise your hand, that's why I might miss you, which is why I just asked you to... oh those damn—it's great! [Laughter] Also from Bali, that's fantastic! This is very sweet, it makes me happy.

The theme, as I was saying, is the joy of interconnection. Here we are sitting together in the Zoom room from different places in the world, different time zones, northern and southern hemispheres covered today. For the sense of interconnection, here we are all human beings in this body and this DNA that we share 99.9%, doing our best, living our lives, all with our wishes to be happy and healthy and well. Say we have loved ones who we care about, people who care about us. We're not so different, a sense of interconnection.

I do invite you actually right now—actually wait, I need to turn on recording, hold on. Don't forget this needs to go on AudioDharma. Here we go. Okay, that's done.

The sense of interconnection that arises from being with others, either actually being with others or interacting with people on Zoom, which is what we're doing here, spending time with others. I was in the middle of inviting you to actually get into the gallery view so that you can see other people who are joining you tonight, empowering all of us sitting together, practicing together, and how lovely that is.

The theme for tonight is the joy of interconnection, the joy of feeling interconnected. There are so many different themes, that instead of just talking about it too much, I will guide us through. There are different aspects of this meditation we'll discover together as we go along. There are parts that might work for you, there are parts that may not, so open to it with a sense of curiosity and experimentation, as if you're the scientist of your own mind, exploring, experimenting, and being curious about this mind that happens to be yours.

Without further ado, let's start our practice together. I will do some housekeeping as I always do. During the guided meditation, you won't be able to unmute yourselves, and all of the chats will go just to me, so that if we get Zoom-bombed there is some safety in the container, people can't just come and scream and yell. That's the purpose of that, just to explain it.

With that, I'd like to invite you to get comfortable. The guided meditation will last about 30 minutes. That's the goal, so that you know what to expect.

Guided Meditation

Landing in your seat, landing in your body, first and foremost. Arriving. Arriving in this moment. Arriving again and again. Each moment a new arrival. Let each moment be a new arrival, starting anew, starting afresh. Even if the last moment the mind was wandering, no problem, no worries. Each moment anew, connecting. Connecting with a sense of presence, with awareness. The sense of intimacy, intimacy of this moment of being alive. This moment that has never been in this way, and will never be. Born of causes and conditions, connecting with the uniqueness of this moment. Relaxing into the welcoming, as if this unique moment is welcoming you. "Hello, dear Lauren. Hi, welcome. Inhabit me fully. I am your life." Relax. Breathe.

Feast. That's the moment arising and passing. Delicate, sweet, light, like morning dew. Connecting, allowing yourself to connect with the breath. With the in-breath and the out-breath. Each in-breath a little more connection, awareness, intimacy with here, with now. With each in-breath, this immediacy feels like vibration, aliveness moving through your veins, moving through the breath of your body. And with each out-breath, relaxing, softening, letting go, letting yourself, letting this body drop in, land, land onto itself internally, a deep landing.

Softening, relaxing your face, your forehead. Your eyes, let them rest in their sockets. Let them drop. Letting your jaw relax, in fact, opening the jaw for a moment and letting it move into a comfortable position, whatever that might be. Letting your cheeks, your chin be soft, drawn down, way down, pulled down, embraced by gravity. You don't have to wear a mask right now.

Softening your neck and shoulders. Dropping, let them drop. Letting your chest, your upper back, your lower back, and your abdomen internally relax. Sometimes we hold too much tension in the abdomen. No need. Letting your sit bones soften, melt into your chair or cushion. Softening the groin area, relaxing. If there's any tension in your legs, upper legs, your knees, lower legs, and feet. Letting your hands be heavy, relaxed. They do so much throughout the day. In this moment, appreciation, inviting them to soften, connected to your wrists, elbows, upper arms. Again, shoulders and neck. The next out-breath, allowing the entire body to soften and relax.

It's really so important, this relaxation, softening. The act of meditation is a non-doing, doing the non-doing. Let the body be soft, receiving the breath. Notice I'm not telling you to breathe because you are not breathing. The breath breathes you. The body breathes itself. Let the breath be breathed, giving up any attempt to control the breath. Intentionally breathe? No need. Let nature be nature, simply being aware that breathing is happening. In-breath is happening, out-breath is happening.

I'll take a few minutes here just to till the soil of awareness. Receiving each breath in the relaxed, soft body, calming, soothing, one breath at a time. Allowing yourself to enjoy, detect delight in being breathed in this moment, the simplicity of it. Your moment of refuge, a moment of connecting with yourself in this moment.

For awareness to turn around, instead of being outward-oriented, turn inward. As if your gaze is turned inward, respectfully appreciating, connecting with the body and the breath. Nothing to want, nothing to do, nothing to be. Just simply gaze inward and hold witness to this moment's internal experience.

I'd like to invite you now, if you wish, to open your awareness to connect to the sense of appreciation that perhaps might arise with a sense of connecting with yourself. This gaze turned inward. I'm just simply sitting and being breathed. The simplicity of it, just a delight of it. Just simply this being that is you, connecting with herself, himself, themselves. Just a sense of connection, time for this being whom you're entrusted to take care of. It's a connection. "Hi, dear. Hello." Away from all the doings and beings in the world, all your responsibilities and all the ways you are and you give and you care for others. Our moment is turning inward for a moment, as an expression of your care for this being that is you. Just connecting, honoring, seeing. "I see you."

Just checking in what is arising. Gently, I'm going to invite you to experiment with putting your hand on your heart center, the center of your chest, to really physically make a physical connection. Your heart center is the center of your chest, not your heart, which is on the left side for most people. The heart center is a sense of connecting with yourself.

If you're holding yourself, this dear being, just checking in as if you were checking on someone you cared about. Maybe a young person you cared about. "Hi, sweetie, how are you? What's going on? What's happening in this moment? Tell me, tell me everything." And letting yourself share. Connecting. Maybe there is fatigue right now. Maybe you're tired from a long week. Or maybe you're excited as a new day is starting. Whatever is arising, connecting, meeting yourself at your own door with care, with appreciation. As if you were a baby and you were holding yourself, connecting, really gazing into the eyes of this wide-eyed baby looking at the world the way babies do, with curiosity and awe. Gazing at yourself with the same tenderness for a fragile baby, their skull still soft, holding them tenderly. Gazing at yourself, connecting with yourself, noticing if there is a sense of joy, beauty, delight that arises, a spark that arises in your heart from connecting with yourself. A sense of connection, a meeting eye to eye.

Allowing yourself, inviting your gaze to be turned inward. Maybe with peace, perhaps maybe joy and peace arise together. That's just beautiful^[1]. Maybe a millisecond of connection, however short or brief it is experienced. And if not, that's okay too, giving it its own time. It's all good.

Now I'd like to invite you to consider maybe today, perhaps, or yesterday, or in the past few days, a connection you had with one person. Or maybe with one being; it could also be a pet. A connection you had with a being. Maybe you talked with them on the phone, maybe in person, maybe on Zoom or some other video chat platform. Just remembering you had a moment of connection where you smiled, or they smiled. There was a sense of being connected to this person. It could be a friend, could be a colleague, could have been work-related. There's a sense of connection, communicating, connecting with another human being. A sense of delight. Tapping into, opening up to the sense of delight in connection, simple connection.

Connection doesn't have to be that special. You might have even called some company and talked to an operator, but you talked to another human being and connected in time. The invitation is to get a felt sense of the joy, the delight in the connection with another being. And now bowing to that being, and then inviting another being in. Some interaction with them, the joy of giving and receiving in the connection. You both gave and you received the delight. In some ways, just these interactions, these brief interactions, are ways that we express and receive Mettā^[2]: goodwill, friendliness, warmth, care, love.

And now bowing to that being, and inviting another being, another connection you had in the past few days, past week maybe. Just the connection, maybe it was a heart connection, maybe it wasn't, doesn't matter. A sense of connection, giving and receiving, supporting and being supported, and just the connection to joy, the delight, the beauty, the grace.

Now, in your own time, I suggest you try bringing another couple of connections you've had to your mind's eye in this moment. Feeling the connection in your heart, perhaps giving and receiving a sense of Mettā, maybe both for yourself—the gladness, the joy—and for this being you've been connected to. Again, you're invited to experiment with connecting by holding your heart center, making contact maybe even with your fingertips. If there's a sense of physicality, it brings something else up, a felt sense of the connection. Be curious scientists, try it out, what do you have to lose?

Now bringing and inviting all these beings you've had these connections with, as if you're inviting them into a circle with you. Feeling in this small circle, or large circle, a sense of connection. These beings you're interconnected with, this invisible golden thread that connects you to other beings. Your life is intertwined with so many other lives. The joy of this interconnection, which we often take for granted. And if you like, you can expand the circle, expand it wide, to acknowledge so many beings in your life, past and present, so many interconnections. Wow.

So many folks who have supported you without you even knowing. You don't even know them—the farmers, the ways you've supported other people, affected and impacted them without them ever knowing. There's a wave of interconnection. The joy, the delight of interconnection. Putting the emphasis there on the joy of the interconnection, not the overwhelming nature of it. You don't have to try to recount all of them, which is the joy^[3] of "Wow, this is amazing." Interconnected with so many people, either actively seeing them, having seen them, speaking with them, connecting with them. You're not alone. And whoever you are, however you identify in this world, so many unseen interconnections you have with folks who share your heart's calling, your heart's interest.

For the last moment of this practice period, allow yourself to feel bathed, feeling like you are swimming in all these interconnections, the streams slowly coming together, connected. All these bodies of water flowing, floating. And let yourself feel whatever joy of interconnection is most apparent to you—either with one person, a few people, a whole community, the world at large, planet Earth.

Now, unusually so, I'm going to ask you to open your eyes into gallery view and take a look. See all the folks in this Zoom room who are practicing with you, a sense of interconnection. In fact, I'm going to ask you to choose one person you don't know at all and pin their video. Pin their video if you can, or just choose them if you can't pin their video. And for a moment, wish them well. Wish this being well, a human being just like you somewhere in the world, practicing, seeing, feeling in this moment a sense of interconnection you have with this human being. It's an exchange. They don't know you're wishing them well, which is the beauty of it, because somebody's probably wishing you well in this moment. You are their Mettā object. The joy of interconnection. Here we are, supporting each other in this miraculous, mysterious way. And bowing to that person, going back to gallery view, a sense of interconnection with all.

Reflections

Hi, welcome back. I'm going to allow you to unmute yourself if you wish at this time. I'd like to ask folks if you'd like to share a reflection about something that's coming up for you right now. Taking a moment to take stock, becoming aware of what is arising, is a wonderful way to make more of an imprint on your awareness of what's arising right now. There's no right or wrong, and you can share it in chat, I'll read them out loud, or you can unmute yourself and say a word or not. It's all good.

What's coming up for me is a sense of joy, a sense of delight with the interconnection of all of you and folks who actually also will be listening on AudioDharma later. I feel a sense of connection with them too, but just a sense of joy is arising for me of all of us co-creating this space together. I wouldn't be here if you weren't. So the sense of gratitude, joy, that's what's coming up for me. If you'd like to share, please do, what's coming up for you, or what has come up for you in this practice.

Ali: Yeah, probably my favorite meditation of yours ever, Nikki. Feeling so much love, a sense of self, and all of us being interconnected.

Nikki: Oh, that's lovely! Thank you, Ali, oh, that makes me very happy. Your favorite meditation ever, yay! And if you feel moved to share in chat or just unmute yourself. I may not see all of your hands being raised, so as I always say, just a few people here and there. Any other reflections? No right or wrong.

Hilda offers: "I really enjoy looking into my infant self's eyes." Oh, that's lovely. Thank you, Hilda, I forgot that I love that too, that was fun.

Susan: "To those who have heard and those who will have heard." Wow, yeah, thank you.

Megan: "Lightness, faith." Thank you, Megan.

Kim: "Circles of interconnection." Lovely. I so appreciate all these offerings coming into the space. It seeds more reflections and more reverberation for everyone in this room as well.

Lorenzo offers: "Beautiful meditation on YouTube." Thank you, Lorenzo. Thank you for joining on YouTube, this is great.

Marie: Yeah, last night I was putting my kids to bed and we said thanks to the boys' stuffed toys. I never said thanks to them before in a deliberate way. It was very touching.

Nikki: Thank you. Oh, that is so sweet. I love it, I love it. Thanks for sharing that. I love it, beautiful. Beautiful modeling for your boys, how sweet.

Nel offers: "Communities can exist anywhere if we explore imaginatively." Indeed. Yeah, indeed. Also gratitude to the Zoom platform. Yeah, I agree. Here we are, a community here, we're so international today also, it's just lovely, makes me so happy.

Breakout Groups

So this is the time we transition into a few moments of interactive practice, especially with the theme of interconnection. See what it feels like to be in a small breakout group with just another one or two people and hold them with curiosity about what might arise. Whatever you say is the right thing, whatever they say is the right thing. It is an expression of Mettā. So it's the practice of Mettā in real time. It's taking it off the cushion into daily life. It's where the tire meets the road. Well, actually, it's a sandbox, it's not really the road, but it's the gravel path.

Here's the invitation: the joy of interconnections. You can feel the joy of interconnection as you hold others, as you listen to them, and as they listen to you. There's a sense of joy in the co-creation in this, even on the Zoom platform with people you don't even know. So relish that, see what that feels like. It is short, it's just for six minutes, but it can be quite profound what you can be left with, the possibilities. As Nel beautifully said, communities can exist anywhere. And if you decide tonight or this morning is not the right time for you, it's perfectly fine, you can bow out and nobody's offended. It's all good. Whatever is appropriate for you is okay. I'm going to make the breakout rooms, they are going to be random, here we go.

[Breakout rooms close]

Welcome back, everyone. We have a few minutes for reflections, for questions, comments, complaints. Everything is welcome, take it away. Feel free to unmute yourself. How was your practice, either the first part or the second part of the practice?

Birgit^[4]: Hi, this is Birgit from California, and I just—this is my first time practicing with you, and it was so soothing and so warm. Nice to see you all from all over the world, so thank you very much.

Nikki: Mmm, lovely. Thank you, Birgit. Welcome, so glad you joined us tonight. Come again, absolutely. Thank you, lovely.

Ali: Yeah, this is Ali. I loved so much about the way you led us tonight, and one of the things I think that helped really ground me is the exercise of just choosing someone and really looking in their eyes. And yeah, there's something so vulnerable about that, and just this realization that we're all the same. We all have fear, we all want to be loved, and yeah, it just really made me feel so connected to you all. So thank you for facilitating that, beautiful.

Nikki: Thank you for sharing that, Ali, and the profound way that you put it in words, of pinning someone and looking into their eyes and realizing, "Wow, we all just want to be loved and safe and happy," and something can break, some realization, some appreciation of our common humanity, that others are just like us and we are just like them. We're not any different. Thank you for putting that into words so eloquently, bringing that into this space. Thank you. Other reflections please, we have another couple of minutes.

Maura: Yeah, please. I just wanted to express my gratitude to the Sangha^[5], to community. I was saying in the breakout room that I've been practicing for many years by myself, and I feel like I practice with the IMC^[6], like I feel like I'm part of this Sangha, but you know, as I said, it was an unrequited, long-distance relationship. There's no other conversation, just listening. But it's been beautiful, and I think when this pandemic happened and all the crisis and all the stress and everything, this community has really been a refuge for me. So I just wanted to say thank you for that, and thank you for this moment. Thank you.

Nikki: Thank you, Maura. Thank you so much for speaking up and talking about how the love so far was kind of one-directional or an unrequited relationship, and now thanks to the pandemic, you are a part of this community. At IMC, we've always appreciated that we have an international following and an international community that we really think about and cater to. And the pandemic has really made us realize, wow, how true that is, and how amazing it is through the Zoom platform to be able to actually feel being part of the community and practicing with other people. It just makes me so happy. I mean, there are so many things to be challenged about regarding the pandemic, but this is a source of joy. So let's celebrate this source of joy. Here you are, here we all are practicing together. I'm happy. I'm just yeah, I'm happy. I've been peaceful^[7] the whole day. This feels like a highlight of connecting with everyone, to see your smiles. This makes me so happy. Thank you.

And it's time for us to bring yet another Happy Hour session to a close, and I feel happier, I have to say! Thank you all, really, for joining and practicing, both for your own benefit and for the benefit of all beings whose lives you touch and support, and also supporting each other in this community, and hanging out till the end for the groups. It's so lovely, so lovely. So may you all be safe and happy and healthy and have ease, and may all beings be happy and free.

Take care everyone, have a wonderful weekend. See you soon. Bye. Tell you what, I'm going to unmute everyone this time just for the heck of it. If you all want to say goodbye, let's just do that. [Laughter]