(Psssst….Do you want to enhance your experience of reading this blog post? Put this track on and enjoy this short pondering about why I think we crave deeper relationships)


“Put succinctly, the essential need that goes unmet today, the fundamental need that takes a thousand forms, is the need for the sacred.”
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These are the words of Charles Eisenstein. And when I read them, they feel like a deep-felt knowing.

When we seek to learn Authentic Relating, we move towards it from a desire for deeper connection, more intimate relationships, more aliveness, and less conflict. We want to have encounters with strangers that make both our days. We want to connect with the bus-driver and the check out person at Woolies.

We want to cry with our parents about death, and we want to laugh with our friends about life until our bellies ache.

And at the core of all these moments of connection is a heartfelt desire to be in touch with the sacred. We want to hold it, we want to breathe it in together, we want to experience it- together.

We want to catch a glimpse of it in the smile of an old lady on the train, or in the shy look of a child peeking back at you on the plane. We want to share the slowness of the sunrise of a new day with our spouses, and the last rays of sunshine at the close of another day with our families.

We want to be intimately closer to the sacredness of this human life, the sacredness of the mere capacity to come into contact with a complete stranger and share a moment where you are both momentarily happy. To be held by another as we grieve that everything that we love, we will one day lose.

And this is why we are drawn to Authentic Relating. Because we yearn for the sacred in the everyday encounters. We desire to take hold of the sacred in ourselves, in the other and in the moments of this one precious, sacred human life.

​Photo: Ian Hamilton