One of the core things we seek in life is to be valued.  Survival itself depends on our being valued.  Can you imagine as babies what life would be like if we weren't valued?  In a worst case scenario we could have parents that function like reptiles or fish that eat their young.  Our only value there is in how tasty we are.  

We have to be valued to survive, yet at such an early age what real value can we have?  Value is based on exchange for getting our needs and wants met.  We value what serves us, what we believe meets or helps us meet our needs and wants.  How does a baby do that?

Fortunately Mother Nature steps in and whips up a hormonal cocktail that makes mothers adore their children - usually.  The expression "A child that only a mother could love" is a reflection of those hormones in action.  One of the main hormones responsible for this maternal feeling is oxytocin.  It is a major hormone involved in the birthing process.  For a new mother, it is released when her nipples are stimulated during breast-feeding.  This hormone is central to the pair-bonding between mother and child.  It has become known as the "love hormone"- not only between a mother and her child, but also between lovers.  Research is ongoing to discover what stimulates its release in these situations.  It is even involved in promoting tribal behavior, combining empathy and trust between tribal members.  The inability to secrete oxytocin and feel empathy is linked to sociopathy, psychopathy, narcissism, and general manipulativeness.

What happen to kids whose mothers don't breast feed?  How does the mother form good bonding with her baby without the hormones designed to do just that?

This hormone driven phase compensates for the human baby's slow maturation process and long period of complete dependence.  At this stage we invent value for a baby by feelings of ownership and projecting their ability to participate with us in the future in just the way we want.   Our projections create a belief in the value of our child that motivates us to care for it without any immediate return for our effort other than lots of dirty diapers.

This process highlights the main point of this article.  When we say that value is based on an exchange for getting our needs and wants met the mind usually goes to things like food, shelter, and clothing.  But the much bigger reality is that our greatest needs are for individuals to participate in our personal life story so that we can learn who we are and how to connect in harmony with the rest of life.  Yes we need basic survival type stuff, but we need connection and participation as much or even more.  Without connection and participation with others there really is no reason to survive.

That being the case, the greatest asset we have to trade with others to get our needs met is our willingness to connect and participate with them in their unfoldment process.  Now this is not as lofty as it sounds.  All it really means is that you be you and participate in the now moment with another person.  The whole personal growth and self discovery thing happens in the background without most people ever becoming aware of it.

The participation doesn't even need to be positive.  When someone cuts you off on the freeway and you blast him or her with your horn, you have invited participation with them.  If they flip you off in return, they have just participated with you in the now moment.  Folks playing victim stories need abusers to participate with them to be able to play out their story.  Within the playing out of the story there will be self-discovery and unfoldment.  Co-dependents need dependents to take care of and try to manipulate into being "right" or "OK".  Rebels need authority figures to resist.  If there were no authority figures willing to participate with the rebel, what could he rebel against?

There is not a "right" type of participation because everyone is in a different place and needs different kinds of participation.  Each person's growing up process is very unique, and every step of the way they need others to engage with to be able to see themselves in the reflections that others bounce back to them.  We can not see ourselves directly.  We depend on others to be able to see ourselves through the feedback their actions give us.  We learn through trial and error how to balance our unique needs for individual expression with the needs of the larger ecology of human society for harmonious connection.

I use the word ecology on purpose because we have a tendency to presume that harmonious means nice and pretty.  Harmonious means reciprocal balance in getting needs met.  Nature shows us this well.  There is harmony between the wolves and the deer, but it is not nice or pretty.  The balanced interaction between them ensures neither population will grow so large that the region can not support their numbers and mass starvation is averted.  When man came in and disturbed the ecological balance between the wolves and the deer by killing off the wolves, the deer population grew so large that they all starved when winter came around.  There just was not enough food to support the number of deer that grew to adulthood without the wolves trimming their numbers down.

We like the idea of balance and harmony equaling happily ever after, but that is not necessary, and in fact would prevent most people from growing up.  We learn through the negative feedback generated by our mistakes.  In a world where everything is happy, we would never have the opportunity to experience negative feedback and thus would never learn.  This is not to say that you can not craft a life of joy and happiness.  That is the end product of growing into that balance maturity brings you.

This brings us to the message of this article - the value of connection.  Connection only exists in the present moment and to the degree that we are consciously participating with our attention in the present moment.

So many people are so afraid of the negative feedback life gives us when we are missing the mark in our attempts to balance individuality with connection that we become experts in appearing to participate without being truly present.  We keep our feeling self at a distance or our attention focused in the past or future.  We think about how we think things could be or should be rather than participating with things as they are.  When we are focused on wanting the world to be our way, we are not connecting with what is - we are separate.

Connecting to what is in the present moment with another person has high value to them.  Just as providing food or shelter has high value to someone who is hungry or cold.  Reflect on your own life.  Whom do you value more - someone who is truly present and participating with you or someone who is off in their own world and ignoring you?  We value present participation just like we value goods and services.  There is a whole commerce of barter and exchange between people for this highly valued commodity.  It is what we call relationships.  

I perceive five general types of intentional connection in order of value:
1. Inspirational
2. Supportive
3. Controlling
4. Accepting
5. Disconnected

We greatly love those people in our life that connect with us and inspire us to be ourselves at our best.  We feel really good when we interact with them.

We really value people that support us in our attempts to make our way in life without judging us or criticizing us.

Although we rebel against them, we are addicted to those people that want to control us "for our own good".  This is the basic parent model.  We set up lots of interesting games with these people in our attempts to negotiate the "right" to be ourselves as compared to being the way that they believe is "right".  This is where we learn most of the balance between self and other / individuality and connection.

We mildly appreciate those who accept that we are different than them and allow us to go about our business while they go about theirs.  This is the level of connection based upon common agreements like traffic laws.  It is the camaraderie of a tribe of people all following the same set of rules.

Last is the very little value we have for those people that just don't give a damn that we exist.  They don't like how we do things and just stay away from us or ignore us.  Curiously, we would rather they resist us and fight with us than simply ignore us.  They would move up to the controlling position, which has greater value for us.  Child psychologists know that a child would rather have a negative interaction with their parents than be ignored.

In order to be able to create the life we want, we need the willing cooperation and participation of others.  To get this we have to be of value to them.  We could develop highly specialized and valuable skills like becoming a doctor or an engineer.  This gives us value we can use to enroll others into participating in our process of creating the life we want.  But even there we still have to develop enough connection skills to be able to "market" our skill sets to those that need them.

For most of us though, it is our connection skills that give us value in the world.  As I already pointed out, those connection skills don't have to be pretty or nice.  If we can achieve a stance of being inspirational or supportive we have the highest value.  But just the ability to be present and participating in the now moment is enough to generate the value we need to get by.  "Suite up and show up" is an old expression referring to this.  

What looses us value is when we refuse to show up in our lives.  When we are busy living in our heads, focused on the past or future or what could have or should have been we have little value to others.  We have little value to ourselves when we do this.  Yes I know that attending to the present moment is filled with the possibility of negative feedback that might feel bad.  But it is better to feel bad and be able to try something different based on that feedback than to not feel anything and keep doing what does not work.

Life is like being a door-to-door salesman.  You get a lot of rejections, but if you keep trying eventually you succeed.  If you don't keep trying you guarantee failure.

We all need to be valued.  Staying in the present moment and connecting to what is with the best we have to offer is how we create that value we all need.

Take care,

David

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"All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual."

~ Albert Einstein 

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About Dr. DeLapp

Dr. DeLapp has been a philosopher, non-force Chiropractor, medical intuitive, and health innovator for over 30 years.  He began experimenting with  medical intuition in 1972 while studying physics at UC Davis.  In addition to physics he designed and completed an individual major in the philosophy and psychology of education.  Shortly after he choose to pursue a career in the only truly health oriented profession available at that time, Chiropractic.  He graduated with honors in 1981 with his doctorate and opened a private practice. 
Since that time he has continued his research into the effects of consciousness and learning on health. 
He developed the Biomagnetic Retraining system for correcting movement abnormalities. 
Since 1991 he has focused on developing a powerful system for uncovering and assisting the mind-body connection in health and personal growth.  The in-depth coaching, guided by the subconscious direction from the body, is called Heartflow and the simpler mind-body retraining for health and unfoldment he has named Gracework.  Both are available at Fair Oaks Health.

Dr David DeLapp DC
Chiropractor

Ellen Flowers FGM
Spiritual Life Coach

 

 

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Jin Shin Jitsu

 

 

Lorena Morales

 

 

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