Reclaim wonder
The way to become more comfortable and more at ease in a shifting, changing world is to make friends with the feelings that are evoked by nothing to hold onto. – Pema Chodron
Remember splashing in puddles, watching reflections, and looking up to see the prisms of leaves fluttering in the sunlight? Can you remember the innocence and openness when answers to “everything” were not held in a screen? We could gaze at the stars, trying to identify which sparkled most brilliantly. Our primary sources for information were direct communications with other humans - our parents or friends, and from books. Solid, print on paper books, that could not morph and change from one moment to the next, that held substance, and with this some reliability in established knowledge, even as that body of knowledge is always in movement.
The pace of change in information management has already rapidly outpaced what is healthy, sustainable and beneficial for our brains, nervous systems and psyche. For many years, I’d been reflecting that Google has quashed our natural capacity for wonder. Curiosity is the essence of life and learning. Sitting with it, wondering, digging, meeting frustrations, confusion and learning new things is the very process of evolving.
Now that we are careening at breakneck speed through the era of AI, there is even less space between a rising and a response. Between a wondering and the space of mystery and some form of response. The response will be contrived and distorted and siphoned through countless algorithms to keep the user engaged, satisfied, and coming back for more. AI (at least in terms of Chat GPT, etc) is almost entirely created and controlled by capitalism and the Empire. The acceleration in 2026 has been exponential and will continue to be. The environmental impact is massive and so, dear friends is the impact on our humanity.
The less we have a grounding in a natural, aligned sense of self and world view, the more “at sea” our mind is. When it does not know its place, the mind will spin and spiral and grasp with even more vigor for some kind of certainty. It does not actually care which side or direction it lies. It just fulfills its function.
Uncertainty is the very soil of creativity. To sit with discomfort, opening to the vast field, to be moved by life and not know where it is taking us. This is the creative impulse and ride.
Every creative holds simultaneously the wild creative muse and the desire to produce beauty or create to the best of one’s capacity. The unknown is the wind moving through our bones, bending us. It is the stars gleaming overhead, igniting the traveler, the astronaut within.
Let’s face it, not knowing is really uncomfortable for many of our minds. Sitting with the unknown is life. No matter how much knowledge of facts we accumulate - about the nature of this planet, on history, science, social evolution, astronomy, and on and on - there is vastly more that is not known, will never be known and is changing.
The Cosmos is changing. Our cells are dying, and new ones are forming every second.
Estimates are that 1- 4 million cells die every second.
330 billion new cells are created every day.
Our ego loves to think it knows - who we are, who you are, what’s happening, what will happen. A healthy, robust ego is right and necessary for social and relational functioning development. A healthy ego has a relationship of resilience and robustness with the nature of change and the movements of the great forces.
Right at the heart of the awakening human experience is cultivating the capacity to hold infinite Mystery with what is taken as reality. Enough knowing and certainty of structure on our lived experience to stay sane and know how to navigate relationships, work, identity, and enough surrender to the infinite unknowable to stay humble, curious, and open.
These are not qualities that any artificial intelligence can ever support. Our mystical, indefinable, timeless essence is ours to ponder, explore and value. That means not being lazy. It means letting go of the instant options popping into our senses 360 degrees. It means boredom and fear and confusion and wonder. It means opening too to the Mystery as the bedrock of what it is to be in a body.
~ My first book, “Coming Home” which is available on Amazon. The second is being lived and written, along with a book of poetry.
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~ The Extraordinary Ordinary are raw, deep writings on what it is to be alive as a human, awakening from skin after skin of identity. A human that is an expression of Infinite consciousness exploring what it is to put feet on this earth.
~ I am an explorer and guide of awakening consciousness, soul companion, teacher, guide, mother, and author. My lifelong experience and dedication are in waking up and walking in this life, eyes and heart open, feet on the ground, connected to the stars. In other words, to come home. I guide in the incredible journey of embodying awakening and living in full-spectrum authenticity, and facilitating group meditation and transformational events and one to one work.