Step 5: Contact

“Hey. Could we do that again? I know we haven't met, but I don't want to be an ant, you know? I mean, it's like we go through life with our antennas bouncing off one another, continuously on ant auto-pilot with nothing really human required of us. Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there. All action basically for survival. All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along in an efficient polite manner. "Here's your change." "Paper or plastic?" "Credit or debit?" "You want ketchup with that?" I don't want a straw, I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don't want to give that up. I don't want to be an ant, you know?”

“Yeah. Yeah, no. I don't want to be an ant either. Heh. Yeah, thanks for kind of jostling me there. I've been kind of on zombie auto-pilot lately, I don't feel like an ant in my head, but I guess I probably look like one. It's kind of like D.H. Lawrence had this idea of two people meeting on a road. And instead of just passing and glancing away, they decide to accept what he calls "the confrontation between their souls." It's like, um, freeing the brave reckless gods within us all.”

“Then it's like we have met.”

--Richard Linklater, Waking Life

Ok. We’ve arrived. We Sensed the beginnings of Need, we became Aware of what we needed, we Mobilized energy to go out there and get it, and we took Action to get us to the threshold. Now, what?

Encounter. Connect. Contact.

What does it mean to Contact, and how does it help us get our needs met?

• Regardless of what need or needs we are working on getting met, the Contact stage is when we encounter the situation where we can finally meet the need.

• We Contact the substance, experience, or interaction we’ve craved, or that has pushed needfully into our Awareness from outside of us.

• In this Contact, we might take in something we need, like food, water or love, express something we need to give off, like praise, anger, or ideas, or respond to an external press or pull on us to satisfy the needs of another.

• Thus, we are at that part of the Awareness Cycle where we meet what’s called the Contact Boundary, the place or event where we encounter the world and exchange, across the Contact Boundary, whatever will meet or satisfy the need.

• The Contact Boundary, figuratively, is the permeable, tender flesh, the soft nerve endings that receive the Outside, with empathy and interest, and the energized muscles reaching out to the Outside, with hunger, with aggression, or with care.

• It is also the Outside pushing in or beckoning to us to meet a need of the environment. It is composed of the contrasting sides of any Contact, in conflict, in yearning, in harmony, or in creative destruction.

• The Contact Boundary can be internal, as when we wrestle with parts of ourselves or issues within, or it can be external, as when we tangle with an interpersonal situation, task, or problem. How we meet the Contact Boundary will determine how well we meet the need that is active there.

• As with previous stages, it is important to understand the polarities and stucknesses in the Contact Stage, so that we become better at getting the needs met that brought us to it.

Some Contact Stucknesses:

Dominance vs. Submission:

“Most of my guests had arrived and I was standing with a small group of friends when Donald made his entrance. He walked over to us, and instead of saying hello, he spread his arms and said, “Isn’t this great?” We all agreed that it was, indeed, great. I thanked him again for letting us use the hotel, then introduced him to everybody. “So what’d you think of that lobby? Fantastic, right?” “Fantastic,” I said. My friends nodded. “Nobody else could have pulled this off. Just look at those windows.” I worried that he might tell us how great the bathroom tiles were next…”

---Mary Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, 2020

“Eudora: “Tell me why you assume the characteristics of the person you're with.

Zelig: It's safe.

Eudora: What do you mean safe?

Zelig: Safe to be like the others.

Eudora: You want to be safe?

Zelig: I want to be liked.”

---Woody Allen, Zelig

• This polarity/stuckness theme has to do with how much to soften our boundaries so as to be able to take in the Other’s point of view or feelings vs. holding onto our own point of view and allowing the contrast and conflict of points of view with the Other create a rich field of Contact.

• Contact is how we get what we need and give others what they need. One of our most-important needs is the need to feel loved, to feel valued, to feel worthy.

• The love we are filled with becomes our self-esteem. To the extent that we get our needs for love and admiration met well-enough, we develop healthy-enough self-esteem. To the extent that our needs for love and admiration are unmet or even rebuffed or attacked, we have narcissistic injuries that leave our self-esteem fragile, brittle, undeveloped, or poor.

• We compensate for narcissistic injuries in a variety of ways, and these span the polarity of Dominance vs. Submission.

• On the Dominant end, we are so desperate to get the love of others, we force them to obey, worship, serve, and aggrandize us. This is hyper-Agency overpowering others or overlooking their unique personhood. To the toxic narcissist, “I am Everything, You are Nothing.”

• The mechanism of narcissistic dominance is the invulnerable Will. The toxic narcissist cannot acknowledge vulnerability, doubt, frailty, or fear, because these are associated with low status, low esteem, and lack of worth. So, he must press aggressively at the Contact Boundary, force his will on others, extending his personal boundary to engulf and control the Other.

• On the Submissive end is Woody Allen’s Zelig, an abused person whose utter lack of self-esteem causes him to literally-morph into mirror images of others, in hopes of fitting in and being loved. Where the toxic narcissist cannot show any vulnerability or softening at the boundary, the codependent martyr has no protective boundary at all, and, instead, allows the Other to take them over with their needs, aggressions, and control. For the codependent martyr, “I am Nothing, You are Everything.”

• Trump and Zelig form the extremes of this polarity and each of us can find ourselves somewhere along the gradations of this spectrum.

• No matter where you are on this spectrum, the goal is to increase your range of response. A healthy Mensch can be forceful and convincing when asking to get their needs met, but also empathic and receptive when the needs of the Other are compelling.

Fusion vs. Distancing:

"Every breath you take and every move you make

Every bond you break, every step you take, I'll be watching you

Every single day and every word you say

Every game you play, every night you stay, I'll be watching you

Oh, can't you see you belong to me

How my poor heart aches with every step you take"

--Every Breath You Take, Sting

“Hello, I must be going.

I cannot stay, I came to say, I must be going.

I’m glad I came, but just the same, I must be going.

La-la!”

“I'll stay a week or two

I'll stay the summer through

But I am telling you

I must be – going”

-- “Hello, I Must Be Going”, Kalmar & Ruby, Animal Crackers

• Contact, by its very nature, involves how we connect, and how we disconnect. Being social creatures, we are nourished by connection to others. Contact is the food that our social selves eat.

• Some of us have social selves that are gluttons, while the social selves of others are positively anorexic. Not only that, but some social selves want to sample lots of different connections, like taking a spoonful of everything on the buffet, while others have a diet that is dully narrow and routine.

• Whether we are Contact-Gluttons or Contact-Anorexics, the quality of Contact, and how well it nourishes us depends on more than just the quantity. It depends on whether the nutrients consumed are truly needed and digested or whether they are empty calories.

• Some people, particularly the Extroverts among us, can be so taken with making lots of different connections, that the ultimate net nourishment of that Contact ends up having the nutritional value and range of a bag of potato chips. If we cannot maintain contact for more than a brief moment, we will not experience a deep encounter with the Other that really can change us.

• On the other hand, the introverted one-person person may create a deep connection with their person, but it will likely suffer from sameness, boredom, or possessive dependency. Anyone who’s been in a long-term relationship or marriage knows the dangers of too much time together.

• Whether you are introverted or extroverted, you may manage your varied needs for Contact by either Fusing or Distancing from others.

• As with all inborn traits, environment certainly plays some role in whether we become either Fusers or Distancers as well. Some families and some cultures reinforce Fusing and Distancing differently, which may sway the developing person in directions that balance or oppose their natural preference.

• Trauma, too, can play a role. A child who has been deeply-wounded or violated by a parent may develop strong distancing defenses or, conversely, may accept that they are to be the object of others’ needs, regardless of their own.

• While the causes and determinants of our relative position on the Fusion/Distancing polarity are many, we can still work on understanding what goes into that position, and we can expand our range.

Goal-Directed vs Improvisatory:

• For some of us, comfort comes from planning and the familiarity of routines, even in our Contacts with others, while for others of us, comfort comes from the feeling of novelty and freedom when encounters are unplanned and routines avoided. Also, some of us are less comfortable with spontaneous eruptions of feeling during contact, while others live for those.

• The Contact Stage is a very fertile place to explore our challenges around planning vs improvising, because what happens in Contact with another cannot be controlled or planned very easily.

• We imagine conversations before we have them in order to plan how we will handle them, or we behave in controlling ways with others to force the situation to go how we think it should go. Doing so can really kill the vitality of spontaneous contact, but for some of us, that spontaneity can be very scary.

• On the other hand, some of us resist any planning of interactions and hate to be nailed down by the needs of the Other to accomplish things together in an ordered way. We will launch easily into flights of feelings and words, with less concern about how we might be ambushing or overwhelming the Other.

• As with all the other polarities, it is good to reflect on your relative position on the Goal-Directed vs. Improvisatory spectrum and to explore how we might slide towards the less-practiced pole.

Contact's Deeper Meanings:

Contact and Unconditional Love:

• One of the hallmarks of Ego is preferential love. That is, Ego, full of opinions as it is, plays favorites in the world.

• This is because one of Ego’s chief functions is to categorize and to evaluate. So, it has boxes that separate what it judges as Good & Bad, Beautiful & Ugly, Safe & Dangerous, and Lovable & Unlovable.

• Although Ego’s categories might be useful for sorting, for discernment, and for protection, they can also be a cause of our separations from one another when applied as absolute truths in our relationships.

• The spiritual, philosophical, and psychological traditions speak of a distinction between Ego’s preferential, conditional Love and the unconditional Love of the Mindful Self (or the Divine, or the Big Menschowski).

• Where the Ego sees differences, the Mindful Self sees commonalities. Where the Ego draws hard lines and establishes preferences between us, the Mindful Self can take in and accept all of the cornucopia and diversity of our humanity.

• In the Greek and Christian traditions, unconditional love or loving-kindness is referred to as “Agape”, in the Jewish, “Chesed”, in the Islamic Sufi, “Ishq-e-Haqeeqi”, and in the Buddist tradition, “Metta”. We in Mensch-land might call it The Big L.

Contact as Communion:

“I am he as you are he as you are me

And we are all together”

--I Am The Walrus, John Lennon

• One of the beautiful cornerstones of Gestalt Therapy is that the patient and the therapist are part of a larger seamless field of interaction, and neither controls nor plans how that interaction rolls out. At any point in the session, one would be hard-pressed to say that there is a structured plan, and the work is carried along by the shared, authentic interaction of the patient and therapist. Such contact can feel, at times, almost mystical in its mysterious unfolding.

• This kind of spontaneous, shared unfolding happens in good Contact outside the therapy room as well.

• In good Contact, there is a kind of holy communion that goes beyond our normal sense of splits within us or our separateness from one another.

• During our toddler years, we begin the process of separating, learning the differences between ourselves and our parents, siblings, and all other humans. We start to develop our separate identities, a process that later includes our separate collective identities, like family, neighborhood, city, and nation.

• The downside of all these separations, boundaries, and distinctions is that we fall into the egoic illusion that we are absolutely distinct and separate from one another. This “trance of separation”, as Buddhist teacher Tara Brach calls it, is an illusion that can lead to alienation, unnecessary conflict, loneliness, and the demonizing and dehumanizing of one another that underlies militant nationalism, racism, homophobia, misogyny, religious bigotry, and all the other “us against them” afflictions.

• The spiritual traditions, at their worst, can become part of this Othering, when they emphasize the surface differences between religions. However, at their best, these traditions all offer a way to see past these differences to the core of our commonalities.

• Aldous Huxley, the British writer and novelist, wrote a book in 1946, entitled, “The Perennial Philosophy”. Huxley posited that all of the world’s major spiritual traditions have a certain common message.

• The Perennial Philosophy (PP) states that there is a foundational ground of Being beneath all the seemingly-different manifestations in our world, and that the spiritual path is to transcend these surface differences and contact the universal Ground of Existence.

• We can see the PP at work in the mystic threads of each of the traditions, the meditative teachings in both East and West that help the seeker drop out of the world of surface appearances into the deeper sense of Oneness, called God in the Abrahamic religions, or called Buddha nature, Brahman, or Tao in the East.

• To approach Contact with this in mind, the experience of authentic communion with one another can be a route to this deeper Oneness, if we can allow our separating boundaries to soften. When we do that, we feel ourselves in a deep, authentic union or connection to one another that transcends our separate selves.

Contacting the Trickster:

“Moishe Pipik! The derogatory, joking nonsense name that translates literally to Moses Bellybutton and that probably connoted something slightly different to every Jewish family on our block—the little guy who wants to be a big shot, the kid who pisses in his pants, the someone who is a bit ridiculous, a bit funny, a bit childish, the comical shadow alongside whom we had all grown up, the little folkloric fall guy.”

--Operation Shylock: A Confession, Phillip Roth

“Loretta, I love you. Not like they told you love is and I didn't know this either. But love don't make things nice, it ruins everything, it breaks your heart, it makes things a mess. We're not here to make things perfect. Snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. We are here to ruin ourselves and break our hearts and love the wrong people and die! The storybooks are bullshit.”

--Moonstruck, John Patrick Shanley

" Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble."

--John L. Lewis, 2018

• A confession. Even though I’d heard the word “Mensch” used my whole life, as in “She’s a real mensch!” or “Oy, such a mensch”, I had never read the actual definition from the Yiddish. To my disappointment, the most frequent definitions were “a person of integrity and honor”, and “a righteous person”.

• Disappointment, because the way I’d always heard it used, it made the person so labeled out to be not just good, but also authentic, lovable, human, and, frequently, well-rounded, interesting, and gutsy. Righteous and honorable, reliable, decent, all good, important qualities, but my mensch is also complex, layered, and three-dimensional.

• That means all the shades of being human, including the darker, more difficult parts, whether that be mischievous, daring, rebellious for a cause, or challenging of convention, tradition, or authority when deep decency called for that. And, on the flipside, the part of us that steps on its own dick, has dignity tarnished by tomato sauce on her evening gown, and crashes into the hard wall of humiliating reality while claiming the moral high-ground. Definitely not as sanitized as the word “righteous” would suggest.

• All of the world’s folkloric, cultural, and spiritual traditions have a place for this contradictory, conflictual, challenging, frequently-disruptive element. As characters, they can be troublemakers, the Native American Coyote or Trickster, the Greek Pan, or the Norse Loki. Or, they can be holy fools, stumbling over their own feet, like Nasruddin in Sufi tradition, or Moishe Pipik in the Judaic.

• In Buddhism, the quality is sometimes called “crazy wisdom”, the tradition of Chogyam Trungpa, who was exalted as a guru by Allen Ginsberg and so many others, but was personally something of a Zen train-wreck in actuality.

• These are our dark sides, disruptive, flawed, or comical. They also illustrate the situations of our lives when we careen into sudden crises or comedies of errors, and, if we are lucky, are transformed through surprising twists, turns, and ordeals.

• These are the Contact experiences that cure us, if we’re lucky, of the unrecovered Maven or Perfectionist. These situations, and the aspects of ourselves that invite them, force us to shape-shift, to become something new or unexpected. They are the lessons we are dragged kicking and screaming into, but out of which our greatest growth emerges.

• Part of Menschitude comes out of humor, rebellion, non-conformity, and happy accidents. As such, this concept, this Coyote, Pan, or Moishe Pipik, holds a special place in the Contact Stage. For Contact, unlike all the other stages, is the stage at which we are most primed to meet the unexpected, the Otherness of Others, the bewildering conflicts or challenges, the spontaneous collision of our needs with the trajectories of others. This encounter that turns us on our heads stretches us the most, and it is this encounter we resist the most, because it throws us out of control.

• So, when working on the Contact Stage, it is so important to realize that we are shooting not just for something boringly-square like “effective action” or “healthy communication”, but for opportunities to be radically-transformed by our encounter with spontaneous, authentic interaction. That has to include this Trickster experience.