Sometimes there are words. And sometimes there is just the wild.
Words may ripen as understanding caresses the contours of a knowable reality.
And sometimes there is just the strange.
Forms and textures, slithering and shuddering in chiaroscuro. Shapeshifting, inscrutable. A reminder of the not-to-be-known. Sensations, instincts, urges, and guesses, entire.
This newsletter is a long time coming, and, to be frank, it still isn’t here.
When I write these newsletters, it is usually in one sitting.
I do not force myself to write. That would be against my nature and against my principles. I believe firmly in flow. So I allow flow to shape my life, and its products.
I know I ought to say something. And I want to connect with you.
So I’ve been sifting for and grasping at words. And still:
I don’t have the words yet for my experiences here.
To say things are different would be an understatement. Yet no proper statement can be made.
For it feels like a dream.
Like I am living in a dream (or living out a dream).
Dreams coming true in the most confronting, humbling ways.
Like rounding a blind corner and getting slapped in the face by a new reality.
And it’s not as pollyanna as “my dreams are coming true, so that means now my life is better!”
Honestly, it’s stranger than that.
Like submitting yourself deeper into an ominous REM-sleep dream that is already sucking you into a vortex to the underworld… you feel yourself choose surrender, relenting to see where this takes you, even if it shall eat you up and spit you out.
An instinctual knowledge, even older than fear, perhaps… is the faith that universe has you fully in its embrace.
Wildness as a Path to Higher Ordering
We are conditioned by western civilization over countless generations to think of that which is “wild” as that which is unpredictable, bold, strange, chaotic, threatening, and frightful.
And we are told that our civilization, in contrast, represents “order.”
But what if the reverse story were actually true?
And what we’ve been engrained to believe is just a motivated myth?
What if nature was order—was our path to a “higher order,” even?
And what if today's dominant civilization was a form of disorder, mistaking, ignorance, contradiction, misconduct?
What if there was an inborn, self-assembling order inherent to so-called “wild” life unfolding? Even if its movements might appear dynamic and dazzling to our human eyes.
What if life had a logic of its own and was capable of organizing itself into ever more complex and intelligent shapes and interactions?
What if the nature of life as a system was to internalize and increase intelligence?
We certainly observe this in ecological systems over large time scales. The emergence of more complex ecosystems, and biological forms, is proof that life flows from less information to more information and complexity.
We can also observe the cooperativism of organisms that co-create niches and interdepend, competing “just enough” to bring about superb harmony for the whole system.
What intelligence! And the testimony is right there.
So how do we miss it?
Our perceptions are trained by our perspective, which is conditioned into us by the culture and society we were born into.
We don’t perceive what we lack stories to believe.
And we especially don’t pursue what we lack processes to sense-make.
So let me introduce another compelling story, another alternate myth. This one also possesses the power to reorganize your extent belief ecosystem, if you don’t mind. ;)
What if I told you that these same principles of life as self-organizing and higher-ordering hold true at the scale of human life?
Let’s imagine: Life-as-a-whole is trying to unfold through you: you, as a particular sacred fractal of life in the universe.
And that if allowed, this Life force could reorganize you into a more integrated, more profound version of your self?
Living life to your fullest would mean giving yourself to Life entirely, in sacred fractal communion, to move through you.
We yearn to become our truest selves, to experience the harmony, peace and meaningfulness of that.
We yearn to integrate all our challenges into wisdom, all our pleasures into harmony.
What if our greatest ally in this process was life itself? Which in fact has already implanted in us our desire for meaning-making, our desire to live a more complete and purposeful life? And which is actively trying to ripen this potential and bring it to fruition?
Life and the innate, collective wisdom of living systems is our ally.
If we let it do what it must. And further, to extend our understanding to life is to allow an even richer, intimate communion.
Sometimes we must de-attach to the stories we thought gave our lives purpose and structure. In order to let a more organic, holistic organizing of ourselves emerge.
The core issue with a so-called “civilized” society that requires centralized control is: it insists you must invest and abide in extrinsic motivators, meaning: outside forces that tell you what you should be and do. By design of any centralized power system: you must be CONFORMED to the society’s logic in order to perpetuate it.
This does us harm. First of all, it breaks us of our inborn attachment and trust of our intrinsic signals. (And it does much worse… but that’s for another piece.)
You are urged to buy into stories that you’re not enough, not worthy, if you don’t accomplish [insert societal value or myth]. If you never feared the consequences of defying such an extrinsic “order,” you wouldn’t comply. If your direct ancestors never passed down to you the fear and the danger of NOT assimilating into society's order, you wouldn't comply.
Such a civilization could not sustain itself, without controlling you. Without you offering up your intrinsic living power to be funneled into the power of these presumed authorities to assert to you who and what you are best to become.
Much of this is unconscious. But once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
And, reborn in new knowledge,
You have new choices.
Don’t give your power away.
Your intrinsic self-organizing power is actually far greater.
It is what can bring YOU and US into fruition.
Move in the direction of that signal.
Choose your wild self, your unbridled truth.
It might feel like Intuition—or, the part of yourself capable of integrating and meaning-making your experiences.
It might feel like Spirit, whispering in your ear or nudging your attention in key moments of questioning or way finding.
It might feel like Life or Nature surging through you, in which your instincts and your actions align into a flow state of bliss: a re-unification between self and surroundings.
Move toward that signal. If you choose!
Allow it to reorganize you.
This is a path that, little by little, brings about extreme plentifulness and outrageous meaningfulness. So much so, it can boggle a mind trained for scarcity and pointlessness.
And that touches some of my experience lately. The whiplash. 💫
The extreme contrast between what I knew in my youth and what is ripening in my adulthood—is testimony to my lifelong embrace of change that integrates. And: it is still shocking to my system.
The distance between scarcity and suffering, and plenty and connection, can be a long road, or a sudden shift—a nonlinear liberatory “portal.”
Recently, I spoke about cultivating range, and range being important to leading a full human experience. But acquiring range also means undergoing LOTS of little and big shocks to the system.
I remain shocked, and awed. Again. By the universe seeming to have listened to, and responding to, my prayers. Seeming to hold and encourage me, even better than my little mind can manage myself.
And with my mouth agape in awe, I have scant words to offer yet. They will come in time, with integration.
And I welcome the shock, the awe, of a revolution in worldview.
The contrast between a life conditioned to proceed down a dead end. And a life exploding with aliveness out of every crack.
A product—not byproduct—of me re-training myself to follow intrinsic aliveness in every domain, throughout my whole adult life.
To suddenly encounter the abundant fruits of that way is still a holy surprise.
I would never want to get inured to such wonder. Wonder is the substance of reunion with life.
Wildness as Self-Regulation: the next Holisma ceremony, May 28th
I wonder if you would consider joining me for the next Holisma mass, whose theme is Wildness as Self-Regulation. 🌲🌲🌲RSVP Here🌲🌲🌲
We will dive deep into the notion that life is self-organizing, and that we can recover and regrow our capacity to participate in life in this way.
- We will explore and embrace self-organizing in our own lives, bodies, and meaning-making…
- in our communities through the emergence of collectives and movements…
- and how we might unlock a thriving ecological future through this cultural and internal path of “rebraiding” with living systems’ ways.
We will also honor our elders and ancestors, both indigenous and re-indigenizing, who knew in their bones, but who may have still been coerced and suppressed to conform to a centralized order that wasn’t quite as wise or rich in the long run as the living systems’ ways.
Please join us for an edifying ceremony involving mind, body, heart, and spirit “re-attuning” to the truths of self-organizing nature, in us and around us.
The event is one week from today: Sunday May 28th, at 4:44pm in Shared Ground’s sanctuary (chapel) room.
Reunification is what the Holisma ceremony spaces are all about.
And learning and embodying living systems’ ways is the path of Fractal Praxis.
Integration and the Outdoors
In the interim days before the upcoming ceremony, I will be taking one of my core medicine practices: going OUT to regroup with myself. I’ve observed that being immersed into a wild environment tends to improve and accelerate processes of integration within me. We modern humans lead lives filled with complexity, inundated with information and noise. In nature, by contrast: everything is signal, nothing is noise. And something about that is deeply intuitive. Something about that, we belong to.
And so to get more whole, we must remind ourselves of the wholeness waiting for us beyond our standard lives—just outside of doors. We must recognize that we cannot be if the wilds are not. We must protect and revere our outer and inner wilds, if we are ever to find our way back, ever to be reintegrated, ever to reinhabit our lives and the still-living pathways of belonging.
May you question fruitfully this week.
May you sort signal from noise most efficaciously this week.
And may you abide signal most gloriously this week.
And I pray Fractal Praxis and these offerings continue to register to you as signal.
With love,
C.
