🧬 Within
I could summarise this entire essay with this short phrase - inside is outside and outside is inside. Or maybe this phrase - the more you look inside, the more you are directed back outside into the cosmos. What do I mean by that? I will try to unpack what this means to me and why I feel its worth musing over.
We are often told to go within and find ourselves, our true selfs away from the conditioning of the world and in tune with our intuition. While I find this a useful and necessary exercise to tune your intuition and inner truth I find the imagery that comes up to be a bit misleading. Because if we take sometime to investigate our internal states, whether physiologically or psychologically we find that we are deeply made up of external factors whether its our parents, the food we eat, experiences we have or our closes relationships. All of these factors continuously shape us and our internal states.
One of the reasons why our language and general culture of self doesn’t take into considerations the multiplicity of external factors that shape us is because it can get overwhelming. We can start to feel miniscule compared to the mountain of factors that shape us, so we are better of ignoring it. On the surface this is a reasonable approach. Focus only on what you can control. However this popular rhetoric is actually limiting of your agency and counter productive for creating alliances with people that shape your life.
For example in the public health world it is well known that we are bio psycho social beings made up of our surroundings and experiences. This realisation has had a small but meaningful impact in the way we speak with our doctors. Evolving from a simple check up of your physical state to a more broader assessment around diet and exercise. Although there is still some developments to be made in taking into consideration where people live, how stressed they are about money, their social circles and where they find meaning in life etc.
By acknowledging the deep entanglement of our surroundings with our inner workings we can better asses ourselves and potential spaces for intervention on both an individual and collective level.
🍃 Some Invitations 🍃
🕯In Light of. . .(Book a space for the next gathering)