The Key To Change: Connection

Knowing people versus making them part of our lives are very different things. The same can be said for the relationship we have with ourselves. Let’s talk.

Most of us have areas of our lives where we are on autopilot. Some are disassociated from the entire experience and don’t realize it.

When you get hit with a hard Memento Mori moment, it’ll typically shake that out of you, but it easily wares off in the sea of fog we call society.

The key to change is connection. That doesn’t mean you need 100 new friends by tomorrow or the perfect wife or husband. 

Connection is everywhere.

The key is recognizing it, and having the courage to actually do it.  

It is possible to know hundreds of people, but not really know or be known at all.

It is possible to live your life in a “busy and productive” manner, but be completely disconnected from yourself, living on airplane mode and repeating the same things every day without truly knowing why. 

This is by design.

It is also a way we escape reality, because the innate uncertainty is something we are afraid of. We are taught that control is a marker of success and strength, but you cannot control the cosmic ocean of all that is.

It is easy to see how we limit ourselves when we try to control everything and have an answer for every question. What we often overlook is how much we isolate ourselves when we do this.

It’s a socially acceptable psychosis, one that death has never failed to snap me out of. But we don’t need to wait for someone to die to be woken from this hypnosis. The teachings of Memento Mori are here to do exactly that.

Anyone who takes stock of how they spend their time and compares that with what truly matters in life will touch their truth.

In meditating on what you would do if today were your last, what you would think about in your dying moments as your spirit floats into the ethers- you are faced with this question: Is what you consume yourself with on the regular even close to that?

The most common theme for me when I remove myself from my life and visually observe from a birds eye view is, “Wow, I need to loosen my grip.” I see someone fighting so hard to accomplish various things, often to a detriment. The energy is excessively stressful and blinds one to the treasures in life that are only found when one moves in subtle ways.

The consumption we have with our own lives can ironically cut us off from it completely.

Ambitions are great and I couldn’t turn mine off if I tried, but when I’m in all gas no breaks mode, it is to the detriment of spending meaningful time with others; the space where time ceases to exist.

Our culture enforces the paper chase and the pursuit of individual goals at the expense of relationships at every turn. I fall for it all the time. The reason I know this is a lie sold to us so we remain distracted consumers and unable to form any resilience or resistance to the tyranny in the world, is because of death.

Every time someone dies, all that we consume ourselves with vanishes and the one truth remains- Love. The significance of the quality of our relationships. This is what creates legacy more than anything else. When you get to a point in your life where most of the people you have loved are dead, you cannot ignore this fact.

Often periods of disconnection, guardedness and hyper-independence follow the traumatic experiences of loss on a massive scale, but at some point you have to join the river of life again. You cannot run with blinders on forever.

Our relationship with ourselves dictates the ones we will have with others, they always mirror each other. Living disassociated, which society enables via hedonism and overstimulation, leads to confusing and unfulfilling relationships. Living completely self-obsessed and without genuine, consistent consideration for others produces the same.

It is truly an art to know how to show up for ourselves and the world around us. If we are completely selfish we are useless. If we are completely out of touch with ourselves, we are also useless. The thing about being useless? It makes people miserable, and they begin to scramble for meaning. This can be perpetuated throughout entire lifetimes to no avail, which is why it’s important to find our anchor within ourselves and our environment. 

Connection comes in many forms. A big one that throws us all off-course when we lack it, is consistency. 

Consistency is a form of connection, a connection to ones self via commitment to (ideally) constructive habits. It is also a commitment to others when our words match our actions. 

We shine in those moments, because we are connected to reality. 

Connection with ones environment can mean as little as looking up from your phone, taking out your ear buds, consciously breathing in the air that the trees and plants create for you, walking out of artificially lit homes or offices and into the natural sun - you know that thing that helps regulate our entire system and can decalcify the pineal gland? Very important, these things. 

Connection with OTHERS. This is the big one. I was speaking with a friend recently about how hard it seems to be for everyone to “show up”, how much relationships have been strained since… the InCiDeNt in 2020. She referred to it as Post-Pandemic Trauma, and I couldn’t agree more. There has been massive trauma to the collective psyche for a long list of reasons in a very short period of time.

The thing that makes it worse in my opinion is that hardly anyone talks about it, we’re just carrying on as if it didn’t happen- but it did. 

The longer we silence the voices that are the modern day canaries in the coal mine, the faster we collectively race toward extinction. We are the answer, but we keep handing our sovereignty over to unelected psychopaths and artificial intelligence, and most notably, our phones. We are already cyborgs in a certain sense.

Have you noticed this rise in claims of ADHD and depression, the staggering rise in suicides, the complete lack of empathy and motivation permeating society? Do you think the amount of time people are in front of screens and artificial lighting known to produce psychiatric illness might have something to do with it? Is all this artificial “connection” and constant contact having the opposite effect?

One more.

Connecting with other people is something I struggle with too. Deep conversations and harmonious interactions are not difficult, those are fairly common, but that is not actual connection in a sustained sense. Consistency is often the missing ingredient. It’s easy to connect with many people a few times, but the same group of people consistently is an entirely different ballgame, because it requires a level of intimacy that many of us are either out of the habit of, or extremely uncomfortable with.

I don’t feel like it used to be like this.

We are so overwhelmed, overstimulated, overburdened, over-consumed, that we lose sight and sensitivity. The apathy of options (which is more of an illusion) overtakes us. It’s a collective nightmare that I think most would appreciate waking up from.

Good news is, you don’t have to physically die to awaken in the dream. 

The thing that has been such a barrier to connection is the prolonged distancing and division on so many levels since the events of 2020 and beyond. We have been conditioned to do so much of our life VIRTUALLY. The fact that people are working from home, holding business meetings online even when they live in the same city, still continuing to have online social events when again, everyone is in the same area, is in my opinion, detrimental. Yes it’s convenient to not have to leave your house in some peoples eyes, but what about before that was an option? And do we realize that there are other reasons for things like going to work or going to a meeting besides the plain task at hand, or besides making money? We do this for community, for experience, for energy, for the process of co-creating experiences that generate an energy that colors our character and other areas of our lives.

You cannot get that from a screen. You cannot get that over the phone.

Before living life in a Zoom room was an option, you had to get your ass out of your comfort zone and into the public space, look people in the eye IN PERSON and talk. Doing this virtually is a joke, because the biggest way we communicate is with energy. People will say it’s body language, and yeah that’s part of it, but energy is the strongest translator of truth for the words a human being chooses to use; we do not communicate our fullness verbally. Not even close. 

As the principle of inertia goes, an object at rest tends to stay at rest, an object in motion stays in motion. Comparatively, an object in isolation tends to STAY in isolation, and an object frequently socialized tends to stay frequently socialized. We get used to habits, environments, and ways of doing — and we repeat. Whether we like it or not is irrelevant; we are creatures of habit. 

This of course can be changed, but it requires you to be at times excruciatingly uncomfortable. 

I am doing this now. Any areas where I feel I’m living small or playing it safe, FUCK that. In recent meditations, I have been asked to take note of what areas of my life are asking for prosperity and care. Prosperity does not always have to be financial, we’re simply talking about abundance here. 

Connection with myself and others is the number one thing. I can have a million friends, but how deep are those friendships? And most importantly, do I see those people in real life, or are they all people scattered across the globe that I talk to through a device? 

There’s nothing wrong with having distant relationships, but if that’s the bulk of them, that’s a problem. 

My story is in zero ways uncommon, which is why I’m sharing what I have with you. I hear it from almost everyone when this topic comes up. 

At the beginning of the year I took stock of every area of my life. I looked at where it was versus where I had intended it to be, and took 100% responsibility for the disparities I saw. This was in no way comfortable, but to not face this would sentence me to a wasted life - no greater tragedy than that.

So the key to change being connection? This has proven true. I wouldn’t have been able to see any of that had I not slowed down enough to connect with myself and be completely honest. This is how I was able to identify my shortcomings, my unmet needs, and what actions I needed to take or change to course correct.

Once I began to do that, I realized that being the person who is always on the move and always so busy leads to a lack of grounded-ness and fulfilling relationships. How could you have a fulfilling relationship with anything if you never sit still and are never in the same place more than once?

You’ll be told you have to make sacrifices, especially with the hustle culture craze. This is obviously true, but that doesn’t mean the love, connection and happiness in your life. That does not mean relationships (so long as they are healthy and not toxic).

Sacrifices would mean things like delayed gratification, quitting smoking (which I just did), taking care of your health when the unhealthy option is what everyone else is doing, etc.

Each goal requires different things, but some things should universally be renowned as what you do NOT sacrifice.

Would we sacrifice breathing air? No, you’d die. Well, if we sacrifice connection, we might as well be dead. We are shells of who we used to be, and a living insult to who we could be. 

Most importantly, we’re not really capable of being useful or providing lasting value when we’re disconnected. Sure, you can serve the matrix, feed the machine, feed your bank account, but that’s just playing the game that no one wins.

Good news is, this can change at any time.

It is not by accident that the paper chase, the rat race, the 3D, the physical, the instant gratification, are all so revered and considered NORMAL in this society, but things like valuing love, family, community as a top priority are things that will get you called “basic”, a “simp”, or “part of some religion”. 

Ultimately what people say in that respect does not matter, but it’s an interesting thing to point out, because so many people are under this spell.

Solution? Tune into your own needs.

For me, I’m making myself go to seven recovery-based meetings a week in the new area I moved to this year. I know I need to create deeper connections there. 

I have also stayed consistent with my Kundalini Yoga practice every single day of this new year. This often involves other people locally, for whom I am incredibly grateful for. It also deeply connects me to myself, my intuition, my dreams, and a much higher intelligence than anything I can conjure up. 

I’ve committed to my health by quitting smoking after 19 years, and exercising and eating more.

I’ve committed to my music by creating an album and working multiple jobs in order to fund it (believe it or not, making music is NOT cheap), the list goes on. I share it with you because it’s easy for me to talk about connection to self, to others, to purpose, to reality, but it’s all lip service if I don’t share some of what I’m actually doing.

Doing things like going to SEVEN recovery meetings a week when before that I was maybe going to two meetings a month? HOLY SHIT that is so uncomfortable, it’s like baptizing a cat. However, I can’t tell you how amazing it feels once I’ve done it. It’s important to add that just showing up to the meeting is not enough, participation in the meeting is required, as is connecting with people there. Just going and sitting silently and then leaving right as it ends does absolutely nothing for me, the whole point is to connect, to share, to give. That’s where the magic is. 

It also looks like being completely present for everything and everyone that is right in front of me. For so much of my life I have avoided my own reality and responsibilities in being up in my head, worried about some bullshit, stressing over a dude, and I can’t tell you how much of a tragic abuse of time that is.

If you’re someone who relates to that, Memento Mori can be a mantra in guiding your mind back to the present- because if we had TEN MINUTES left on this earth, would we spend it on some made up shit in our heads that in a few months from now won’t even cross our minds? No. Absolutely not. 

So what would we do? 

Do that. 

What areas of your life are asking for a little more love, abundance, prosperity? What areas of your life do you feel grounded and connected in? Which areas could use some revisiting? 

This is the beautiful thing of the alchemical powers of PAIN. It is the most potent driver of change. Sometimes we have to enter a place of pain and suffering to gain the awareness that a change is necessary in the first place. It is our body, mind and spirits way of telling us that something is off (usually). The reason I say usually is because sometimes the pain is there because we are having a breakthrough, and the pain is the old self resisting to stay when it needs to leave, but thats a topic for another entry. 

I’ll leave you with this, and I hope it benefitted someone:

I haven’t been on here in about a month almost, I’ll try to write more and podcast more. I have been very busy with multiple jobs and creating this album and changing my entire lifestyle, but I will get used to this new way of maneuvering soon. Let me know how you are doing in the comments if you like. And if you would like more content or want to suggest topics, say so, and please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Due to the nature of insane cost of living plus needing thousands of dollars to fund the musical projects I’ve got underway, I am able to give more of my time to things that have an energetic exchange, especially a financial one. If there isn’t, of course I love writing and will still keep writing, but not as much. I have to be conscious, practical and intentional with how I use my time - this is my favorite lesson from Memento Mori actually. 

It’s the year of the 7, the year of victory, the aura, prosperity. It is beauty triumphant. There is no reason to pour ones energy out into a bottomless cup, so remember this when you do whatever you do or engage with whoever you choose. The days of getting something for nothing are over, and should be for everyone - we set the price on our value.

Hugs. 

For all my links, visit https://linktr.ee/tesstamona - I also have a store if you’d like to do business and help fund what I do that way, and commissions for music are open as well. 

If you’d like to make a donation for whatever you feel you gain value from, be it the music, podcast or writing, I believe that link has a donation button, or you can cash app or Venmo me, $Tesstamona on cash app or @Tesstamona for venmo. If you want to support the music in a non-financial way, stream it on Spotify and share with your people, it goes a long way.