Personal transformation is a pretty popular topic these days. But while personal improvement is an important part of modern life, there’s another kind of transformation that has the power to change not only ourselves, but the world around us. I call it “mutual awakening” and it’s focused on awakening to and transforming the space between us.

The Invisible We

We’re all familiar with the concept of “subjective” experience, which often is defined as the inner, personal, and private world that each of us lives on a momentary basis. But there’s another version of the subjective called the “intersubjective,” which is the shared space of consciousness that exists between two or more people. We’ve all experienced moments (if not steady states) of oneness, of being inside the same experience, together. Some examples of this state include love, compassion, joy, laughter, penetrating clarity, and a myriad of other experiences.

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, “We are tied together in a single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.” Throughout the ages and across the spectrum of traditions, spiritual teachers like Dr. King have told us the same thing: At the deepest level, we are all one and everything in this world is interdependent. Paradoxically, this underlying oneness gives rise to the multiple unique forms in which we find ourselves. Yet, our essential nature is unity—with each other and with all of life.

The field of relatedness has been described by many philosophers, physicists, sociologists, and mystics, but I particularly like the one-word definition offered by Dr. King: mutuality. In ordinary usage, mutuality connotes reciprocity, sharing, partnership, and mutual benefit. In my work, I use it to refer to that place where souls overlap—a confluence of consciousness. Mutuality also points to the fact that relationship is a two-way street, where two or more individuals agree to be consciously related.

Awakening Mutuality

Mutuality emerges when two or more people occupy the same space in consciousness. As Sufi scholar Kabir Helminski writes, “Two stones cannot occupy the same space, but two fragrances can.” Truly, our souls are more akin to fragrances than stones because they are permeable, able to commingle without losing their essence or their autonomy, while our egos always remain separate, like two stones tumbling in the ocean of consciousness but never blending with it.

We can tune in and listen to what the relationship itself desires, what it’s ready for, and what potential it contains. Then, if we want those potentials to be fulfilled, we can elect to work together to expand and deepen our experience of mutuality. What I call evolutionary mutuality is a true union of souls, in which there is an unbounded merging of the essential self of both individuals, who each remain distinct and unique but who achieve a heightened state of awareness and engage in dynamic interplay.

Mutual awakening starts with moving beyond our separate sense of self into full and immediate contact with our essential nature. Only then, may we come into reality with another. Once we become aware of our inner essence in all its fullness, the next stage is to connect with the inner experience of the other. When this is achieved by both partners, a sacred space is created where the partners become aware of the field of relatedness between them.

Waking Up, Together

By learning to let go and enter this field together, we awaken simultaneously—it’s never just happening to one person. This is an entirely different process than the kind of individual awakening that has been described for thousands of years by spiritual mystics, with their myriad techniques and practices. Instead, mutual awakening is an invitation to become something greater together, though spirit. What’s exciting is how available it is, as though consciousness itself has been waiting for us to pay attention in the right way. When we do pay attention, we experience the mystical depths of shared unity, and we shift our normal way of being and acting in the world.

Mutual awakening is a movement of attraction and expansion between two or more people who wish to give and receive at higher and higher levels. The more energy is exchanged, the more mutuality occurs. This reciprocity of energy, attention, and love creates access to unending dynamism and new evolutionary potentials. In this heightened state, Evolutionary Relationships serve as channels for our connection to each other and to the greater intelligence and energy of the cosmos, the universal mystery and greater reality to which all of us are connected. As the Bible states, “Where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.”

Patricia Albere is an internationally known spiritual teacher and author of the bestselling book Evolutionary Relationships: Unleashing the Power of Mutual Awakening. She is the founder of the Evolutionary Collective and has worked with over 200,000 people in groups in the last 40 years exploring a new field of ‘intersubjective awakening’ and postpersonal development.