If You Can't Make Peace With Your Partner, How Can You Expect to Make Peace in the World? AMA with Annie Lalla

Do what Olympians Do. As an Olympian I know that mindset is key to which awesome athlete wins. Im concerned that most people are stuck in fear and anxiety about our collective future. We need to know and address the challenges, but keep focused on our collective desire for peace. What systems to change and who is doing what in the system you care most about? 

AMA with Nate Soares. Wednesday 2/4 at 10am CT

Author of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies answers questions about why superhuman AI would kill us all.

PLANTS ARE NOT CONSCIOUS.  

This is my response to a post to a Facebook group post about the idea that plants and animals without brains have consciousness; that plants, and other life forms without nervous systems like ours, might also have it. The comment, albeit popular in a trendy sorta' way, is far from justified. Here's why:

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Moving the Goal Posts:

To start with consciousness isn’t being found in plants. There’s no evidence for that at all. What is happening is that the word itself is being reframed to include more physical processes than intellectual reflection. That’s not new, panpsychism has been around for hundreds of years, probably longer. What’s changed isn’t the "discovery", it’s the cultural redefining of what consciousness is. With all of the obstacles to overcome creating AIs, computer science started taking it seriously, so people stopped laughing at the idea, and that tolerance has spread to neurology and layman speculations about nature; BUT let’s be clear, there is no actual evidence for plant consciousness at all. None. There’s just a social shift to how popular culture is saying it should be defined. The problem being that simple reaction ISN'T consciousness.

When people say “plants are conscious,” what they’re really describing is what a plant does when it’s faced with something that might harm it, but that’s not awareness, it’s an evolved physical response. You grow your hair for evolutionary reasons too, but are you aware of your hair growing? Can you choose for it not to? Are you monitoring the process as it happens

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What Actually is Consciousness?

Consciousness is an evolved, sophisticated result of the need for certain animals to move in complex ways for complex reasons. Take pain, as one example. Why does pain exist? Because when we’re in pain, we move away from it, QUICKLY. That’s its purpose. If you had to analyze pain before reacting, if say you leaned on a stove and had to think about whether to move or not, you’d be badly burned before you finished the thought. Pain bypasses thought. It makes us act now. It evolved due to the need for instant mobility.

A tree can’t move quickly. It doesn’t need pain. It doesn’t need that kind of awareness. ITS strategy is to become strong and massive so to withstand harm rather than avoid it. Grass handles harm by being flexible and abundant; one blade dies, another takes its place, the species survives. There’s no evolutionary pressure there for the kind of awareness pain provides animals. And since all of the emotions function as contextually behavioral presets using mobility as its medium like pain, plants have no reason to evolve those either.

Those preset reactions in us, are the roots of what we call “awareness.” The stored memories of predicted contexts that allows us to adjust our reactions more or less appropriately become our beliefs. And the total structural paradigm of those beliefs along with the emotions and awareness, cause our self-awareness, and our inner life, and THAT’s what we call "consciousness."

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If Plants Don't Think, What Are We Looking At?

Another thing people with this "plants think" idea get wrong is that plants quite literally don’t think or talk to each other. More accurately put, they react to each other through fungi. It’s the fungi doing the coordination, not the plant. So if we want to assign consciousness to something you don't assign it to the foot, you assign it to the brain, if you git what I'm sayin'. Through mycorrhizal symbiosis fungi trade their stability and ability to distribute resources for the plant’s sugar and energy. The fungi decide how nutrients, water, and chemical signals are shared. If you want to talk about something “brain-like,” it’s the fungi, not the tree. The fungi organize the forest. The plant itself just reacts.

And this kind of cooperation; one organism joining with another to create a larger, organized whole; isn’t unique to plants and fungi. It happens between animals and like with pollinators, even between animals and plants. Then there's when one plant or animal survives as a parasite of the other. Interestingly, the prevailing theory is that this is how single-celled life evolved in the first place. One simple cell drifting through the world, over time, adapts to new environments and splits into variations. Two different variations meet again, and as it happens come to work together as it helped them both survive. The ones that don’t cooperate either have to evolve differently to survive or die out, and the ones working together, integrated until eventually one cell absorbed the other. The idea is that, that's how modern cells got their inner mechanisms, like the cell's nucleus, that made them more complex cells than just the simpler walled off sectioned cells that they'd evolved from.

Were those early cells (or even the modern ones) “conscious”? Of course not. They're only cells. But can they react? Absolutely. Reaction and cooperation aren’t awareness. They’re steps toward complexity.

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The Brain Itself is Not Responsible:

The post also brought up the idea that animals without centralized brains have their own consciousness, without a brain, and yeah, I'd have to agree with that. The thing is though, the pivotal mechanism creating consciousness isn’t the brain itself. It’s the nervous system within the brain. The brain works because it’s a highly organized communication network like hardware capable of running complex, shifting contexts. That’s what lets us think and feel. An octopus, as an example, has a distributed nervous system that allows for a similar kind of complexity, even though it’s organized differently than a centralized brain with a spinal cord.

So yes, you can have a brain without consciousness, but you can’t have consciousness without a nervous system (or something equally complex to serve as the hardware) .....even an analogue machine would do the job, it just wouldn't be as quick as what animals have. Plants don’t have that. Their structure simply doesn’t allow for the kind of integrated, layered processing that consciousness requires.

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But We Aren't Plants, How Can We Know For Sure?:

And I think it important to address an argument possibly implied in all of this; the idea that plant consciousness might just be too alien for us to recognize is neither an objective position, nor is it true. That we can’t judge them by our standards because we don’t share the same kind of mind doesn't keep us from a clear analysis and comparison of the mechanisms involved. This idea contradicts itself.

Our definitions of consciousness come from us, from humans observing and describing the world. Plants aren’t taking part in that. The word “consciousness” belongs to the language of beings talking to themselves, not the plants. If you say plants have it, you’re already using the word differently than someone who says they don’t, and in a way that compares what they experience to ours. Their assumptions are in the possibility of that comparison.

It’s not that we can’t know either way, that our hands are tied and we've no choice but to remain agnostic on this. The arguments I've already made stand on their own. It’s that we’re talking about different things entirely. People who side with making the determination rest on a definition of "consciousness" that's precise enough to be used deductively, making this a 'yes' or 'no' answer, while people who side with not making that determination rest on the idea that we don't really know what "consciousness" is.

The thing is, is that while we can't know the intricate details about every last horse that exists, WE ACTUALLY DO have a clear definition of what "horse" means regardless of the infinite focus on those details, and as long as the same can be said for "consciousness", whether anything has it, will be at some point determinable. That is UNLESS, some of us are determined to keep moving the goal posts without considering the mechanism, and the definition keeps becoming blurred.

To hopefully hit this point home, remember the old “how do I know your blue, is my blue?” argument? Sure, we can’t directly feel each other’s experience objectively, without tainting our perspectives with our own individual views, but what we can do is look at the mechanisms that produce them. We can see how the brain processes light, how those processes create the experience of color, and then compare those mechanisms between people. From that, we can define what the “blue” mechanism is, and how we're experiencing the same and different things when the color pops up. The same goes for consciousness. We can see the structures that support awareness, memory, and emotional integration, and plants simply don’t have them. So unless we stretch “consciousness” to mean “anything that reacts,” there’s simply no reason to say plants have it.

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The Popularity of the Idea That They Do:

So why are so many jumping on the bandwagon? It's the other "old" story. People project themselves into everything in order to understand them. It's anthropomorphism 101. Some of us can't even analyze anything without projecting our self centered human traits on to it. It's why prejudices pollute so many of the beliefs of so many of the people you see around you. Whenever you say to yourself "How can this guy be so blinded by this crazy idea?" think about what's happening here and whether there's actually anything at all pointing to the idea that plants can think.

The concept of this app sounds promising. Do you think the internet can be a place for deep and meaningful conversations in this day and age?

The concept of this app sounds promising. Do you think the internet can be a place for deep and meaningful conversations in this day and age?

Metamodern Love . I am at the airport passing into the US to hold the Fall Metamodern Spirituality Lab (on Love) at Sky Meadow in Vermont. My hunch is that a lot of what a platform like this one should do is exchange what we're doing, where we are, who we're with, etc. and not just our ideas and responses to things. So here's a nod in that direction. 

If this platform is built on trust, then I vow to show up as I am — open, honest, and real. Will I fail this test or flourish? Let’s find out.

I don’t know if I am doing this right. . I had the urge in my car to start singing an improvised song (inspired by my relateful camp experience at Annabeth’s Vocal Flow and Kedar’s bonfire jam) and it was in that exploration that I had the epiphany that I am allowed to write bad poems! This really excites me and now I’ve started to write a bunch of things that I feel poetic about. The permission to be bad has been crucial in my permission to try, and now I am wanting to maintain my permission to be bad and try in front of others. 

I haven’t posted on UpTrust because I question whether or not I am really “trustable” on any topic. I don’t feel qualified, or justified, or certifiably “trustable”, apart from maybe my honest attempts at honesty. But my honesty =/= truth. I could speak honestly about what I think a Beef Wellington is and still be wrong.  

But I can write bad poems, and I can be wrong, AND I can do that publicly. And in doing it publicly, maybe my poems become better and my honesty becomes truer. 

Ordinary Love. An invitation to true wellness culture

Postmodernity is too egocentric. This includes current “spiritual” trends.

Here’s what an alternative can look like: Yesterday Dara asked Jason to install a window A/C unit in Val’s room; he came over and did it. Last night a participant shared struggling with a contract at work, and a lawyer in the session volunteered to help her redline it. My sister watches the kids while I help my brother-in-law move their furniture to make room for the new baby. If this doesn’t sound special, that’s the point. You’re already doing this, that’s also the point.

I’m not writing to admonish us to “get rid” of the “ego”—a particular self-identity*. I think it’s too hard for modern Americans, steeped in a culture of individualism. I love life, people, experience, and I think a good life includes a sense of “me.” Instead, I want to expand the sense of self to go much beyond the concept of “my body, my history” to see the larger whole these are part of. One upshot of this is gratitude, even for what I usually think of as “Jordan’s”—like these thoughts thunk in English. I needed English to think ‘em, so how much are they ‘mine’? 

Automated & consensual narrative lock-in

We know that social media exacerbated this. Many studies show narcissism and loneliness increasing faster with mass adoption of social media, especially after 2012. Young kids don’t want to serve as a fireman or doctor anymore, they want to be adored as an influencer (We’re working on this social media problem by launching UpTrust). 

Now I worry that AI is exponentiating this self-reification trend to unprecedented levels.

Last week I met four people who were convinced that their personal ChatGPT interface, molding its “personality” to respond based on their unique interactions, was a sentient being. If you think our filter bubbles are bad now, imagine what it’s like when we have 8 billion of them? Each individual’s personal collection of bots reinforcing whatever identity feels special, safe, and comfortable, no matter how limited and delusional?

There’s nothing wrong with specialness, safety, and comfort, but neither is there anything wrong with ordinariness, risk, and discomfort. Transformation, life, intimacy, and play all demand both. Are we bleaching the color of life in pursuit of maintaining a self? What are we so afraid of that we hide from becoming? Life is transformation. Relating requires and changes our uniqueness. Other people providing friction and challenge—that’s a service, freely given to all at birth.

Perhaps the trap isn’t narcissism. It’s any reification of identity via any narrative frame, especially spiritual ones, designed to parade as if they’re narrative-free. And the cost is ordinary love.

Transcend and exclude often means we fall back into less maturity

I’m still trying to get my mind and language around this, so I’m going to highlight the contrast to see the phenomena more clearly. Does your coach / (AI) therapist / culture / practice help you:

• Express more gratitude? Become more forgiving? Be more accepting of others’ flaws? “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court”?
  Or say you should be treated a very particular way (reifying a victim identity?)

• Build infrastructure that’s super helpful but unsexy? Do things that are good for others without recognition? Feed those who are hungry? Do mundane things for the local whole like pick up trash that’s not yours?
  Or build a marketing funnel that will help you promote yourself and perpetuate the ‘me’ ‘me’ ‘me’ cycle? 

• Love your friends and family better? Accept being misunderstood? Show up to their events and support their successes? Take care of them when they’re sick? Be more generous? Patient, humble, respectful, loyal, temperate? Maintain commitments regardless of feelings?
  Or emphasize your in-the-moment desire above all else, calling impulsivity and self-centeredness ‘surrender’?

• Develop boundaries as expressions of love and connection? Face challenges with grace and acceptance? Take responsibility for your pain, flaws, mistakes, shadows, and limitations?
  Or use "boundaries" to control others and force them to change according to your preferences?

• Admit ignorance, learn from criticism, hold your beliefs lightly, speak simply about profound experiences, work steadily without needing dramatic breakthroughs, notice your defensive patterns without performatively announcing them, contribute to social understanding, love others as they are?
  Or position yourself as having rare insights to help others transcend their limitations through your techniques and advice?

This list can go on; I wish I could speak to the connection and community side more but I’m stuck in my own bias. 

I’m not saying it’s easy, we of course need guides, mentors, feedback–it’s so complicated! Nor am I saying its special—all of this has been said for thousands of years! I’m trying to highlight a healthy version of one pole and unhealthy versions of another on purpose to get more clarity on where we are deeply unbalanced today. This is especially true of ‘spiritual’ hotbeds like San Francisco, Boulder, Ubud, Amsterdam. Austin is somewhat counterbalanced by its Texas-ness—cowboy culture still emphasizes family, duty and sacrifice to a greater good beyond ‘you’. Plus our immigrants are a little more integrated.

What’s up with me?

Anyway, I ask myself: Why do I care?

Sure, practices purported to transcend ego instead teach self-absorption. But it’s in the name— "personal growth" and “self-help.” What’s got me?

Because I’m guilty of all of this. 

Sometimes despite my best efforts, I’ve taught people to ignore their minds in order to stay with the sensations of their bodies (rather than integrating them); to ‘surrender’ to their feelings-in-the-moment and ignore larger consequences or agreements and the greater wholes that hold them. I’ve corrected a lot of these mistakes, made amends, even evolved the practice and training. Yet I still can’t quite escape the selfishness of ‘wellness’ culture. Prime example: a couple years ago we hosted a “Give Fest” at the Relateful Studio in Austin with a reverse silent auction, where people bid on what they wanted to give to a local nonprofit. Even my wife and I didn’t follow through on what we ‘won.’

Let us redefine wellness and self-development. Let us change the metrics to gratitude, forgiveness, acceptance of our and others' flaws, showing up for family, friendship, and our greater communities. Let us celebrate unglamorous, unwitnessed interdependence.

Three alternatives: what is it all for?

Burning Man is actually a great example of a positive alternative. The economy is about gifting—and after your first year, it’s well known that to get the most out of the experience, you need to give. People camp in communities, build massive art projects and cars together, and give them freely without credit, burning them at the end. It’s all about creating for the whole, being present with each other in non-transactional relating. All of this disrupts the self-reification loops in such a way that people are consistently shaken from long held encumbrances, and come out of the desert transformed. I say this as an admirer but not a fanatic—I went to Black Rock City in 2012 and 2014, and then didn’t go again.

Relatefulness

Relatefulness, especially in Level Up ⬆’s Leadership Program and the The Relateful Coaching Training, does not fall into these problem nearly as badly as almost every other community I’ve seen. We claim our directionality of truth + love. This means the personal can’t be number one—individual expression and growth is always in service of something greater. Of course we make mistakes. (For example, the Level Up structure highlighted individualism. We’ll be returning to a cohort-only model this Fall—more on that in a future email). But we’ve done a really good job focusing on being with what is, especially relationally and communally. 

We don’t abandon compassion and honesty in service of making sure people feel seen, heard, cultivating a ‘safe space,’ or maintaining instagram-defined-trauma-therapy-norms. This is hard, because I not only want people to feel seen, heard, safe, and heal, I think it’s crucial for a healthy community and for the true pursuit of truth and love. It just needs to be in service of love/truth, rather than an end unto itself. It needs to come authentically from the moment, not as a script or status signal or performance. We run into generative friction embracing the seeming paradox of this polarity all the time, and it is incredibly demanding of our facilitators to walk this tight rope. It demands that we are always changing, individually as leaders, as a community, and even the practice itself. Even our coaching teaches revealing identity commitments, inherently making the self an object in a larger self that can choose “yes” or “no” to, versus reinforcing a self and an existing worldview.

And even as we teach people how to meta-narrate as a way to witness and disembed themselves from unconscious habits that have been running them, we recognize that the compulsion to name and categorize experiences—spiritual or otherwise—often becomes a form of conceptual possession, serving self preservation rather than self-transformation.

Frozen
The Disney movie Frozen shows another fantastic example of a healthy alternative. (I just watched the Broadway version with my kids this weekend, so it's fresh on my mind). 

In my view, the critical part of Elsa moving from “Conceal don’t reveal” to “Let it Go” is not about self-expression, it's about surrendering the need to control, particularly others’ reactions to her true nature. As a result she loves what she previously saw as her shame (her ice power), an identity transformation that eliminates the victim-perpetrator dynamic entirely and unlocks her ability to use her power for everyone’s benefit.

But of course the most incredible part is reframing the trope of “true love”—not just from romantic to familial love, but about the act of loving others. The secret that ‘healed’ Anna’s frozen heart wasn’t receiving ‘true love’ from someone else, but her performing a selfless act of true love herself. Even better, she truly loved the one who accidentally caused the curse in the first place, in a show of what I like to call “true forgiveness”—there was never any threat to love’s presence in the first place. So in some real sense, nothing to forgive. Family love, particularly love that endures despite harm, represents the ordinary, unglamorous love that doesn't depend on worthiness or reciprocity (romantic love ideally is the same, but often feels like something we need to earn or could lose). 

Oh and there’s the wonderful Olaf, as a projection of the best of Anna and Elsa’s innocence in childhood. And I love that it’s not spiritual :)
 

True spirituality isn’t spiritual (and is definitely not about ‘me’)

As usual, I’m writing this for myself as much as anyone. Can I experience states of fundamental wellbeing, help others, and act with virtue and integrity without any internal or external narration / validation? Without needing it to be spiritual development? Who would be accumulating spiritual experiences or qualities anyway, and what would they be good for if not to benefit the whole of existence?

Can all of my mastery lead me to being completely ordinary? Not needing actions to be recognized as anything, even by myself, I respond to what's in front of me without overlaying (spiritual) significance.

And can I not do that for the sake of development either? If I notice that self-referential trap, may I love myself in it and move on with the normal good stuff of living. The self-referential loop is infinite if I engage it.

Instead, let me show up lovingly for the sake of itself, because that’s what love does.

—

*Although that is a path that can work for some people like Byron Katie or Eckhart Tolle, it’s a hard one to “do” because the will that acts needs to eventually be transcended. In both of their histories, their dissolution was more done to them.

(this will be sent out to my #TTT email in a couple of days, but UpTrust gets the early exclusive ;) )

Monogamy v polyamory. Is monogamy better? Is poly better? Is there an overall norm for people, with exceptions? Is it totally pluralistic? Here are some points for monogamy, with some counter points, to convey some of my uncertainty but nevertheless leaning into what I’ve chosen:

• Point: I don’t know a single polyamorous couple that’s lasted more than a decade, whereas I know a ton of lifelong monogamous couples.
  • Counterpoint: many of the lifelong monogamous couples are not healthy relationships
    • Counter-counter-point: perhaps being in a lifelong commitment, even if the relationship isn’t ideal, is more healthy than being hyper-independent, especially as you get older. This runs right up against boundaries, how to know what to tolerate/love as is, when to leave, etc
• Point: The poly focus of attention tends to be the relationships themselves, often a kind of relational narcissism, rather than the relationship being a foundation for engaging the world in love (ironically). This is my version of the poly is impractical argument. Most of the people I meet practicing polyamory are constantly putting tons and tons and tons of life energy into their relational problems, and it seems like their relationships are often built around addressing these problems rather than enjoying life together. The fact that it takes so much time and energy points to something being a little off. Monogamous relating also takes energy but it usually seems less self-referential; they’re more often helping each other face and engage the world, rather than face and engage each other and their relationship.
  • potential counterpoint: You’re making a developmental point Jordan, not a mono/poly point. Most people practice poly from a Red ego-centric POV; most people practice sex from Red as well. If you practice from a genuine Green+ polyamory, this doesn’t happen.
• Point: Humans are largely monogamous; it’s instinctual
  • Counterpoint: How would we know if its cultural versus biological versus systemic versus psychological per person/family? it only takes a couple of generations of evolution to make massive physical changes, so even if it is biological, how could we know what’s possible for the future?
  • Counterpoint: people wanna fuck, especially dudes
  • Cheating, mistresses, polygamy, Sex at Dawn etc…
• Point: Many poly people avoid endings, boundaries, standards, and facing their own karma by just jumping from relationships to relationship. Sure monogamous people do too, but many of them end up getting married and that crucible forces them to face their stuff. Far fewer poly people get married, and when they do they can still use other relationships to avoid their shit
  • Counterpoint: we can use absolutely everything to avoid our shit.

there’s tons more, just want to get the convo started…

Quick take. Whether you are familiar or not with Freud's concept of "the narcissism of small differences", it's affecting the way you relate to people and ideas 

Can a worm be rehydrated? . At what point does a worm truly die? If I see a kinda dried out worm on a sidewalk, can it be rehydrated? 

Calm Your Heart.  

Calm your heart down

let your heart walk steady through the world.

let your heart give gently and generously

let your heart break and bleed peacefully

let your heart rest.

let your heart beat

let the rythm of your steady heart be the song that calls to your beloveds

let your heart sing the tone

and when your heart sounds the alarm

calm your heart down.

love is not an urgent matter

life is not an urgent matter

now is when it is.

calmed, your heart will still leap

I swear to you

that steady gentle love plenty often stirs itself

into a frenzy of adoration

a prosperity of passion

the drama of play

and the panicked heart

moves startlingly

running off what is at peace.

scaring away what was

only ever there to love.

We don't always have to feel connected with ourselves first to connect with others. Sometimes, I find myself in connecting with the other. Waiting to feel a certain way to join others, like waiting to lose weight to start going to dances; or waiting to feel confident to make that call we dread; or waiting for "signs" to talk with your partner and tell them you've thinking about separating (you thinking about it IS the sign to have the talk). I've seen in others` eyes the love that I have not had for myself in certain moments...the acceptance, the compassion, the understanding I can't sometimes reach on my own. What's stopping you, sometimes, to be felt and seen as you are?#DeepTakes

Hey what's up uppies I'm just here uptrusting at the best time of the week, Friday night! I'm here to share my most popular blog post from February when I wrote a blog post every day. Here it is!

musings on god

As someone interested in sharing ideas and perspective and frameworks about living well, it feels right to share my relationship with God, who might be described as the ultimate mental model. I’m shaking my hands and doing vocal exercises over here because I don’t want to cling to a desire to find perfect phrases or descriptions, good is good. I’m also letting go of a desire for you to receive these words any particular way. In a sense, this one is a dialogue between me and God, and you are also in the room with us, listening.

I’m quite cerebral, thinky, logical, and this extends to my conceptions of God. A Christian evangelical friend has pointed out this trait of mine during a few conversations we’ve had. God, as a concept, is Big. Infinite, even. I’d really love some ironclad proof towards His existence if I am to priortize Him in the long arc of my life.

As a kid, I had a conversation with my youth pastor about what I saw as the pros and cons of being a Christian. I told him that I didn’t particularly care about reading the Bible or going to church or doing good works, but heaven sounds pretty great. The pastor assured me that I can indeed go to heaven just by accepting Jesus into my heart, and so I did that with his guidance right then and there in the Panera Bread. We drove to a bookstore and he bought me a Bible, and then he drove me home and relayed the good news to my parents.

A few weeks later the burden of proof became burdensome to my discerning mind, and I revoked my membership as a Christian.

Skip ahead to recent years where I have lived in Austin, Texas, a testament to the profound influence of my environment on who I am. A flurry of connections, events, retreats, and self-study have led me to enjoy the existence of God*. That’s God with an asterisk because it’s the spiritual-but-not-religious God, the God who would never send anyone to hell, the God who just wants us to enjoy our lives, man. It’s a big tent God and we’re all welcome inside because the proof is like water to humanity’s school of fish. The sun on my face and this latte’s great taste and all of life’s little abundances are proof of God, full stop.

So now we come to the ultimate question without an answer. Everyone has their take on God and religion and faith and heaven and hell, and my relationship with God is up to me, no pressure. It’s my responsibility to sift through the incense and the nonsense to have a relationship with God that makes sense? feels right? is resonsant? with who I am.

Of course I am sympathetic to the conceptions of God that do not ask me to fundamentally change as a person, that do not ask me to jump through a collection of seemingly arbitrary hoops, but God knows that about me! Obviously! And this might be the trick of a God in my life, a lovely sort of paradox, one that I have noticed also holds true for human relationships.

To elaborate: when you need something from someone, they resist giving it to you. When you don’t need anything from anyone, people give stuff to you. The God-as-I-currently-conceive-of-Him doesn’t really ask me for anything, and so I talk with Him and I express gratitude towards Him and I meditate on Him and I do my best to live a life of service that is authentic to who I am as a person, a person uniquely crafted by God, as all people are.

Again, this is all Quite Convenient for me, I don’t want to downplay that facet of my current relationship with God. A me from some time ago who was more prone to paranoia and self-doubt might have feared that this is all a trick of the devil who has succeeded in nudging me away from accepting specifically Jesus into my heart or having a specifically Christian faith. That fear is vanishingly small now but it persists, anything is possible.

I admit to a sort of hubris in all of my attempts to apply my human logic to God. God is beyond, more than, infinite. Life often only makes sense looking backwards. God knows that I view the general positive trajectory of my life over the past years as His tacit approval of the evolution of my relationship with Him. I enjoy my relationship with this God of mine informed by vibes and the Tao Te Ching and the spirituality of people who I admire, and I’m open to this relationship shifting radically, instantly, profoundly. It’s an ongoing conversation, perhaps the most fulfilling, enjoyable, and comforting conversation that I am so fortunate to have. Amen!

Better holding environments as a growth imperative. There is never just an individual.

The word refers only to that side of the person who is differentiated from something.

Something like relationships perhaps? Or maybe environments?

My hot take is that relationships are environments in which individuals are embedded in - and at most levels these days, they pretty much suck. And that's why the world also has a lot of challenges right now. 

I think it's imperative to our collective development that we have stronger holding environments.

I think we can do quite much better in parenting, family life, schools, local communities, and global collaborations. I think we're ready for something more than personal development and interpersonal development. I wish for more group-development: groups learning how to support individual and group's development with, without and through being embedded in them. 

I think it starts at the level of parenting and ends at the level of global coordination. 

I'm greatly inspired by Robert Keagan's work around holding environment's role in human development. He talks about how "good" environments hold us (we are fused), let go of us (we differentiate), and stick around (we reintegrate back into). 

I'm starting to come to terms that this is something that has my name on it. It's my life's work to create these kind of environments. This is why I'm so into parenting (the first holding environment), and community building (the art of holding holding environments). It's why I'm currently creating an alternative to a school. And building a village. I think uptrust is one example of this, and that's why I'm here.

And I think Kegan is really on to something when he writes:

 “Your own sense of wholeness or lack of it is a large part a function of how your own current embeddedness culture is holding you.” 

I'd love to dive deeper into more conversations about how we can make better environments.