A large part of my struggle over the last few years has been trying to find the signal vs the noise, online and in my own personal understanding of things. The noise being the simulated thinking, the knee jerk reactions and responses to the incessant flow of information. The signal being the information that holds-up in real time. The information that is truly relevant to assisting us in overcoming the challenges we face in the world.
Many are reflecting back what they see rather than questioning it, I played into this for a long time and am still working on it. It’s a natural way to feel belonging. Deep thinking is no easy feat and now with faster and faster sharing it’s diminishing our capacity to make sense of things even more.
To paraphrase Daniel Schmachtenberger, what’s meaningful is bound to what we think is real. if we give up on knowing what is real, we’re giving up the depth of our connectedness to what is meaningful. Giving up on sense making is an expression of a type of nihilism and it feeds into further nihilism.
Despite the hard work involved I’m continuing to seek out what is real verses what is simply noise because it equally provides me with a sense of meaning to strive forward and make the right decisions for myself, my family and the world at large. It’s annoying as heck to swim through the non-sense, especially my own. Most of it due to feeling a lack of agency with what we know needs to change, both in our personal lives and around the globe.
Finding reliable co-creators verses sources that want to keep us locked in a perpetual state of confusion are far and few in-between, and co-create we must, we’re an inseparable interconnected species. After some years I was lucky enough to come across what I determine as very coherent, mindful, heart based offerings to make sense of what I was feeling and guide me to the next level of focusing on embodying what I was learning. More importantly to help me recognize that I was participating in an online circus. Both my naivety and a feeling of powerlessness keep me in an artificial loop with non-sense.
Future Thinkers and Rebel Wisdom‘s courses and content came in right around the time I had seriously lost hope and had found myself neck deep in memetic tribal culture wars. To keep it brief, it began in the new age spiritual community then became deeply entrenched in the nihilist community and ended in the spinning simulated reality bubble of the “trigger happy forward thinking movement”.
There are just too many reasons for so called leaders to keep their followers both misinformed and confused. Let’s just put it this way, if no one had any incentives to disinform we’d all be closer to making important choices that create the changes we wish to see in the world.
More reasons to do the inner work, our shadows are wide and plenty and they’re hard fucking lessons. The more people you have looking to you for answers the more responsibility to attend to one’s own inner work. This is where slowing things down and stepping out of the game becomes paramount.
Choosing this path has definitely not bestowed me any popularity. Moving from tribe to tribe, staying committed to discovering motives, incentives and how my body was experiencing these online interactions.
You give people the benefit of the doubt, because that’s what we all deserve. Then you learn that many haven’t surrendered their teachings to what they’ve discovered to be true along the way. Instead they use what they’ve learned to guarantee their spot in the online circus.
They’re afraid of transitioning out of what they’ve learned is unhealthy, too comfortable in their identities because they are tied into their livelihoods. Sure, we all have to make a living but we have a greater responsibility to fess up to what we know is no longer working or to what we’ve outgrown within our own belief systems and personal philosophies.
“There’s two games here, there’s trying to get the best deck chairs on the titanic and there’s trying to save the ship. Nobody can think about how to rescue the ship. So instead we’re fighting for a position in a losing game. It’s important that it stops.” Eric Weinstein
Speaking to those I engaged with in extreme hierarchical and competitive online environments: It was next to impossible to continue to participate in what has been experienced as an online circus of narrative warfare that has nothing to do with conscious communication or any real attempt at embodying what we are learning collectively. If everyone were to only post their next best contribution the number of shares, posts and videos would drop by more than half. So who are we kidding? Only ourselves.
If you have the time to watch the interview with Daniel you’ll get a taste of what we’re dealing with and for those that know me, a huge portion of where my anger stems from across many platforms, teachings and meme tribes since as far back as I can remember, offline as well.
I’m an eternalist but I’m also a cynic. I suppose this has taught me that it’s about balance and not expecting anyone to have the final answers or to be super human. It’s simply about trusting what actually works on a micro level so that something greater can emerge on a macro level.
I want to expand on ideas that attempt at finding solutions for our times and to co-create from a place of non-rivalry. I want to spend the next year embodying more of what I know to be real.
I’m not excluded from this hard edge. I speak in second person but that’s what we do. What’s really taking place when we do this is we’re projecting our inner processing. It took me a whole of two years to crawl out of the traps and shadows, still sometimes pushing me into testing the limits of those I interact with online. This is why I had to slow down the sharing and start integrating. It’s no fun to come into greater truths and having to start over again and again, each time on a whole new level with nothing to hold me up except my own personal integrity and a sincere desire to grow.
If there is one thing followers don’t like, that’s seeing the people they put stock into change their minds. They especially dislike it if you contradict yourself or change lenses of perception and cultural lingo. Who wishes to build a following based on limiting oneself or on ideas they’re no longer in agreement with? Or based on ideas that aren’t continuously integrating a more expanded and inclusive view of the world?
Our struggle to contribute honestly without generating unnecessary polarization has existed since the beginning of time. What contributing online shows us is that we’re still only reaching the preliminary stages of dialoguing with no other incentive than to up our own internal playing field. The traps are great and the wrong incentives plenty.
Taking that next leap into action for me is about softening into my body and embracing healthy stress verses constant polarization. It’s about always levelling up and assuming responsibility for where I need to clean up my own house and apply what I’ve learned.
We will all fall short of bringing our best to the table as we attempt at uncovering what needs to emerge to better serve each other in becoming more empowered and proactive. It’s about being dedicated to self-overcoming for the betterment of all.