On Beings as Patterns: leaning into our quantumness

being is: inhabiting — a mode of operation

— not a solo entity —

patterned elliptical rings in a 4d shape float in a milky galaxy of purple poofs, green glows, neon stars and luminous orbs

i’ve been viewing the world more in terms of pattern than entities.

this thing we perceive as an individual is really just a specific pattern of the universe that is blooming up here in this moment of spacetime. even me, fuzzy, am not just one or even several patterns. each of us, infinite patterns that have a higher or lower probability of exciting through into matter and form.. or what we call “reality” aka matereality or matter-reality.

i’ve been feeling myself merging with other people’s energies for moments. overlapping, a new completely different pattern emerges. i notice this more intensely since i’ve been viewing ‘relationships’ themselves as their own beings (as in both verb: a mode and noun: a conscious living thing.) and as you know if you’ve been reading along recently, i’ve been in the state of exploring relationship as art medium for about a year. i explore, express, and acknowledge all my connections as relationship; not just my relationships to other humans but to communities, ecosystems, our other-than-human earth kin, unearthed beings and energies including ideas, objects and matter, symbols, systems, elements, and forces. everything as relationship. matrices within matrices and all valid beings/entities in their own. this is connected to my understanding of us as quantum beans, quantum matter. in quantum physics, quantum matter is understood to be in ‘superposition’ at any given time. superposition refers to being in many different, all valid states at once, like a wave (varied and in flux) as opposed to a particle (specific and stagnant). quantum matter, therefore only appears to be particalized (in a certain place, state, or structure) when being measured or observed. meaning us, quantum matter, only appears to be solid matter as long as a consciousness (including our own) is perceiving or observing us. so…spoiler alert.. we are in fact these fluctuating patterns that are only ever momentarily discernible as a small percentage of the full truth of who and what we are.

when i carry this truth into my daily awareness, many things are set at ease. for one, much potential energy reverberates in my being — neutral and magnetic — when it passes a threshold of activity it feels like adrenaline or anxiety. a lot of that i’ve found comes from the desire of the different parts and patterns within me to be expressed or at least acknowledged. if i’m connecting to myself as a multitude of pattern matrices all with the potential to be brought forth, my being feels whole and unfractured. parts of me that may feel stifled or hidden when i’m more connected to myself as an idea of a certain thing, can relax when i acknowledge that i can be any number of things at any given time. i’m now available to be whatever makes the most sense, or is the most attractive (read: magnetic) pattern/expression at any given time. “i”, fuzzy, am more available to just “be” (as in active verb) in each present moment. i call this mode of relation Quantum Realism. behaving as such that our quantum nature is our truest nature regardless of the ways that may seem to contradict our understanding of linear physics or matereality. [Embracing Superposition is one of the tenants of Quantum Realism which i discuss further in my forthcoming book Earth Stuff: Spirit Vision.] when Embracing Superposition, i’m not operating from old programming or projected plan, but from the source of me ~ the multitudes of fluid patterns that might burst forth at any moment. a truer picture of me emerges, one that is vastly more interesting then when i spent time trying to craft and act from an externally-influenced, designed avatar/archetype.

timing gets synchronous when we are meeting and responding to the present with presence — an example of how our quantumness supersedes our connection to linear physics. time is pliable and fluid. our destinations and connections (or what quantum physics calls entanglements) have the opportunity to come meet us when we are acting from our embodied present. those patterns that challenge or compliment ours on our emerging journies sprout up with ease. it’s like being the star in our own open world videogame (okay but what’s the difference..shh). i decide or lean into exploring a concept, then emerging all around me, articles, songs, a random convo, a chance encounter, physical objects, ambient ideas all relating to the theme. if i’m busy trying to be anywhere but right here, i miss all these gems.

i also find it easier to not pedestalize and anxiously attach/overlap with other humans’ patterns. as i discussed in visibility in the era of chronic overexposure and systemic disempowerment masses of folx aiming for a systemically imposed supreme ideal makes a disempowered, disembodied, controllable collective. the living idols of this culture are the larger-than-life humans who appear to fill these supreme ideals and are thus stripped of their humanity. this is an anxious attachment pattern. when we give others the grace of also holding them in an understanding of superposition, we not only have context for multitudes of sometimes conflicting patterns within an individual, we also make space for ease of change and growth for us all. our patterns can freely mingle, overlap, and detach as needed. i’ve found when i’m busy being with my multitudes, i have little time to obsess over someone else’s. i have more time to revel in the momentary expressions and emergent patterns that i get to witness in others. of all the timespaces i got to witness this ! by extension the beauty in deepening intimate relationship lies not in the getting to know a “true” and defined version of someone, but in getting to see the larger emergent pattern of a being that is only apparent through many moments of contact and observation. another name for the overlapping of our patterns in spacetime — intimacy — is a being not a knowing.

visibility in the era of chronic overexposure and systemic disempowerment

also: how to be visible today is to be cancelled

fuzzy’s torso mirror image dissorientingly refracted thru waves of water speckled with refracted light squiggles

a closer look at the idolization of mere mortals in whom we project our greatest possible goodness or success.

those who relentlessly share internet opinions on the lives and being of others aren’t necessarily doing it for the purpose of changing others’ minds (tho some are). rather the target audience is for those whom might agree with them. something to rally and connect around. something to help us feel belonging and like our opinion and our being in the world matters to someone or something. we are in an age of the disempowered individual. that is not new. bayo akomalafe said recently in a course i’m taking: the biggest fetish of white modernity is the individual — this idea that we are all disconnected and that that makes us special. it is a strategy of playing people against each other and dismembering collective power and collective agenda. to fracture our connections not only from each other and our present, physical communities; but also to fracture us from our heritage, traditions, and ancestry, our greater-than-human kin, ecosystems, and our own ‘em-bodied wisdom (our body’s deep knowing, inclusive of epigenetics, intuition, self-knowledge, spiritual understandings).

occasionally, and refreshingly, there are those who maintain their weirdness, their own beat on their rise to visibility. they still do not escape these patterns of expectation and disappointment. thousands or millions of people telling you (or usually just shouting into the e-void) what it is you should be, do, and how. the same people who struggle with or aren’t even trying to figure out their own way of being and doing. it is the desperate human need for community and connection that has warped this pattern of behavior in the material of these times. because adherence is what is rewarded. and an idol can only stay pedestalized for so long. we are so far from our connection to ourselves and our communities that people feel physically or metaphorically assaulted by unexpected/undesired behavior from their idols.

so what does it mean to be visible when individualistic modernity has coded a supreme/hierarchical ideal into our collective consciousness? to meet these standards at the peak is to transform into a larger-than-life living idol. something more important than spiritual, familial, or self connection in the eyes of pop culture. these are our living gods that we hold to impossible standards. [think beyonce, lizzo, kanye west, doja cat, will smith, kim kardashian, simone biles, miley cyrus, drake.] and when it is inevitably (often gruesomely) revealed that these people are not gods, but mere mortals with human flaws and teams of people behind them orchestrating this vision of perfection, we are aghast, disappointed beyond belief… “how could they??!” after we placed our whole vision of ideal and perfection upon them.

at all levels i find, to be visible is to be cancelled, maybe just by one person but there is someone who is projecting their disempowerment onto that which they do not agree with within us. and there is always something within each of us that each other does not agree with. that is the glorious beauty of the universe differentiating thru so many fragmented embodied experiences. instead of celebrating this, we abhor it. how dare someone else be when we feel stifled at every direction. how dare they shine and not fit our pre-molded understanding.

the threat of cancelization or public humiliation is a tempting excuse to keep ourselves small. we are biologically coded to deeply need belonging because as humans we need eachother to survive. this is also a quintessential method of hierarchical control. if you do not obey, you will be ostracized, your life and well-being will be compromised. this is all part of the cycle of disempowerment of supremacy systems.

so what’s the answer to keep our peace and keep our shine? i’m still sorting that out… i’m sure it is not a one size for all answer though. i do feel it can’t hurt to always lead with compassion. then to sus out what i’m available and have energy for as well as what others have the availability to receive. sometimes it makes sense to show love to the haters. they are, after all, just tryna find their own way thru the late-capitalistic anthropocene hell scape like us all. and dosing love on hate can be immediately disarming. but there are also sooo many haters out there. and our time and energy are in certain ways finite. and it’s not impossible that a love response can throw fuel on peoples’ righteous and misplaced anger., which can open us up to more energetic suckage. that thing we notice in kids of “if we can’t get good attention then we’re going to go for baaad attention”. this of course appears across the age spectrum in those who feel disempowered and out of attractive options. if the aggressors’ goal is to get a reaction, then any reaction is positive reinforcement. as with kids and temper tantrums, sometimes they need to feel that as an ineffective way to get what they want. which is to say pretending the hater(s) don’t exist is sometimes the most direct and effective route to peace. or a middle option is to acknowledge the hater, and let them know that you’re unphased. people do examples of this all the time on social media. either replying to hate with loving messages, sharing a hateful message or critique with their own public response of “okay so…?”, straight up ignoring or not addressing adverse remarks, or going thru and blocking the haters from their interweb zones.

a peer and creative guide mar grace often reminds people they are advising “SOMEBODY HATeS YOUR ART ! and you should make it anyway”. another way of saying, you can’t please all of the people all of the time. and how could that unavoidable truth possibly be a reason to make ourselves small, round out all our interesting edges, or pretend that we are not also existing as delightfully imperfect beings finding our way here on earth.

teachings of the zombie ant fungi: on becoming a parasite to the systems that exploit us

zombie ant fungus fruiting from a leaf-attached, lifeless ant body (photo source: rezamonium/shutterstock)

i’m interested in the zombie ant fungi’s ability to overtake a system and use that system’s structure for its own purposes, in a way where the soul and life of that system cease to exist.* can you imagine if we could implement this technology with the exploitative structures that we live with/in?

within my worldview of everything being right where you need it when you need it, i believe even that which seems purposeless has some teaching to offer us — some wisdom kernels for which way to proceed or what else is possible. for the universe has created/is of all, and experience has shown me without fail that there is beauty in all of its faces. if i can’t see it, i need only shift my perspective. unimaginable pressure forms gemstones. terrifying volcanic eruptions reinvigorate the nutrients of the land. love and faith glisten in the face of crushing opposition. i’ve resolved to give myself to life completely while i’m here. the whole horrifying and delightful spectrum.

as part of a ritual for a course application on post-activism, i promised the zombie ant fungi to indulge focused time to follow 3 generations of their being and receive whatever learning i could. my interest in the zombie ant fungi is its ability to take over an existing system (ant) and manipulate its mechanisms and structure for the fungi's own purposes (life/continuation). [the fungi spores land on an ant, infiltrate its exoskeleton using enzymes, consume non-vital soft tissues once inside, release chemicals that interfere with the ants nervous system and control its behavior, direct the ant body up into the trees to secure itself by mandible death-grip, then proceeds to consume the lifeless ant body before busting out and releasing more spores to continue the cycle.] while their process may seem parasitic, i feel there is deep value in their efficiency for transforming of existing systems. nature is never without balancing forces.

in this knowledge-share ritual, what was reiterated again and again is the importance of the mechanism of distribution within a system. the fungi does not take the time to retrain each individual cell or working part of the ant. instead it infiltrates the central nervous system and uploads a new code… a new goal and purpose, a new consciousness.

part of what i find so interesting about the zombie ant fungi and its process is that it does not start from scratch. in my dreaming of transformation and worldbuilding systems that hold us and our society, I often jump ahead feeling as though we must build something completely anew. while it’s been clear to me that there is the need for the ability to utilize the detritus and compost of capitalism, supremacism and its descendants, I have been very wary of trying to make change from within these systems. I see so regularly those who desire deep change go within the belly of the beast, only to be co-opted, and shifted towards its own mission and ends. part of my draw to post-activism is the understanding that railing against a system using their tools and rules reiterates the same problems. as audre lorde said “For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. (full quote below).

importantly, the zombie ant fungi only utilizes the ant’s body and system for so long as it needs. once the fungi has the vitality of a place to fruit, once the ant has attached securely to the place where it will reproduce, the structures and body of the ant are fully consumed by the fungi.

so if the mechanism of distribution is the key to the shift, what might that represent in the societal systems we occupy? for my context in the global north (colonized, capitalized, industrialized ‘modernity’), i see the mechanisms of distribution largely as (1) media: mass media (organized networks including news networks as well as popular entertainment media like movies, tv, and music), social media (masses of individuals sharing electronically with immediacy), indie media (distributed by small groups, individuals, communities), institutional media (distributed by education, political, and carceral systems) and (2) family/community structure: which largely revolves around the institutionally advantageous nuclear family (inclusive of the culture of individualism like bootstrap mentality, zero-sum thinking, us-versus-them mentality).

my vision for the end of white-supremacist patriarchal capitalism is death by obsoletion. i’m regularly reminded by narrative and experience that the building anew must begin from inside the burning building. so what kind of vitality and organizing do we need to foster in order to fortify us thru these changes? so that we are not overcome by the strength, power, and rootedness of trauma that these systems thrive on? what micro-moves can we make in our individual communities to shift reliance away from these systems? even tho they may be moves of the material the system created, what course corrections are possible now, that align us with where we want to go? the zombie ant fungi does not immediately kill the ant, it utilizes the ants body to climb trees to a safe height for reproduction…something that would not otherwise be possible for them in their existing state. how can our mechanisms of distribution be fortified and rooted enough so that we are not consumed by the ant before we reach the safety of the tree canopy?

i leave you these questions to mull with me.

have additional perspective on zombie ant fungi learnings? would love to hear from you <3

zombie ant fungus fruiting from ant body. (photo source: wikimedia commons // cc by-sa 2.0)

*zombie ant fungus scientific name is ophiocordyceps unilaterali. cordyceps are a broad category of parasitic fungi. only the sub-category ophiocordyceps control the host’s body.

“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.”

-audre lorde

all the time pain, everywhere beauty

⊹✺⊹ everywhere beauty ⊹◍⊹

moonrise over washington square park arch during pride weekend 2023

i’ve been in consistent pain for 9 years. there have been ups and downs, (a real rock bottom in 2016 when i couldn’t lift a fork or glass of water to my mouth), but largely it gets steadily worse. which is to say i experience it in many more places and ways — it has been spreading. but believe me dear reader, it has not spread faster than my capacity for and connection to beauty and delight. in many ways, pain has been my compass to find more of these joys, to be in deeper relationship with life, other embodied beings, and the flow of the universe

the pain bloomed from my shoulders and back, a still noticeable nexus. it began longer than 9 years ago, that’s just when it became sustained. these days it extends across my muscular system.. from the muscles in my head, down my arms to my fingers, my legs, hips, quads, calves, feet. it’s uncomfortable to be sure. and i was VERY bitter about this for awhile, and the bitterness sometimes still creeps in when i’m experiencing a debilitating flare that (appearingly) conflicts with my goals and desires. however, i have come to be in relationship to my pain in a field of deep gratitude. a soothsayer, sanyu estelle, once asked me ‘what has been made possible thru your pain’ to which i replied everything. without it i would still be ‘living’ (zombie-ing) a life that was not mine - was not of me.

tho the pain persists, my anguish ended when i stopped feeling entitled to a body free of pain, when i stopped feeling that what was undeniably present was somehow wrong. i was unilaterally attempting to impose my will on life, on my body. i forgot everything here on earth is a collaboration, a cocreation. life became about results and how much i could bend myself to attain them. when i stopped feeling at war with my body and began to listen, more deeply, at what it is telling me and when, a new type of freedom emerged. a freedom to belong to life, and the earth, and let it belong within me. with all it’s quirks and wonks, to commit to deep intimacy with the full spectrum of what is offered while here on earth.

denying truth does not make it un-so, it only creates friction, stagnation and resistance to the undeniable flow of life. life is not affected by my belligerent denial of its circumstances. all that harm and anguish was just the lens with which i chose to experience the life that is present. [this is not an assertion that all things are fair, aligned, nor that everyone ‘deserves’ the circumstances they are in. this does not negate the reality of systemic injustices and gross inequities of access to care and resources.] to deny what is present is to disempower ourselves. but to be alive is to have power (regardless of what systems of injustice and exploiters would have us believe). when we are present with truth, our power remains. we always have a point of agency within our circumstances, however small. discomfort and pain are usually showing us what needs change, shifting, balancing. our circumstances might make us feel disempowered and disconnected from our agency, but there is always a way to shift and flow, always more beauty to be had. beauty is everywhere.

how lucky i feel i am to have a body (full stop) and to have a body that communicates so openly, so directly, so consistently. it is always clear to me when i am out of balance, or it becomes clear soon, body makes sure of that. my pain shows me when i’m overworking, undermobilizing, needing rest, ignoring that which needs attention, heading in a wrong direction, and much more. my pain slows me down endlessly, so much so that i get breaks to look around, indulge moments i didn’t know i needed, witness life i didn’t know was there.

i don’t feel attached to my pain however. it is very welcome to leave whenever. and while it is here i’m very down to be in collaboration. i realize too, my system is sensitive, to sensations of discomfort as much as delight. pain—pleasure are a sort of earth paradox that i’ve come to embrace. in the process of releasing resistance to pain, holding it as valuable and not inferior, i have been gifted with a deepened capacity for pleasure. pleasure finds and pierces me, pervades me far deeper than my experience of pain. this long relationship with pain has shown me something too. with every return to a low-low, i can’t help but remember and know the deep rush of beauty and pleasure will return. as i deepen my relationship and experience with the whole pain—pleasure spectrum, i come to find beauty dwells everywhere. in pain, in pleasure, in life, in death — i’ve come to find the duality of earth and all its treasures is bursting with beauty that is hard to ignore.

a tree grows out of literal bricks on this old building i walk by to get to the park <3

Spoiled by Stagnancy

a half-eaten, ripe fig over fluid reflections of the sun shining on waves of water

being ripe with change allows us to occupy the center of our lives

oh to be comfortable, familiar, stationed~

~a human desire that loses balance when we forget our nature of movement, collaboration, and change.

that’s the thing about being spoiled.. it is past ripe, passed the present where the past lingers into the future - spacetaking - occupying energy, awareness, intention.

as sanyu estelle teaches on intentioned collaboration with the universe: “when there is nothing to solve there is nothing to solve for.” meaning our circumstances share with us the equation for aligned movement. when our aim is repetition, repetition is what we get. only the results don’t stay the same. for even constants cannot escape the universal flow of -change- (note it is called constant change because it is the only thing that stays the same… but the nature of change is that it is difference-in-motion. oh the lushus paradoxes of earth. when i’m holding two poles i know i’m closer to truth. more than binary, two poles bring in the full spectrum betwixt. holding many paradoxes is the multidimensional spectrum of Truth on earth.

there is grief in staying past the exit time. over-ripening, the spoiled fruits that could have been enjoyed, nourished us in their aligned timing, become unused waste. still it’s never too late to turn the putrid into nutrient dense compost. everything is somebody’s good ~ even physical toxic matter can be metabolized by some earthling (consider how fungi process plastic & oil spills). when we clutch the deteriorating, we also ignore the fresher falling fruits that are prepared to collaborate now, with new more relevant nutrients to our changing circumstance. rejection and stagnancy are course-correctors on our journey if we take notice, if we listen to what our interactions are showing us. holding fast to an outdated dream or plan that served an older version of ourselves can be about safety, pride, self-projection, desire for acceptance. we clench too tight and miss the very direction that will bring us closer to ourselves and closer to our community/world/universe.

earth is abundant. it is only our insistence on scarcity that makes it so. (collective=systemic, personal=individual) shifting our personal realities is our individual responsibility within the collective.

i invite you to accept movement, and then collaborate with direction. accept the ever change of creation, destruction, and recreation that is our nature. we can find grounding in growth. many nodes of varied attachment that are consensual, trustworthy, and fluid bring balance to our movement. we can never stay permanently attached to one thing. (life will always bring more variables and surprises.) attempting to do so disempowers us in the face of the unexpected. we exist in folded ribbons of reality that morph, overlap, shift. within the truth of infinite possibility and life-feedback of possible-probable paths to our desired futures, we can find fluid agency. a balancing dance of noticing, responding, intentioned action, and intentioned inaction (rest/reflection/processing) in both our inner and outer worlds. as i said to a friend recently, “i am never in balance. i am always balancing.” ‘to be’ is a verb. to refuse change is to refuse life.

a nearly-ripe mango droops from its tree, vibrant and ready

6 Things Staying On My Mind

6 things staying on my mind

(in no particular order)

a yellow cluster of dandelions amongst others in the grass of a city median (spring 2023 bk). i can’t stop thinking about Empress Karen Rose’s description of them as little communities of healers that pop up wherever, with fervor, ready to heal.

i used to think talking ab friends who aren’t present was harmful gossip that only drives wedges in relationship. now i realize how healing it can be to draw bridges between our mutirealities with varied contexts. a window into wider experience that can color our knowledge of our own experience and better inform our relationship building/evolving.

black&white interference pattern drawing of magnolia blossom & budz with a wavelength, a spiral, and stars by lou fuzzy 2023

the past present and future all exist always in spacetime. so if we can affect the future in the present we can equally affect the past from the present. it’s not that the physical manifestations of the experienced events change..rather our relationship to those events changes which changes everything.

a cherry blossom parasol over the water, brooklyn botanic gardens 2023

letting go of hierarchies means also releasing our own perceived positions of power and influence. power and influence remain. but it is that which emanates from our deepest self and interconnectivity rather than from an imposed, oppressive conceptual structure.

black&white interference pattern drawing of tulips with moon and stars by lou fuzzy 2023

i have learned that, as an earthbean, i am a mere collaborator with the universe (Us). i make choice, i have agency, but i also must work with what is available and present.. not only must i, but my conscious willingness to do so is what i find to be the secret to flow. so if everything is always where i need it at any given moment, how can i shift my perspective to be available to focus on it?

STAR card from the newly released tarot deck: The Trickster’s Journey by Jia Sung

i can’t stop revering the generativeness of conflict and discomfort, and noticing how they are key initiators for change (and if we are present and willing [r]evolution). i’m also reminded how earth-rocking that discomfort can be..and then i remember how that is maybe the point? to let my earth be rocked and to stop resisting/holding myself in stagnation.

black&white interference pattern drawing of a moth with stars by lou fuzzy 2023

i have been receiving so many juicy fruits that are products from seeds planted long ago,, many of the things i felt, at the time, were not ‘paying-off’. with each sparkle i am reminded how uncomfortable it was to be outcome-oriented instead of process-focused. process-focused = present; receptive; responsive; open; an adaptive, trusting/faithful orientation to the process including toward collaborative entities*.

fuzzy nibbles on a cherry blossom while holding their branch

[notes:
*black&white interference pattern drawing is a recent style i’ve been moving with as a way to work with/thru duality and interaction. images become apparent thru contrast and their beauty is seen thru a different pattern of appreciation.
*entities can include humans, ideas, energy, all non-human earthlings, trusted spirit guides etc]

Relationship as Art Medium

~ a mycelial network ignited ~

melting into a river of relation, ordered chaos of which i am a dancing speck, a swirling molecule, making contact and curvatures.

tree, moss, and fungi learning frm the forest on the land of painting residency (2022)

i have been swirling with relationship as my primary art medium for a few months now. it was the most available and necessary practice for me to cultivate thru my recent huge life transitions and transience. relational creativity and tending is what floated me thru material uncertainty. fully an ethereal artform.

i had a creative breakthru in june of last summer while undertaking my second of four self-led painting residencies. to summarize, i shifted from trying to command and control paint to opening up to the wisdom and will of the paint as well as the ideas with which i was creatively collaborating. i started looking at my painting practice as a relationship. one that i only felt ease and joy within when i was tending to it like a partnership rather than a unilateral using. then, thru polyfying my human relationships, (a move that necessitates conscious creation as the classical structures of relating fall away), i tuned this same sense of engagement to embodied others. ive been taking note of the shifts, openings, expansions: a mycelial network ignited where a monocrop farm once lived. suddenly endless opportunities to dive into intimacy cracks, shift vision, grow anew. the pleasure of which is electrified by the nature of shared experience and multidimensional connection. A JOY TO CREATE, an endless stream of collaborators. Cocreation is the main mode of earth dance. as you might guess, since i initially connected with this idea thru non-human relations, i have a very expansive inclusion of what and who are creative partners. i’m constantly creating with a chorus of collaborators: entities of all forms, earthed and unearthed — material and ethereal. in the medium of relationship, life is art, and we are the material. a beautiful practice of being with the moment and holding the fulcrum of experience. dna strands of being and witnessing, expressing and receiving, together create a pattern of flow (a pattern of life). relationship as art medium is a process of moving thru inquiry, witness, and response —allowing ourselves to change and be changed — daring to keep our eyes open to the unfolding.

in progress painting mentioned above — balanced order: grounding point (2022)

On the Ethereal Arts

neptuned : a mode , a mood , a space in time (2020)

on the ethereal arts:

tuning to spirit and floating thru form

creativity that lives in the ether, in the immaterial dimension. this is music, performance, dance.. sound & movement: physical storytelling. ~body telling~ lil whispers of expression that seep into others and blow off into the wind.

ethereal: (adj.) living in the airwaves, a home separate from matter

art: (verb/noun) creative expression or the product of creative expression

these ethereal expressions can be turned into physical media. the physical media just becomes a temporary vessel for the momentary transference (translation). tapes and records warp and break, memories fade and warble, visions of experience combine with those of the human vessels and become something new altogether. the immaterial imprint swirls with the receiver to be something different to each witness. even the makers of the thing have shifting experiences of the expression over time. ethereal art is an idea/energy/feeling that lives in the ether and is only brought into matter thru millions of varied tendrils marking its wisps.

it’s different than static visual media, such as painting and writing, of which the primary mode of transference is the physical object made: material art.

playing with matter is one of my faves. i like to see the thing, feel it, let my eyes and hands be the entry point to the experience. material art has been my home base and preferred bridge for awhile.

during my recent period of transience, most of my things including my visual artmaking supplies were stowed in storage. not only were my tools less available, the rushed experience of downsizing in order to move had me feeling i needed a break from making physical media. i lived in my last place for five years; much was begun, collected, stashed that just couldn’t come along. many parbaked projects were shed; i felt heavy from the physical representations of my creative explorations. still, as i’ve shared before, limitation is the birthplace of creativity. expression will ooze till it finds an exit. movement is always a very accessible and available form of expression to me. it happens all day often without me realizing or consciously collaborating with it. music too became an active playground for my expression. most of my time between housing was spent staying with three musician beloveds — a home brimming with instruments and sounds — and so dancing with sound channeling became another flourishing form of creative flirtation for me. it is during this time when i became transfixed with the idea of what i call the ethereal arts.

there’s something so spiritual about the ethereal arts, they are slippery and shifty. it takes a different mode of connection and way of opening as a vessel. there is a riding of the creative wave channel each time the piece is shared. the material arts have a front-loaded wave-riding — a more private experience of creating that is shared later, post completion.
the material arts are spiritual as well, but in a different direction. there is some sort of lassoing of the idea, energy, or feeling into a specific and static representation. there is still collaborative variance with those who witness, but the material object doesn’t change except to degrade slowly over time as with all earth matter.

what i can say from switching vibes is, to me, the ethereal arts take a different mode of engagement: ongoing improvisation. nothing can have consistent constants on the earth realm. so by nature of the art being something that is expressed thru different times, spaces, and moods, the vision of what the piece is only comes into sight thru repeat exposure: repetitive collaboration/witnessing. otherwise we are only ever with a fraction of what is. a momentary touch in the dust of time.

to evoke ethereal art is to collaborate with the ether that gives rise to form. connecting to matter thru spirit.. tender wisps of pattern and movement not yet embodied (gusts of rhythm in the wind). a way of tuning the vessel of my body to the underlying beat of life.

lightwaves thru a water tank spotted at the music show <3 (2022)

after death, remembering: a poem, a portal

after death, remembering

remembering the last time

remembering the last time

remembering you.

there are no new memories

fresh from the face of time.

distant is my earth body

from your momentary meatsuit.

closer is your light

to the quantum web of everything.

i see you clearly,

the greater you of before n after.

the middle you of material mechinations

only a memory

of a memory

of a memory

now.

{Our memories are not truth recorders

but essence bottlers

reconfiguring to suit our sense —

needs and being of the body

contrasts the components

of spacetime.

body records build in narrative,

to see connection,

underapparent in timespace.

sensory storage

folding in on itself.}

i will only remember the essence of you

blended with the records of others

of which we morph,

with each recall,

to include us now.

context everunfolding.

for your mudsuit must be growing

its imprint interacting with me everyday

a new angle,

a new vision,

anew, after death

bottled in the beings of others

a fountain of your essence spills.

How and Why we Grieve: a practical guide on grief and the nervous system

a channeled message on moving thru grief:

Grief comes and goes like the wake of the tide. It is not the tide itself but our energetic response needed to be present in the tides. to be present in life. Skipping grief is disorienting precisely because it displaces us from the experiences at hand.. from the necessary processing of the moment that presence requires. Grieving has a wrap of being extraneous, but it is as natural as the molting of skin, the turning of the tide, the shedding of leaves and flower petals, the rotting of flesh. It is not always pleasant, or (shallowly) beautiful to behold. But it contains enormous beauty, cyclical wholeness, unstoppable relief. Perhaps more painful than the repression of feeling and movement that is grief, is the shame spiral elicited by cultural baggage around grief (what it is and how we hold it). The lack of connected cultural context for grief large and small is an added burden to the nervous system needing the sweet balm of grieving. The lack of creative webs of care around the grieving process and the lack of personal and interrelated practices around grieving leaves a hole that often triggers our sympathetic nervous system (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn). A natural process that initiates when we perceive danger that’s in direct conflict with our ability to digest and process. Our body responds to the feelings of imminent danger - all energy is funneled toward direct action. Returning to feelings of safety is the only priority. It’s no coincidence that grieving practices invite our parasympathetic nervous system (rest, digest, process). Spending too long in the spiked sympathetic nervous system state is deteriorating to the body. And it’s not just an issue around grief. Cultural “modernity” that dominates the imperialist countries keeps us in this hyperactivated state more often than our bodies are equipped to handle. Much energy, awareness, and connected practices (culture?) are needed to keep up with the amount of grieving and processing demanded by these destructive and transformative times.

HOW TO GRIEVE and move thru GRIEF is such a focus point because there is a so much to be acknowledged, mourned, and composted in these times of great transition and decomposition.

Big deaths and catastrophes are crash courses in grief. The process sometimes takes us over so we can’t help but tend to the grief. I also believe it’s vitally important to grieve smaller ‘deaths’ and other meaningful transitions. Grief allows for integration, freer movement, fluidity with life.

Practices that invite the parasympathetic nervous system // PRACTICES to SUPPORT GRIEF:

deep breathing — the most available, most basic, and perhaps powerful pathway

movement — especially rhythmic or interconnected movement like dancing

vocal stimulation of the vagus nerve (singing, humming, wailing) — the vagus nerve is the main component of the parasympathetic nervous system which directly links to our heart and stimulates a reduction in heart-rate. the vagus nerve connects the brainstem to the rest of the body’s vital organs

spinal twists to stimulate the vagus nerve

meditation/mindfulness — ranging from sitting meditation of all styles to movement meditation - any practice that helps one orient to internal, external, or desired environments. (some specific types are focused meditation, visualization, body scan, mantra meditation, love meditation, self-inquiry, journaling, automatic drawing, mindful walking)

co-regulation — our nervous system connecting with other regulated (parasympathetic state) nervous systems thru a secure bond. when we process and move with others we access a deeper well of support and ease.

{the Kubler Ross “5 stages of grief” are a reductive view of what grief is and seem to describe grief’s context solely from the view of insecure attachment to loss and change. grief is far more expansive and looks really different when supported by an embracing of change along with personal and collective grief practices.

what are the stages or components of grief: A key thread is inviting/recognizing movement

components of grief that do not necessarily have a sequential order:

• Review: a review of what was that is being transitioned from. making sense (for oneself) of personal experience is a part of processing and integration

• Release: release comes in many forms — crying, physical movement, vocal expressing, talking, expressing thru art or writing

• Self inquiry/response: tuning in with self moment-to-moment and inquiring about self-needs, following up with response — emotional soothing, nourishing (eating, moving, communicating), body-tending, expressing, seeking help, etc.

• Ritual: ritual is the externalizing of a feeling, thought, idea, or process thru a sequence of movements or expressions. Rituals help us materialize, demarcate, or witness that which might otherwise be unseen. I want to highlight two tones that ritual can take in the grief context:

  • Honor Ritual (honor, gratitude): a physicalized part of reviewing and releasing is honoring what was and offering gratitude for the experience. this helps us process, make sense, and hold in the context of our ever-evolving experience. vigils and altar building are forms of honor ritual.

  • Transformative Ritual (physicalizing internal experience): this might be just an expression of the pain or discomfort with the process of reviewing and releasing. it is a way to externalize internal discord or confusion, inviting these feelings to move thru our body and not remain stagnant. an example of this is when we draw our feelings onto a page or designate physical objects as symbols for internal understandings.

• Decomposition: this is a less perceptible or active component. decomposition happens once we release, express, and grieve. what was once within is now free to rejoin the vast cycles of energy and life. the product of the decomposition stage is incredibly nutritive to ourselves, others, the earth, and entities we may never know.

May your journeys with grief be non-linear, freeing, nourishing, and bring new life.

Grounding thru Practice: letting paint be my teacher

I finally had a huge transformation of allowing painting to teach me, instead of trying to master painting.

Earlier this month i undertook part two of a four part painting series. My first egg painting residency was clunky. I was finding a sense of order with the flow of channeling paintings — where my part ends and collaboration meets. I foresaw what patterns i would need to inhabit in order to be successful, then quickly derailed myself by slipping into old patterns of behavior. After a day of rest and nervous system reboot, i returned to a more grounded execution of part one of the series, though still pushing myself a little harder than ideal.

While in the planning stages for part two of the series, my old patterns came into view. Before, i would begin with this vision in my head, as i often do with creative visual exploration. I wanted to manipulate paint, to master paint, to bend paint to my vision.. i willed paint to become this thing that i sensed in my head or my bodies. There was no space for curiosity. Then, during this residency, i really had a shift of like, there is wisdom in PAINT. /color and medium/. Paint has things to share with me. Up till now, i was being a unilateral partner to paint: showing up to take without opening up to receive.

When that hit, it seemed so obvious. Especially because opening to collaboration with Material is how my practice thrives. I allow my visions to express thru a multitude of mediums. So much of the way my ideas materialize becomes about what medium they itch to express thru. Meeting Medium as collaborative partner is already a deep woven part of my practice. If i want textural material and to work with what-is, i might express an idea thru upcycled fabric. If i want it to have a sort of crisp luminance of the cyber age i might design digitally. If i want emotional, expressive materiality that’s very about feeling, then i want to do this in paint. I feel like so much of paint is about flow: finding ease and flow with practice and mutual openness. (we have to change and let ourselves be changed, over and over. stagnation is a slow dying). And there is definitely something about material manipulation with paint — a factor of confusion for me as to the point of why i wanted to engage with paint. I was aiming for this unilateral imposing instead of mutual creation which involves decay (of expectations/iterations), constant change.

In the midst of feeling so called to this medium i’ve also felt a lot of frustration and ungroundedness historically when engaging. {failing to let the current flow thru (envision: figure-8)}. So when re-approaching this painting series, i did it with a spirit of inquiry. What is the reason i want to play with paint? What is it that i want to manipulate and move? In this case, it’s not my emotions, expressions and feelings themselves i aim to move. Rather to engage the ability to shift and combine materials with their own energetic spirits into something that mirrors, evokes, or contains ~ f e e l i n g : s e n t i e n c e : expressive symbols of form and color. All of painting is a metaphor. {The metaphor mind links us up to stardust and ether. In metaphor mind, we easily acknowledge the unseen space between two distant points and their sameness. S P I R I T U S ~ breath : is another such similar bridge}. The medium here — egg yolk — provided by the chickens on the land, brought forth a deeper layer of metaphor and meaning: Golden life-liquid of nourishment giving flow to the powdered earth minerals of pigment.

so this time i stayed with the paint instead of dissociating into to-do lists and incremental deadlines

Before, the process of trying to force paint to my will was terrible for me. I got sick trying to work my body to be outcome oriented.. to meet ends that i foresaw. I tried to override realities of linear time, process, or integration. Once i got the vision i was off running to the finish line — all about the outcome. I didn’t wanna care about the process. I wanted to zip forward, fast-forward to the end. What i found was i got sick in the middle and had to slow myself down. I had to take a day off and reboot my nervous system around the project in order to complete it. That was very humbling.

I’d initially planned to paint part two of the series last summer and had a false start. I wasn’t ready to be the conduit or the channel for a grounded/grounding painting exploring balance. I was dealing with a lot of out of balance learning experiences at the time.

Coming back to this phase, i again, knew the patterns i needed to inhabit to be successful and was more determined to stay the course. I felt both like the humble doer and the passive bystander, watching this very slow unfolding. I was watching the process in myself and outside feeling all the eager frustration of a halted racehorse with the awe of a satisfied baker. like “wow this is a really slow process.. woah we’re really in it..wow everything is being baked in”. I was with the meditation, the material, and what i was trying to infuse into the material during the process. I could be present to allow the paint and its movement to be a way i process and deepen awareness. I could take frequent breaks to cook and feed myself, to walk and stretch, explore, and be intimate with the land — everything my chronically ill, neuroqueer bodies needed to be a conduit to this painting. and it was BEAutiful. Instead of the two paintings i initially planned, the one painting is probably just a quarter of the way done. So its beautiful and im just reflecting on wow, intentioned creation takes a lot of time. It also feels more aligned. I feel finally able to meet paint in a sacred act of cocreation.

a poem:

painting is a sentience
a student of painting does not need a (human) teacher.
they are the learner - they are learning from paint.
when i stopped trying to master painting,
i could finally relax
to do the thing
i need to, am being asked to / want to do
to be the full open breathing channel
conduit for creation
collaborate with conditions and ideals alike
to create a magical convergence
holi plexus of unearthed energy birthing into being
to be present to
all that is
and infuse it with
all that could be
enuf to hold
us all thru
the raft of one cell body
percolating into timeless
effervescence

a neuroqueer invitation: shifting lexicons/perspectives of bipolar experience

green creature lounges in a lagoon with a sprouting flower and moody moonrise

My experience of bipolar is my experience of order just as it is my experience of disorder. So disorder is not inherent in my experience of bipolar. Mental health has been largely taboo in my life and the society i was raised within so i haven’t talked with loads of people about it. People often judge what they don’t understand.. and i saw plenty of people written off for having atypical mental-emotional systems. I’ve felt comfortable in this part of myself for a few years yet still resistant to talk about it because it all feels so loaded — the existing paradigms of understanding and naming experiences of bipolar feel misrepresentative to me. Not only am i glad to be sharing my experience and not have it be closeted anymore, i hope to contribute to the widening understanding* of what bipolar is and how we can all be in relationship to it outside of limiting and pathological language. Pathology is the study of a disease and its causes.. Pathologizing mental variances assumes there is no purpose or need for such variances — assumes the problem lies within the individual, not the systems that exclude them. I know there is value in this way of experiencing the world and engaging with environmental energies. It’s not inherently an experience of disorder and doesn’t need to be pathologized. As i learn about disability justice, the most crucial point i’ve come to understand, is ‘disabilities’ are only such in relation to the society/collective world that we are existing within. It is the world or our structure around shared reality that dis-ables certain expressions of humanness — that puts them at odds with the collective exchange.

i’m on the bipolar spectrum

Like everything it is a spectrum. I feel both really aware of and affected by the energies of others. I feel capable of experiencing a larger range of response to energy and emotions (more intense on both ends of the spectrum) than the neurotypicals. This experience of larger range seems tethered to by ability to perceive and connect with more subtle energies. My system picks up on more waves and is subsequently more easily overwhelmed than ‘neurotypical’ systems. What is typical is not definite, i notice myself in relation to the established systems that govern our shared spaces and interactions. The language here is messy, unclear. Bipolar mode of being is alien to capitalist, hierarchical hustle systems; therefore it is pathologized within western capitalism.

the top google search definition for bipolar: “A disorder associated with episodes of mood swings ranging from depressive lows to manic highs.”

That sounds bad, bad, and bad. i’ve experienced so much shame from this identity since i was a kid. The good news is we get to morph and grow the lexicon to fit our needs of communication.

alternate definition that includes my experience: capacity (and likeliness) to experience a larger-than-typical range of moods and emotions. when heightened sensitivity is at odds with environment or conditions and left unmanaged ‘bipolar’ can manifest into a disorder.

To someone else, experiencing a small portion of the mental-emotional spectrum, i’m sure my wide awareness and responsiveness looks erratic.. “all over the map”. The widened experience of spectrum is exacerbated of course when left unmanaged in relational societal contexts that don’t hold space for this way of being.

Know what’s really good for grounding energies? the literal earth, nature, being in touch with the flow of our cycles in relation to other earthly entities, plants and plant medicine… community. Compared to ‘psych’ options, it seems the simplicity of these tools still feels harder to access or be in active awareness of these days. and certainly not widely encouraged as a starting point for a mental health journey except in a superficial way (“have u tried *insert health fad*?!”). There’s no one-size-fits-all support plan. I certainly encourage western pharmaceuticals and psyches when it’s the aligned option for folx (i know plenty & sometimes this is me*). AND there are so many other accessible and helpful ways to support ourselves when bridging the space between our experience and the built world. Diversified approaches hold me best. Communities of neurodivergent, adhd, and autistic sweeties are so good at sharing support and tactics! Working with the spirit, body, energy medicine, and ritual has been so helpful for me to find greater grounding for intense energy experiences/time periods. Irreplaceable in fact. It’s the multilevel and regular support that keeps my world goin round. Different zones of support include: personal/self practices (mind, spirit, body), close relationships (people i can process with and share my intimate struggles), community, professional support (people i pay to help me spiritually, mentally, emotionally), ingestible support (plants, pharmaceuticals, food) & relationship to natural world.

In short, while i find my experience of bipolar to be disabling in the current world i inhabit, i do not consider it a disorder. It is an order that differentiates me, similar to my queerness or chronic illness. There is value for the collective wisdom pool in these ways of being — important colorations of the human experience.

Maybe next we will adapt a word that is not so binary as bipolar but rather recognizes the full expansive spectrum of experience. Perhaps full spectrum feeler or sensi (a shortened version of sensitive as which i already self describe). Neurodivergent* is already such a beautiful new-ish word to me that feels like it serves us neurodivergents so well. Neuroqueer* is that much more accurate for me. Especially when seeing thru the bell hooks definition of queer. “ queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”

i ask you dear reader: what expansive redefinitions of identities and experiences might support you in your life and journey?

~

<3 Sources & Re-Sources <3

{feeling so juiced and ignited by the autism spectrum conversation bloom led by late and self-diagnosed cuties. We share in our neurodivergence and i notice overlap in societal experience and possible responses -

• self diagnosis can be really helpful! it can help us feel seen, find community aid/support, find supportive tools/tactics, or it can be a first step to seeking professional assistance (not exclusive to western medical complex systems) ie: mental/emotional/spiritual support; energetic support; prescribed plants, medicines, pharmaceuticals etc.

  • my dear friend moonheart has compiled self dx autism resources here if you’d like to read more.

• neurodivergent was gifted to us in 1998 by Judy Singer, a social scientist and self-identified on autism spectrum

  • words from her book “For me, the key significance of the Autism Spectrum lies in its call for and anticipation of a politics of neurological diversity, or ‘neurodiversity.’ The neurologically different represent a new addition to the familiar political categories of class/gender/race and will augment the insights of the social model of disability. The rise of neurodiversity takes postmodern fragmentation one step further. Just as the postmodern era sees every once too solid belief melt into air, even our most taken-for granted assumptions: that we all more or less see, feel, touch, hear, smell, and sort information, in more or less the same way, (unless visibly disabled) – are being dissolved.” (http://www.myspectrumsuite.com/meet-judy-singer/)

• neuroqueer started as a verb as in ‘subverting neurotypical norms’ and i definitely id with it as an adjective as in the above and also a combo of being neurodivergent and queer (https://neuroqueer.com/neuroqueer-an-introduction/)}

• [image: creature in the black lagoon watercolor by fuzzy]

on communal dreaming and the Point ✺

a rosie astral body is cradled between organic mirrored shapes made from continuous crossing lines

a lens is a point, a photo: a container, a gathering: a place to dream

sometimes i just love holding my camera up to a view to put it in some digestible space. to tighten the context and dimensionality for my sensing bodies to drink it in with more ease.

points are places from which line and form extend. points expand and contract. our universe is a series of points within points connected to points, and the space between.

I cohosted communal space with my beloved friend and fellow artist Quinn Hines in our local community garden last weekend. A Place To Dream: art show & photo party gathered us within art, dreaming, dreamscapes, magic, pleasure, celebration, and cocreation.

It’s becoming ever more apparent to me that we need deep spaces of dreaming and imagining new worlds and next metamorphoses ~ collective and podulated. i Love a good container. With a 12th house virgo sun i’m always dying for ways to contain, feel, and free (process) the details of my knowing and experience. and i crave still the bridges on which to share these understandings. There is existential loneliness living life with toes still swimming in the sky. I’m sure as i find my truer and truer earthlie expression, that feeling will melt into an existential connectedness; it already does. Two poles of a vast understanding that bring equally deep joy and sadness.

i crave to anchor dreaming. i crave to find the point. the point within the whole point, that i want to point to. that’s the thing about embodiment and choice; attention and intention.

There’s an animated movie called The Point made to the soundtrack of Harry Nilsson’s album of the same name. Everyone/thing in the town is pointy shaped but Oblio, this lil’ spherical weirdo that is outcast. And the whole time i’m thinking this buddy is the actual point and the rest of yall are cones right? Anyway the pointy society is very hierarchical, oppressive, and hostile to diversity or anything that is without ‘a point’ (meaning a purpose that they deem valid). :/ too familiar :/

The movie comically reiterates how it’s great medicine when there’s no point meaning no intention: play for play’s sake. (Then isn’t that it’s own point?) When we are open to being affected and transformed by our surroundings, we inevitably unearth underlying and collaborative points — of the cosmos and other earthlie entities. The influence of communal dreaming — a deep-rooted human technology, an anti-algorithm, a grow-rhythm. BIOQUANTUM COMPUTING. Answers/entanglements result that are different and greater than the sum of their parts.

Part of my spacemaking practice is clearing space, creating openness, inviting the conditions for transformation or connection. Another part is building space & structure for transformation and connection to occur. At A Place To Dream both of these spacemaking practices were activated. My series of Mirrored Dreamscapes for this show is viewable on my website. These explore duality and its resolution in the third, the point (the whole) represented by the centered astral bodies. New quantum images occur in the building of points into lines and lines into interacting forms. Contained within these images are my spiritual processings of the archetype of the lovers (tarot numerology theme for 2022) and the sometimes brutal nature of transformation and earth explorations.

Mirrored Dreamscapes watercolor paintings hang in in front of a red brick wall with climbing rose vines

Quinn Hines and friends commune in front of Quinn’s dreamy photography portraits (photoquinn.com)

closeup of Star Cycle: 3 successive Mirrored Dreamscapes ~ (arrival, expression, reflection)

2 iridescent bubbles float in front of 2 friends playing beneath a tree with hanging cloud sculptures

explorations on power

for this exploration on power i begin with a few inquiries:

Where does power come from? What do a tree, a tiger and a human have in common? What power is innate; what is power contortion? What is it we've been calling power that is really a distortion and something else altogether?  

Before we go anywhere with these inquiries, i strive to hone our definition of power. Let’s get clear on what it is we’re exploring. I’d like to start by unbraiding power into three different strands: true power, contorted power, and collective power. Sarah Jaffe – author of Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone – talks about two ways we culturally use the word “power”: power-over (someone or something) and power-to (do or be). As embodied earthlings a certain amount of power-to is innate. We use power to exist, and without we die.  I consider this kind to be ‘true’ power. Power-over is a corruption of what power is. Power-over is something else altogether… deserving of a new name. For its shadow grows so large we are disconnected from our own power-to and the power of others (human and larger nature.) Power-over is the capacity to influence or direct amassed power for the benefit of oneself at the detriment of others. Power-over is the hottest commodity of supremacy culture and the pyramid scheme that is white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. 

In this exploration on power, i’m most interested in exploring the power-to (power to do, power to be, power to negate). In re-embodying our power-to, we pull energy away from the systems that reinforce power-over. Power-to is often built With others - not in isolation. (Earthlings of every sort exist within interrelation.) 

Mary Parker Follett was a social worker and theorist who explored different types of collective power.  Thought Co’s biography of her states “In a 1924 essay, "Power," Follett coined the terms "power-over" and "power-with" to differentiate coercive power from participative decision-making, showing how "power-with" can be greater than "power-over."’

Power-over is a massive energy suck. It takes a lot of strategy and force to continually coerce, dominate, and extract power. Power-with recognizes the autonomy and self-sovereignty of each agent or group & draws strength from the collaboration and communion between the differing agents and groups within a larger network. Power-with grows and is reinforced by the collective use and sharing of power-to (each of the individual agents and groups’ power). Mutual influence has a probability of leading to productive growth/change in the earth realm. This is how natural hybrids are made and evolution occurs in self-organizing systems*. The earth and the cosmos are complex interconnected webs that contain far too much energy and information to be organized and understood fully by any one group or being. The balance is thrown when a single agent or group unilaterally imposes its will onto another agent or group without the collaborative nature of cocreation. Energy and power reproduce when they are shared. so power-with or copower is a renewable quantum resource. The stifling-of or cutting-off-from power creates stagnation. Power-with is an extension of the principles of power-to which are strengthened and multiplied when in cocreation/collaboration. The power-to will henceforth be referred to as Power; power-over will henceforth be referred to as exploitative control. Power-with will henceforth be referred to as Power or copower. (I encourage all-ways to play with the language and redefine/ blossom new words as needed. Lexicons are living building blocks for our shared realities and we all have the power to morph them.)  

During a group-inquiry driven fellowship program last summer, i chose to explore power together. (I love practices of group-inquiry as i notice the access to co-power heightens my senses and connection to the universe’s ideas and information.) Thru a focused process of stormbraining our notions, beliefs, and noticings of power we emerge ways that we have come to know and use the word. In one place, we can see things society has taught or showed us as well as the truths of power that we may not notice or lean into. All these layers began unraveling for me. In the process the fear began loosening. I thought power was: oppression, cancerous, evil, unnatural, exploitative. I learned power is: natural, inevitable, neutral, available, creative. 

Power truths unfolding for me daily: I wake up everyday with a well of power in my center that can spout and slosh and direct as i please; i sometimes let my power leak away. I give my power away sometimes in exchange - real or perceived - for safety, likeability, ease, fear. I have believed lies that i do not have power or that i must do something to deserve it. There is some power uncorrupt. Power exists before distortion and outside of systems of manipulation. Power is nature and power is flow. Power is inextricably linked with life regardless of systems that desire us to think we need their source or their permission to connect with it. 

a spirit transmission on power: power comes from your hips you can wiggle them and rise it up through your core. power comes from your walk. power comes from your lips power comes on your breath. it is a rhythm an energy a motion you can take into your body and ride. it is a beauty blessing of the earth. physical power, energetic lines of rhythm that connect us out to energies unseen. there is a web of force that can be touched and electrified and in this way power is not finite it is an intimate interwoven energy and system. it is a quantum resource and it has only limit of potentiality which is different than being finite. it is only the limit of the body riding it. true power embodied is a meeting of this space. — it is the tree that takes up space and reaches skyward snuggling its mingled roots deep in the earth. it is the tiger that leaps and tears flexing its biology to the fullest. it is me moving radially thru the world, nurturing an electric center that reaches out to tether and play with the earthies. in this way power is not something that can be taken or given, it is something we have access to that we can pull within and intermingle and pull from within to mingle out. as in introducing our power to the physical with creation, with action, movement, communication.

Power to do, be, and negate (not do or not be) is a birthright. More than a right it is a fact. Innate and inherent to life is Power. Innate power is the potentiality of energy expression/transmutation of any earthly entity. Innate means inborn so this is specific to birthed energies/entities already in material expression. The power to breathe, digest, excrete are some of our most basic potentialities that are filled by living. Even those who receive assistance for these tasks like breathing and feeding tubes meet their potentiality to express and transmute, just with assistance. To be truly power-less is synonymous with death, and does not happen before (and fully not even then). This is not to undermine the realities of disempowerment that rage in the multitudes of experiences now. Rather our task is to recover, re-member the power that is ours and inviolate. It is from this space of sovereignty and connective imagination that we build something better – that honors and holds the earth with all its entities. 

True power begets power – it is a quantum sustainable, renewable source of embodying energy. It is in harmony with cosmic order and flows thru its individual agents when not impeded. 

There needn’t be so much heaviness around power. True power is not so entwined with exploitative control. It is not something to avoid, fear or shrink from. It is for you, just for being alive. If someone gives you their power, hand it back to them. We are in a state of re-membering how much power we have. You may feel tempted into the hierarchy of misappropriated power and disempowerment… convincing someone they are powerless will not gain you anything worth keeping. The new paradigm we're building won't come with so many nasty side effects when we grow together with true power. True power, in this instance means power uncontorted. power connected to innate potentiality. power that is in harmony with the full earth web of interconnected parts. power that is fluid and flowing.

a cycle to embodying power more fully - notice > ground (connect) > activate > reflect 

A well of power lives in our gut, the cradle of our sacrum, our hips. (power being expressed energy potentiality). It is kinetic energy but specifically refers to the ability or action of expressing that energy. 

There are different types of power, physical power, emotional power, creative power, personal power, spiritual power, mental power, people power, systemic power, natural power, innate power, external power, electrical power to name a few (further defined and explored below).. and there are different types of fuel, which is like prepower; a part of the formula for using or expressing power. ie food, fossil fuels, any combustible/processable raw material to increase access to power potentiality, information or connection that increases access to power potentiality.

journal: 

what could be some fuels for other types of power that we don't think about as much?+

what are the ways you engage, flex and interact with your personal & innate power?

I love listening to Priya Parker talk about power.* She describes leaning into power and directly engaging cultivation when recognizing new forms. In that vein i’d like to explore different categorical expressions of power and their fuels:

types of power and their fuel explored ~~~

physical power - strength, force, leverage, expressed bodily ability

emotional power - command of engagement with the sensations of feeling energies that pass thru our bodies

creative power - focused transformation of inner connections, ideas, matter and experiences into external expressions (we might venture to measure this type of power by its ability to connect us to other or by its ability to heal or delight ourselves)

personal power - innate inner connection to source and embodied potentiality of self expression

spiritual power - meeting of potentiality for connection, communion, and transmutation with energies and entities unseen

mental power - the potentiality of the mind to focus, notice connections, reason solutions, and make meaning

people power - the heightened potentiality of many bodies and/or nervous systems acting in harmony/synchrony. as in "power in numbers"

systemic power - potentiality for controlling outcomes by a group of mechanisms and rules (that are often agreed upon & imposed by a group of people) and with the ability to affect much more than individual parts or the system's incepters. (note systemic power is not inherently exploitative control though it is easy for it to slip into this expression when the system or group’s goal is exploitation). systemic exploitative control arises when the sovereignty, empowerment, and importance of each individual agent is not honored.

natural power - potentiality of expression of earth & its beings that is in flow with earth cycles & regeneration.

innate power - essential and inseparable available expression (inborn power)

external power - potentiality that lives or is sourced from outside the body

electrical power - the potential ability of an atom's charged particles to cause an action by movement of electrons between atoms

what could be some fuels for other types of power that we don't think about as much? (enjoy reading my list and i encourage you to make your own!)

+considering fuel as prepower - raw 'material' that increases access to power potentiality

physical power fuel  - nourishing food, rest, hydration, resistance, repetition

emotional power fuel - quality time & affirmations from supportive community, spaciousness thru mindfulness (ie meditation, self-reflection, embodiment practice), our breath, movement

creative power fuel - internal listening, intention, play, enthusiasm/desire, limitation

personal power fuel - spiritual practice, self expression, self knowledge, supportive relationships/community, body-tending

spiritual power fuel - communing with nature, communing with spirits, cultivating intention, gathering with others around spiritual goals/intentions, celebrating the unseen, noticing the immaterial

mental power fuel - food (especially fatty acids, nutrient dense food, electrolytes), noticing (especially patterns & connections), naming, storytelling, connecting thought processes, reasoning with others

people power fuel - accessibly shared values & education, access for varying bodies/abilities in general, pre-care & after-care (emotional, mental, spiritual etc), communication

systemic power fuel - cocreation/collaboration, investment (belief?), connected parts and shared meaning, (a defined goal?)

innate power fuel - self knowledge, presence practice/mindfulness, self inquiry, self expression

*Tyson Yunkaporta talks about the principles of self-organizing systems in his book Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The World. In this book he examines global systems from an indigenous perspective.  
*Priya Parker discusses cultivating power in her episode: Power, Intention, & Gathering with Prentice Hemphill on their podcast Finding Our Way.
Thought Co article on Mary Parker Follett (https://www.thoughtco.com/mary-parker-follett-biography-3528601) 

[image description: colorful articulated hands hold a floating glowing purple orb that shines green; colored pencil on grey toned paper]

on water as consciousness

on water as consciousness ~ a flow lesson

i see my spirit guides in ritual with me. we are cupping our hands to lift water above eachother’s hands and letting it flow down to eachother’s cupped hands below. you can not hold the water still. while you have some effect on it's motion and containment you can not make it solid and certain. it’s important that the water is in tru movement. otherwise it becomes something else - changes states. the flow of the water is important, the transience of it. in the skin contact, pleasure and sensation — a knowing thru touch. gravity ensures all the water returns to whence it came. you can only lift it from the river of consciousness/creation for mere moments. to contact, touch, share, before it returns. indiscernible from the pool.

the task here might not be to fully know the water, finding solidity, but to sneak its essence, flashing truths to splatter out in droplets for the shored masses. a reminder even, that the river is there for them to splash, puddle n play with.

such a huge part of the task is to share, remember, reminder that it's not so serious. life is play. the mind suffers in the body because it tries to make ssense of these limits. of the suffering.

suffering you may feel, but there is always something more available to you. always a full beating spectrum of life within and without. it is a matter of tuning and releasing to what is instead of demanding on difference. it is a matter of finding the ballroom you are in and being in that material fully.

meatsuit mudbody

meatsuit mudbody

holy earthanchor

i bow within you

we kneel and rise togther

stretch for the heavens and the dirt

my mind wanting to jump out

fiz z l e a w a y

slowly return to the cosmos.

my mind forgets it’s part of the body

the way spirit takes form in the brain

it forgot , i

the mind

shape of consciousness

tethered, jumping

bounds outside of itself

it thinks

forgetting still,

the spirit is the wings on which it rides.

my mind was not made to remember

for that we have beloved meatbodies

electrical sensorium of wonder

to discover and re-member

towards completely

for which, when we’re ready

we don’t need these perfect mudbodies

to find our way back

to the stars

on cocreation: what i know about longterm intimate relationship

I've been with a partner for 11 years. I say of our love that within it, we have each been many different people over the years. I therefore feel like i’ve been in many different relationships within this singular context. The strength and ability of our relationship to continue is only possible thru the continual allowance of these changes and adapting of our relationship unit to support us: finding a shared space for our overlap that is distinct from our experience of ourselves, yet grows in harmony. The relationship is not the same as the individual (like singing in unison) – but complimentary/harmonic – highlighting and supporting eachother. 

Longterm cycle of intimate relationship thru growth :

cocreation > rupture > adaptive cocreation > …
or in microscale : contact > cocreation > tension/friction/intention > adaptive cocreation 

A cocreation is some type of shared form, agreement, or commitment. It can be explicit/spoken or implied/felt. Cocreation is the foundation for interdependent, securely-attached relationships. 

It enables autonomy and mutual exchange of the interdependent, symbiotic parts. Any monolateral imposed structure that does not invite collaboration or feedback is disempowering to the individual imposed-upon and ultimately disempowering to the relationship. It creates stagnation in part of the field of the relationship and doesn’t allow for adaptive or supportive change. A rupture is a dematerialization of the shared structure or cocreation.. The surrounding sentiment can be positive (like an expressed desire or intention), neutral (trying something new for the sake of newness) or negative (like an altercation or disagreement). The sentiment does not correlate to goodness or badness of the friction – it just necessitates a response – even if the response is de-entangling the relationship. (We never fully disentangle from relationships even if we disengage; rather the nature and intensity of the entanglement shifts). Adaptive cocreation necessitates embodied response to the new circumstances from each willing/desirous part of the relationship. 

There is no such thing as absolute right and wrong. Those are false moral hierarchies that suppose constants and ignore the limitless entanglements that factor into each individual experience. There are patterns of energy, existing structures and forces, and personal preferences at play in each relational interaction. The goal is not to find the ‘right’ or ‘best’ way to relate, but rather the unique formula of needs, desires, boundaries, shared pleasure, support, and reciprocity for each relationship. This may seem like a lot but it does not have to be such a cerebral task. We navigate with our felt sense and notice when something is unfulfilled or needs to shift. Often change is made possible with awareness. Some combinations of relations have a higher probability of being able to meet each other’s needs, desires and levels of reciprocity. This is just a map to finding the greatest possible ease within a relationship. Sometimes there are fundamental differences at the level of basic needs and it’s a scant overlap of communication or understanding. These relationships present more challenges or friction. More ruptures are also more places to know and learn, as long as both of the parties are willing, and separately decide that the benefits outweigh the strain of engaging. When the friction outweighs the ease (or potential for growth and delight), the relationship feels detrimental. When mulling this relational equation for myself, i often think of the Prentis Hemphill quote on boundaries: “Boundaries are the distance at which i can love you and me simultaneously.” Boundaries are not only an act of love, but a zone of space, a buffer for this relational equation to unfold.  

I believe it takes a community to meet an individual’s needs. As interdependent communal creatures, it seems ludicrous the extent to which hyper individuality (including nuclear family model) have pervaded the society i’m within. This is, of course, a purposeful divergence from our nature by and in service to white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, which demands hierarchy and disembodiment to function. Trying to force a small circle (nuclear fam) or a single other person to meet all our varied needs is a recipe for relational failure. The new equation becomes a vision of projected need and visible shortcomings – disempowering us from engaging our wider community to meet our needs and disempowering others’ autonomy in the relationship. I feel so much more ease and space in relating when i’m empowered to negotiate my proximity and engagement with others in relationship to our separate needs, desires, and boundaries. 

The more i remember that each relationship is a gift to know and be known in a completely different way, the less i seek a single solution of how to relate. I’m able to show up with presence, desire, and intrigue, to find what new parts of me i can know in the light of others. I remember to revel in our everchangingness, and take the deaths, large and small, with reverie as they come. 

Some tools and others that have helped me thru massive relational transformations:

- Mia Birdsong & her book How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community b

- Accountability Mapping (sliding scale, self-paced, body-centered accountability course)  

- Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma, and Consensual Nonmonogamy by Jessica Fern ( i rccd this book to everyone regardless of relationship orientation !)

- Breakthrough - a modality that uses our reactions in conflict to navigate personal/internal healing

-  Prentis Hemphill podcast : Finding Our Way (every episode !)

o, how i ran

O, how i ran. Running for my life and risking it in the process. At first i was running towards — a horse galloping with fervor — i had energy, aim and a path. As i felt certain ‘truths’ at odds with my existence, it shifted to running away from. At the beginning, i was running toward knowledge, running toward understanding, interrelation (i thot), connection.. a sense of safety, enoughness, belonging. {I catch myself running still sometimes, in search of those things, momentarily forgetting from where they come.} But for awhile, when my sight was at its worst (willful illusionment), i was running away from. Running as fast as i could, until my body broke beneath me. I was unstuck from all sense of order and fell into a still chaos. At that point i was just running — a wilted wildebeast lost from the water and herd. Just running away, unaware of from what because i was so out of my body and my self. Only retrospectively did i learn i was running from disconnection, abandonment, destitution. (Projections folding in on me, as they do... the very thing i reactionarily want to run from is the thing i find myself within.) The healing process colors understanding. It is in finding my way back to myself, the re-membering of parts, that i come to know those parts in an embodied sense. Tho they have always been with me, i feel more whole and of myself when i give the myriad parts of me life and expression in the material realm. (embodiment means to hold something in the context of a body — to hold it in the body of a full earthly experience. an antithesis to dissociation, disconnection, disembodiment.)

I spent so long undermining my own understanding, intuition and sight trying to morph myself to fit the broken systems i was taught. O HOW I RAN. Not just marathons, but sprints and hurdles. I did backbends to map capitalist logic and hierarchical systems onto my understanding of love, interrelation and existence. I was exhausted. I broke my body into a bridge trying to hold the distance between expectation and reality. Trying to care for people the way they need to be cared for and deliver enough above people’s expectations to avoid being knocked down the ladders of hierarchy and obstacles to survival. I was running toward catching enough resources to relax a little bit..to feel like i deserved to pursue my pleasures (thems the capitalist rools). I felt the gap of givers and receivers (read extractors and extractees) grow impossibly large under my deteriorating body. In a general manager role to a multi-location midsized business i felt directly responsible to people on both ends to be the bridge over this gap.

A slow revelation came thru some huge life-altering events. I wonder still how much longer i would have run myself into the ground without being shaken awake. First my dad died. He had a pretty brutal stage 4 rare cancer diagnosis followed by a near 2 year battle (i don’t think cancer journeys have to be ‘battles’ but it’s how i would describe his experience.) Immediately following his death, i threw myself into work. and at first, it felt like it really helped. It felt calming to have an external sense of purpose when i couldn’t will myself to keep certain parts of my life together. I had a really intense grieving process and work was some of the only breaks from crying. I kept my head down, running this grind for awhile. The formula got harder and harder to meet. The math to make the insides match the map of ideals match the external realities broke my body. I remember describing my reality then (at the edge of burnout) as furiously treading water while starting to take some into my lungs. While my expectations of work and career and life were folding in on me, there was this eerie knowing creeping up.

i just couldn’t shake this feeling that my dad had worked himself to death.

My dad was a wonderful guide and beloved member of his community that maybe didn’t embody the value of rest. He certainly encouraged it for me and people around him but i think he thought if he could push his limits, he’d be all the better. Knowing how much he loved life, and how i often feel the same way, his main reason was perhaps just so he could do more. I feel that way all the time. {My journey in this life is a great balancing act of riding the flames of creative expression and resting/earthing enough to stay grounded and present thru the process.} At my father’s memorial celebration i reminded everyone who thot he had a short life that he did SO much “he lived many lives”.. maybe he just lived it really fast and all at once instead of spread out with plenty of rest intervals. Somewhere around then i learned how all mammals have about the same amount of heartbeats in a lifetime. The bowhead whale’s very slow beat (10 beats/min resting) lasts them 200+ years as opposed to the rat’s quick heart rate (330-480 bpm resting) which lasts 2.5-3.5 years. Now it wasn’t his heart that killed him.. it was a cancer. Cancer cells multiply continually, without the typical kill switch or autodestruct function that healthy cells have.. a disease of productivity. Production that knows no microdeaths, just the big one. Kinda like capitalism, huh?

As i watched different parts of my beliefs and understanding deteriorate around me, another strange truth seemed to cloud my existence. I could not see myself passed a certain age.. like 31. I felt distinctly aware that i was heading for a short life. That my body was telling me, that’s how much longer we had together within these circumstances. The cognitive dissonance grew so great, and the fuel to go on dwindled. I started looking for changes, a next step that i could live with (meaning it didn’t uproot everything i thot security was based in.) I had not hit rock bottom yet.. just a sort of bottom. I made a lateral step — a new job in the same field. It seemed to have much more to do with my desires and interests, but in the end it was the same models and beliefs dressed up differently. There was lots of self-bargaining and contorted expression thru this period. I felt lost and the familiar was unsustaining.

Then my body broke broke. i got seriously injured by overriding my body signs and intuition. My chronic illness had already been in flare up for a year or two and then i pushed myself to meet unrealistic expectations within very questionable work conditions. I wound up with severe tendonitis and general musculonerve pain that rendered me immobile. I needed assistance lifting drinks and forks to my mouth is how serious it was. I have never fully recovered and chronic tendonitis is now a part of my daily chronic symptoms. (Beloved body signs that help urge me to rest and recover in waves so i don’t burn all the way out before i’m ready.) This loving force-stop was what i needed to see, look, and feel myself oriented squarely in my life at that time. To look at the math i was conjuring. Even then, i tried to return to the job, make sense of what i was building towards. Leaving all structure of knowns behind still felt not yet possible. Then a very close beloved held up a mirror to my life and the justifications I was making for it. I felt dysphoric and lost. and THEN the last straw (the one that broke the camel’s back as they say): my employer made an offhand comment revealing their contradicting values, or at least how they contradicted where i wanted to be and thot i was. Only at the point of feeling without anything worth pursuing was i ready to face the void — to take the reigns and responsibility for my life, my beliefs, and how i acted on them. From there, change was easy. Well, not EZ easy.. but a hell of a lot easier than whatever the hell i was doing to myself before. O PEOPLE HOW I RAN ! till my body said we will run no more. Not until we are running for the sake of running, and dying for the sake of dying. There would be no more sacrificial living to feed the monsters of overproduction. I see my future now: long and glorious, full of love and adventure and building worlds within worlds of beauty and connection. I’m thankful for my body. It holds me to the earth. and i love it here. I just wanna do more, and there’s not much to do when we’re always running, running.

O how i ran, till my body said, let’s rest. Again and again, i overrode my body’s consent, till eventually it overrode mine. And if it weren’t for this blessing. I might still be running, and o so near to dying.

The thing is when i take a step back. I see that we’ve all been running running. and are having our collective tower-falling moments of having our systemic beliefs called into view and question. Bodies are rejecting this shared reality. Maybe what we need is to bottom-out, so we fear not collectively facing that void of newness - of something else - together. MAYBE WE ARE ALREADY THERE. We are building the foundations beneath us for the worlds we’ll inhabit tomorrow. It takes some humble shifting and mudwading to build where you stand. But the signs of things not working, will escalate, till change is embraced, till the void is faced. We are the ones who can paint our future differently.

my dad reflected in moving train window on his last earth trip (top photo: sun sets over an airfield after my dad’s end of life celebration; text photo: my dad’s text to me on my last bday while he was earthside)

how does one greet a flower?

how do you greet a flower,
if not with a picture?

(little suns everywhere)

they’re so vicious 
in their magnificence

(drinking, crooning at the star)

sly coy dormant, then
just there

              utterly     escapable

(i once thot all my plants were unhealthy
when not in bloom)

no surprise
my proud beauty, rude excellence
demanding to burn hot

    f  e  r  v  e  n  t  l  y

(a sun i kno myself to be)

till death takes me.
before dormancy

or so i thot, till i re-rose
like a blossom . . .

2 weeks?   that’s all i get?
of this life.. of this year.?

(i wilt like a flower when i want
to burn like the sun)

what suits this blessed impermanence?

(the sun is coming the water is scarce, 
i worry)

how do you greet a flower, if not 
with a picture?

(there’s something of myself that you 
must teach me.)

shall i bring you a drip of life?
sweet nectar for your synthesis?

i could smell you, 
with all the breath in my lungs
till i forget my head and it blows away

how do i greet you, flowers?

shall i whisper to you 
sweet secrets of speech?
shall i beam at you with my heart,
share an earth touch with my feet?

how does one really greet flowers?

move the air ecstatically around you 
with undulations of my stems?
or mimic your colors
with all the petals i pull towards my leaves

how do we really flowers greet?

shall we sway beneath the sky as one
to the orchestration of the wind?
shall we host life at our feet
while quietly creating?

show me, 
how does a flower
be.

shall we shine, openly inviting
to drink of life and celebrate?

shall we feed the earth with our beauty?
touch our spirits to the creatures?
return our bodies when we’re ready.

show me how to be a flower,
instead of trying to be the sun.

(a flower is the stardust 
that knows how to be earth)

if i could learn to greet them
then i might learn to be One.

energy is a cleaner compass than matter

on how we open, how we move and where we’re heading ~

the nature of openings is like a closing in reversal. in many ways an ending is set with a beginning. not that it is written but it is directed to. the birth kernel of truth (-ness) is the essence, the beginning,, the intention, the plan, the cape (a sort of invisible net we carry forward that gathers energy to us). a new direction is a new birth. and each birth precedes the end, the last, the next birth. last is another word for transition. because nothing is ever the final nor never final. ((these words wind thru truth to catch its many sides.)) a stagnant truth is a false one. a dead one - more memory than life. an imprintation on the fabric of spacetime that is not where we are. clinging to ghosts like survivors forgetting that everything is birthing,dying perpetually. What’s important is the way we do a thing, far more than what we’re doing. What matters more than the goals and mile markers we set for ourselves out in the invisible future (another spacetime)? the energy and angle with which we direct ourselves (in the present spacetime). we need to know less of where we’re going than how we’re getting there. aligning with the energy of the place we desire to go to is a stronger compass than aiming at the destination we think we want. (we are not as good at predicting materiality as classical physics might have one think). unseen energy is a precursor for materiality and it’s something we can access outside of spacetime. tuning to the subtler qualities makes us a finer instrument of perception. a fine-tuned sensing compass allows us to better ride the present - to better sense the shift of our flow before the signals escalate and larger adjustments are needed.

fluid and future paths unfurl in the now, stretch all the way back thru spacetime to where we are. a distance too great to see but possible to feel. being in collaboration with our fine-tuned sensing systems and using that to align to our desired direction quantum-bridges our journey. which is to say makes a non-linear, multi-dimensional pathway connection.

it doesn’t cheat the laws of materiality, rather things align in such a way that the distance between two points collapses - a secret passageway, a shortcut. these are available to us all the time when we give in to our nature of perpetual transformation, when we don’t hold ourselves as fixed points. imagine a roundabout of choices: you drive in circles making a decision, one exit might get you off on the other side of the roundabout, another might land you two miles down the road, an unfamiliar place entirely.

it is a feeling, inner knowing, that shows us the thruways and bridges to our most aligned futures. so, in this time of reassessing and new beginnings, i invite you to use your energetic compass that you’ve been developing all your life, knowingly or not. if this feels like an unknown proposition, try imagining that nothing is as it appears on face value (it’s not) and sense for the truthiness that lies beneath. if we’re not practiced this may feel like a terrifying way to make decisions and choose how to respond. you can start as small as feels right and let the revelations from lived experience be the trust that brings you closer to your own energy compassing.