How Society Gets Trapped In Limiting Ideas
On the need to re-awaken other ways of knowing in order to unfold a shift in individual and collective consciousness.
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I want to share a quick video clip with you discussing why our world is feeling trapped in outdated ideas. The video is below, but I want to set some context first. Also, I’d love to hear your thoughts about the content of the clip in the comments.
One of the key premises behind my first project, Collective Evolution, is that we can benefit from moving beyond old ways of thinking about ourselves and the world and awaken to new ways of knowing. These ways of knowing aren’t new per se, they are more so forgotten.
As CE’s about page reads:
We live in a time where our systems and overall society is crumbling or transitioning – media, technology, economies, education, consciousness, relationships and more. Our existing ways of looking at and understanding our world are no longer sufficient, and new conversations are encouraging us to look more deeply at why our world is the way it is, and what about us creates it to be this way.
Today, we orient to our world so cognitively, stuck in our heads and thinking constantly. Often focused on ideologies of someone else’s making, unsure how we TRULY feel about them. In the end we often respond to, view and consider what’s possible based only on what we know from a limited way of seeing the world.
In modernity, we have lost sense of the sacred, the subtle, and the interior of ourselves. This has had a big effect on our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health inevitably producing the practical decisions we collectively make in the world.
Simply, the state of our world is a natural manifestation of our existing level of consciousness. Therefore we should not be overly surprised by our outcomes.
Our global society is in decline. Some refer to these major global happenings as ‘crisis after crisis’, but I see it more so as ‘reflection after reflection.’ Either way, we seem to be awakening to the fact that something fundamental is ‘off.’
From the crisis lens, we can have much fear and worry, looking to use our existing ways of knowing and systems to URGENTLY fix the problems.
From the reflection lens, we might see that our existing systems and ways of knowing can’t solve the problems and aren’t meant to, because a fundamental shift in consciousness is needed. Here, because we are attuned to something deeper in ourselves, there tends to not be consistent worry and panic either.
This isn’t to say we should ignore all short-term changes to help bring more peace while we wait for a shift to occur, but there is a strong sense that we must think and feel more deeply about what’s occurring. (Of course, if you are in an active warzone this cannot be the case, obviously.)
Many object to this idea of exploring ourselves in this way. I believe this to primarily be because we are stuck in a baseline of mild survival stress and oriented too greatly toward urgency. Taking a breath is nonsensical to that angsty-ness.
What is also common now is people are ping-ponging back and forth with wanting new systems but also feeling all change can be created from our existing systems. It becomes difficult to know where to land in search of an all-or-nothing answer.
This represents the awkward space of exploring “How do we solve this? What shall we do next? I don’t seem to fit in this world, but I also am not sure where I do fit” in a time of fundamental shifts in the way we live. This has happened in history before, but this time perhaps more intensely.
Before we apply the “accept everything and don’t lose sight of presence” prescription here, I believe this IS the point of our moment. To sense this visceral feeling within our spirit and being that knows a new way of orienting to our reality is emerging.
This is why I built CE on the foundation of what I call Embodied Sensemaking, a process that looks at our reality, ourselves and our world (including current events) from a place that includes mind body spirit.
By listening to these layers of ourselves we can gently explore how our worldviews and what to choose to do are shaped. Then we can gently and skillfully expand, re-direct, or change them as needed - without the classic ‘rabbit hole’ moment so many people go through where they lose all sense of what is real and often struggle to find a stable worldview again - often becoming blackpilled.
With that said below is a clip from my full interview with Lubomir Arsov from earlier this year called The Collective Shadow of Modern Society with Lubomir Arsov.
In this clip, we discuss the ways in which we are orienting to and ‘knowing’ our world, and why those ways are producing outcomes we don’t like. The full episode is incredible and I recommend checking it out.
Be sure to let me know your thoughts in the comments.
As usual at very thought-provoking article. Thank you. Your article reminds me of the Biblical life-lesson where Jesus joins his disciple in a boat and calms a storm may sea (Matthew 8:23-27).
I'll use a paragraph that I cliped from EVS Bible Study to better explain my thought.
... And when he [the Great Teacher} got into the boat [this world], his disciples followed him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea [the world was becoming a dangerous and scary place to be in], so that the boat [life on earth] was being swamped by the waves; but he [the Master Teacher/Wise One] was asleep [to the scary happenings in the world]. And they [the frightened, worried common people of the world] went and woke him [brought the wise one's attention to what was happening in the world], saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.” And [the teacher] said to them, “Why are you afraid, o you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea [taught the residents the true, ancient knowledge of the Gods], and there was a great calm. And the men [those who heeded the words of the Wise Teacher] marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?”
Indeed, all the changes, crises and collapses we’re witnessing are happening against a cultural backdrop where scientific materialism has successfully imposed itself as the dominant religious discourse for modern times. (This isn’t true everywhere, but it’s very much the case in progressive cities. I live in Montreal, a global hub AI; my comment speaks to the view from here.)
We’ve gone from a society where it’s taboo to be a non-believer to one where it’s taboo to put one’s faith in something that “is impossible to measure or quantify, and therefore can’t be proven to exist.” We’re under intense cultural pressure to dispense with our proverbial right brains which, for all intents and purposes, are where God, the Universe, the Big Beat, e.g., would usually “go” to be actively, holistically and regularly engaged with.
This technocratic pressure to dismiss “magical thinking” and “irrational beliefs” is exerted via subtle and less-subtle forms of socially-sanctioned shaming, and achieves its aims once we cave to the pressure and admit that we, too, believe that anything beyond the small fragments reality we can realistically deal with as tiny sentient beings can only be a compensatory figment of humanity’s imagination.
I see the pendulum swinging back in people I know to be exhausted from the last 4 years in particular. They’re finding Jesus for the first time, or going home to the various belief systems they were raised with. They’re finding solace and liberation through ritual, community, and clear and functional strategies for achieving states of peace, trust, and surrender. This doesn’t strike me as being totally risk-free (cults, e.g.), and it’s not something I personally gravitate towards. However, I do understand (and experience) the need for religious experience and, to the degree that a person hasn’t signed up for something toxic or become a sanctimonious jerk, I’m happy if they’re happy.
I can only infer that a culture that cuts us off from the Divine, broadly speaking, is one hell-bent on keeping us small, scared, atomized, and consuming from the (dis)comfort of our treadmills.
This can’t be all there is.