“The Tao that can be spoken of is not the Tao” — Lao Zi
I’ve been watching the collapse into certainty with fascination. As I see a world that is increasingly difficult to understand and make sense of — I see certainty veering it’s head everywhere. A doubling down, more intense focus on the things. More tunnelvision, more ideas, more frenzy, more disconnection. This rekindled a thread I started on several months back, that I am picking up. How can we express ourselves without collapsing into certainty — or maybe — how can we communicate while holding or embodying complexity? That spins off into a number of different questions like, what does clarity without reduction look like? How can we make what is visible and needs to be seen salient? How can we allow for simple without confusing it with easy? How do we transform our information ecology from trenches to campfires, where we can let ideas come into proper dialogue with one another? Can we rebuild our capacity to focus our collective gaze on that which is regenerative, to be in service of, speaking only when spoken through instead of speaking to resolve or to promote ourselves?
There are communities where practices to start addressing these questions are being explored. I see it in a number of places like Rebel Wisdom, the STOA, Team Human, John Vervaeke’s discord, Emerge, Ekskäret Anywhere, the Consilience Project, the GameB community, Centre for humane technology, Emergent Dialogue as well as other parts of what I tend to think of as the sensemaking web. Frankly I don’t know why I need to add more language in the pile that is forming — but I feel a strong calling to do it. So I heed that urge. The exploration I am inviting you on is very much my exploration too — I aim to write to invoke rather than state, point to, hold space for emergence rather than reduce. Let’s see where it wants to take us.
I’m relaxing into this exploration, this serious play. Seeing what wants to be said. If there is a there that can be generative as it is planted in the soil of your cognition. To see how these expansive, striving, fleeting sentences grab hold somewhere and create whispers, like rings on water, of that which needs to be seen and understood in you.
There is much talk about how humanity and the world is currently in a state of crisis, a liminal time between times, some say a bifurcation point. It’s not just one crisis, there are several. One of which has to do with our ability to make meaning. I see it in those around me — an inability or hesitancy to make meaning. As if we are not worthy of meaning. I would like to push off from a slightly different point and then try to zoom in on this particular phenomenon.
My starting point is an experience I’ve had in my body. When I take seriously that our biology (or body) has no perception of time. Then everything it knows is right now. In other words: everything we know, is now. When a past or future memory triggers an emotion — that emotion is not a shadow of anything, it’s as real as any experience you are having first hand. It is through directing our attention, our cognition that we can begin to dream the dream which later can become meaning. That meaning making emerges from life. I am not one to believe that meaning is there for us to discover but rather I’m suggesting that the meaning is created by life unfolding in its giant, slow, ever expanding loop of emergence. Encircling, overflowing, eroding, composting, evolving, transforming as its shapeshifting into yet another state for us to discover and then breathe meaning into. Life as the quality of beingness, the ocean not the waves if you will. The life that is there in the interstitial matter which is, not matter at all, but rather dynamic balance, flow, relations, friction, tension, in process. A process that eventually, if we cultivate that skill, can become patterns that we can understand, participate in and live.
I have lived in a world where patterns consist of things, until recently — where I glimpsed something so incredibly simple and profound — that patterns are relationships not the nodes connecting them.
This is why I find writing hard. It forces me to work with abstractions because (the English) language is built of objects and subjects and what I am talking about here is an unfolding, a process, a string of ever-happening moments. I am pointing to something which is like that walking meditation where you shift your awareness in such a way that you perceive that you are standing still and the world is moving past you — it is a fundamentally different way of relating to what we think of as reality. It changes everything. While we are in that way of relating it is the only way to relate — and then we fall out of it and it’s almost inconceivable. I hear those that know more talk with ease around these relations, some of them own a different language and experience of ritual and ceremony. They seem to be able to hold layers upon layers of relations and the obligations and responsibilities those relations create. As well as fluency in zooming in and out, dancing within and between perspectives. As it’s described and I can relax into their perspective, I can flow with it — when I do it without guidance I need to be in an expansive state to get it.
It reminds me that some of us have forgotten what it is to be fully in relation. That it takes effort to remember.
The patterns are alive for me, that is where my gut tells me this exploration needs to go. And I see so many of them. Sometimes I wonder if I’m just another conspiracy theorist in the making, but from what I can tell so far I see no patterns that explain everything. And none of the patterns revolve around some secret cabal of anything trying to corrupt society. But I am vigilant around that patternicity, as well as collapsing into pseudo science — of defining myself in opposition to. With that caveat let’s dive in.
A pattern I am seeing in communities that I am a part of is that when we connect we do that diminished, instead of from wholeness. The pattern I see is one of reducing ourselves to fit in. In a way the price of connection is that reduction. What I am pointing to is that it is as much a part of the scarcity paradigm as the way we have constructed our money — it rests upon a belief that there is not enough room for all of us. Instead of trusting that we can show up with our full selves and still be accepted. Instead of trusting the other to hold the friction and to allow for our rough edges. We reduce ourselves, mutilate ourselves, polish ourselves.
In that lack of trust we step away from our developmental edge so we stop developing and in not trusting the other we stop trusting ourselves.
To the extent that we forget what it is to trust altogether. The reducing, protecting and cutting off is sometimes presented as a sound protective mechanism — a way for our bodies to make sure we do not get overwhelmed or traumatized. It is marketed as a way to keep us safe. What I’ve felt in my journey is that as I expand my capacity, my trauma threshold increases and the need for protection decreases. The irony is that as the protection keeps us safe it is also keeping us constrained. It is when we are willing to let go of that safety, magic becomes possible. It is like that final turn of the “Judge the other” form in “The Work” by Byron Katie: after you’ve answered what you would never like to experience again — the invitation is to turn that answer into “I am willing to” let whatever that was, happen. Because that is a precondition for the life we dream of. It is in the act of putting ourselves out there, of being vulnerable, to fully trust at the risk of being struck down or even destroyed that we open up the possibility of transformation. But we only get the full transformation when we step in and let go of our safety. And when we do that we realise that what kept us safe was not the reduction at all, instead it is to fully understand that no other being can actually hurt us. We’ve all seen it, in the unbelievable stories from conflicts with human suffering on a level that is beyond my wildest imaginations, where people walk out of the conflict, manage to integrate the experience and keep moving, even succeed in the face of fantastic adversity. I’m not saying that the pulling back doesn’t protect you, I am saying it is also holding you back. I am proposing that the only protection we need is the ability to let go. And if letting go feels abstract we can also call it the act of trusting, unconditionally.
I am surprised to find out where this line of reasoning took me when I spelled it out. I’ve reread this last paragraph several times now, wondering where it falls apart. I’ve personally felt the turnaround settle in when doing the Work — how that which was inconceivable becomes acceptable. And in that I’ve felt deep, instant healing of trauma, compassion where there was scar tissue, just by shifting perspectives. It is truly like magic — for all I know it might even be magic.
I’m attracted to go further. To temporarily ignore the voice that is whispering of naivety. The one saying that I am setting myself up for being hurt, cheated, run over, violated. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but I know where the safety protocol takes me, since it’s the one I’ve lived so far in my life. It’s not a bad place for me personally, but that’s because I drew a good hand of cards in the lottery that is life and not because of anything I’ve accomplished. I am curious to find out what I’ve left on the table — what if I was capable of fully trusting?
Let’s see. Where were we? Let’s keep peeling this particular onion. I’m proposing that without trust, connection is difficult, if not impossible. Without connection we lose respect and when respect is gone control becomes necessary since we cannot reach the other. The other, who cannot be trusted nor respected, is now becoming a self fulfilling prophecy. And each time I have the experience I lose the ability for reflection — to see the cause, that which is generating the outcomes. The separateness has blurred my vision, smudged the glasses if you will. If we don’t remove the glasses, clean them every now and then and replace them, we will not be able to regain that capacity. We stop being able to sense where the other is, and in that we go around worrying about what the other will do to us if we do not please them. This pushes the sympathetic nervous system into activation — at first on a low level but then with increasing intensity, exhausting us further as it goes on. Before you know it we can no longer direct or take action in the world. A collective freeze response or budding depression if you will. The paralysis puts us fully in the hands of the system of institutions — the ones we once created to assist us — letting it take over, fully. It reminds me of how some describe one of the main existential risks of AI. I’m saying that the same pattern is already here, already deployed. The systems we’ve built, patch by patch, trying to avoid yet another consequence of our separateness. Sweeping symptoms under the rug with a frequency and quantity that the rug is now rather forming multiple different hills for us to die on. All the while we are yelling at the top of our lungs, to tell our story to dominate all the other stories out there, to rally everyone to our particular hill. The collective noise is disrupting the little capacity we had left, stressing our individual and collective nervous systems further, triggering deeper collective trauma, feeding our depression and addiction.
I hope that you can see how this is not a result of malice. We do this with the best of intentions, trying to reach the others on their particular mountaintops, keeping all of us safe and yet it’s paving the road to a veritable hell as we are burning the planet.
In trying to save the world or fix “the problem” we forget that there is another way. Instead of looking across we could look down. If we did we would discover that our hill stands on ground, on soil. Perhaps there is mycelium in that soil, connecting us. Perhaps we’re on tectonic plates that are shifting with the evermore powerful fundamental forces that we all have part in. Both these images invite us to rediscover that we are already connected. But looking down requires humility, curiosity and care. Qualities of the parasympathetic nervous system. Qualities we cannot access while doing exactly what we have managed to convince ourselves that we’ll do “one last time” because this time it’s different, this is the last hit of disconnected domination and then we’ll put it aside forever and start trusting — just let us fix this one last thing that needs fixing, shout this last idea louder than we’ve ever shouted before, solve that one last problem we need to solve. Because this time we “know” we’re right. Not seeing that we are merely repeating our pattern, with more force, hoping for a fundamentally different outcome.
The lack of trust gets us here either way. Bottom up or top down. Paralysed with fear. Of losing what it is we thought we had. So what can we do?
What if rather than solving you need to stop? What if rather than bracing for a fight you need to take a deep breath? What if instead of opposing you could just extend your exhale, let your eyes take in the periphery and relax? That’s the easiest way to reset your nervous system and start connecting with your body again. And perhaps, in connecting with your body you can connect with other bodies — the ones closest to you, your community, other communities, other species, the earth. Perhaps connection will lead to respect that will lead to reflection and then eventually you will be able to direct again, but this time from a place of care — deep care. And in that deep care you believe yourself to be worthy of feeling meaning. And in that discovery of how good it can feel too, perhaps it will let you raise your expectations — from survival to thriving.
Perhaps you say that it cannot be. Because solving problems is what we as humans are good at, what we were meant to do.
We cannot resign now (as if stopping had anything to do with resignation). What if what I am pointing towards is that our current way of solving the problems is yet another way of trying to escape?
Another way of continuing the spiral of separation and the yearning for safety so we do not have to trust. What does it make us if you and I would stop to see, hear, feel the pain our particular hill of good intentions and solutions also holds? What if as we stop and look around, we discover that however horrible of a world you might be living in, there is also beauty. Plenty of it. Just because a lot of that beauty has been dismissed as unimportant does not mean that it actually is. The connection you have with those around you, your kids, the meal you made, the tears you shared, that text you got, that inspirational video you watched, the cat-video that made you laugh. This line of reasoning evokes words from the poem Sweet Darkness by David White: “You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.[…]”. Can you feel that? What if the world was made to be free in? Not as a symbolic statement but as a literal one. What if the world was made to be free in? What if freedom is available to all of us as a matter of perspective — as a starting point rather than an end — as a place from where existence begins from which everything else unfolds?
Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.
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Amit Paul is an entrepreneur passionate about facilitating the shift we are standing in front of as humanity. If you would like to get in touch or find out more about his work visit amitpaul.com
