🐙 Sensory
Realm of Possibility
Sometime in 2020 during the global pandemic I was on a phone call with a friend, Lucy I think & in that moment I came to a deeper realisation (which is still slowly unfolding) that the vastness and complexity of our world is meant to be navigated, processed and lived fully as part of a collective, not simply as an individual calculating all outcomes and discovering some magical answer. Yet all of our cultural systems of operating are structured in an individualistic way. Whether it’s finding a job, a partner, a house, being healthy or even saving the world, it all seems to be subtly framed as something an individual does by themselves.
This tension seems to be a big part of our stress, unease & ineffectiveness at making positive shifts. To be clear I don’t think the solution is as simple as dropping your individual identity joining a commune, cult or something of the sort. The honest truth is that you & I may never witness a fully interconnected rich social life within our lifetime because we are culturally conditioned & bureaucratically limited to live otherwise.
However I do find some solace in understanding that an individual doesn’t have to burden the weight of the world on their backs rather in order to be effective this burden should be shared.
Put another way, in the style of a cheesy quote “if you wanna go fast go alone, if you want to go far go with others”. This realisation is quite obvious in some ways but it seems like going against the grain of how things are structured currently.
At this point you might expect me to prompt an exercise of you to close your eyes and sensing into a supernatural collective field, which may be a thing I don’t know 🤷🏻 But on a more practical level I simply invite you to look around you and trace the origins of items around you, whether it’s clothes, furniture, food, computers, phones each one of these items takes a whole group of people to create and deliver to you. Particularly your phone which is likely made across 6 continent supply chains. However most of us might just think of one solitary person (Steven Paul Jobs) when we think of our phone. This view I think limits us in tapping into our collective insights. I am also definitely guilty of believing I need to be a lone creator, organiser or producer in my projects. On some level it also appears economically cheaper to do everything yourself, when you are operating within our market economy.
We seem to believe that other people are simply a means to enact our individual goals rather than potential collaborators, co creators or potential inspirations to a totally different path to take. Its starting to become well known that we receive & process information throughout our bodies and not just in our heads, however we may not extend this concept to the collective body of our community or humanity as an extension of our cognition and vice versa. This way of looking at the world around us has made me simultaneously more humble and proactive in my curiosity towards the people around me.
One of the framings that has served me well on this journey has been realising that quality questions are like sensory organs to the world around you. But this isn’t simply a technicality of asking good questions because the authenticity of your curiosity is almost as important as the actual question. It’s not about following a recipe of deep questions. If it’s not grounded in the moment people can subtly sense its a manufactured question.
The more you start to sense the word around you, you may start to sense what I casually call the collective emotional weather, I would highly advice to approach this feeling with caution. There’s a thin line between being informed and connected on one side and being totally overwhelmed on the other side. Being able to process and transfigure the intense voltage of the collective embodied cognition is a delicate balance that I am continuously trying to navigate.
This act of continuously discerning and orientating towards acts of nourishment is an art I believe will be crucial for the years to come. An art of deeply sensing what’s the root, trunk and fruit of possibility.
🍃 Some Invitations 🍃
🕯In Light of. . .(Gathering Aug 22nd)
🪔 Become a Member (A big thank you to everyone how has already become a member, a surprise is coming soon :))