I woke up this morning, uneasy. Was it a dream? Something I ate last night? I sat up confused by the dull headache, reminiscent of a hangover — impossible as I had had nothing to drink the night before. “All is not well this morning,” was the broadcast I was receiving. What then? News on the feed was bad, is bad, is always bad. Maybe it’s a news hangover, I thought. I need to swear off the default American news sources.
Who am I this morning? Uneasy, not at home in the body.
Breathe then, always the breath. We take 17,000 of them a day. I try to make at least 500 of those conscious ones. In…hold…out…hold…repeat…times 10. Green tea and then a stretch into my body. Starting to feel — a — bit — more — like — the — becoming — me.
My spiritual practice is to take everything in every moment as the path to awakening. Poison as path. Joy as path. Work as path. Boredom as path. Path as path.
I have a craving to know what is going on in the world. I want the news of the day, everyday. I take it in full firehose. Like all cravings it comes with a clear cost — mostly my tranquility. I close the traditional feeds and switch to my PROOF feed, everyday the AI sends me a collection of positive stories about the future. Stories from people who give a damn about the future. My nervous system resets and I start feeling a glimmer of excitement. There are good things going on out there.
As is inside so is it outside, as it is outside so it is inside — clear — but what to make of it? If I am uneasy is that because the world is uneasy, or is the world uneasy because I am uneasy? Until I shift my attention to the outside piece that is positive, and then I am positive. I am what my I put my attention on, or where my attention gets grabbed. Rabbit holes are everywhere: 12 notifications have gone off in the last 4 minutes, updates and responses, notes to read and research
Snap awake, question: How do we transcend who we are to make way for who we are becoming?
We don’t have the life we want today, the world we want to live in today. No one likes the state of the world today. My inner cynic knows these roads only too well.
Yet we can see what is emergent in the world. A growing movement of world designers are sharpening their imagineering pencils and designing their way out of the chaos. New economic systems, new physics, new governance models, new transport and energy systems. All we need to do is let them get their hands on the wheel and drive this old world forward into a thriving future.
How do we get the powerful of this world to step aside?
As it is outside so it is inside. What is it in me that is standing in the way of that which I am becoming? Fixed, attached, impatient little old me. How do I get you to stand aside to let love and wisdom emerge?
Time to meditate, to be.
Evolution is messy. Our evolution is uneven, more of a probability cloud moving in the direction of a better future than a linear progression. We have remnants of Neanderthal DNA in our genetics. We are a mishmash of everything that has gone before with some really cool features, like thinking, imagination, laguage, empathy, love and compassion. The same is true of our civilization. We have Hamurabi’s eye-for-an-eye code of justice living side by side with the International Court of Justice (World Court). We have pollution spewing 200m super yachts ferrying champagne guzzling elites alongside radical gift economists who refuse payment for work and live off the gifts of others. Evolution is here, just unevenly distributed (Wiliam Gibson, on the future).
We are evolving towards becoming a new kind of human and we are stuck in the past and we are playing with technologies that threaten the very viability of life on earth. All of these things and more are a part of the emergent future.
Same on the inside. Most of us are at war with ourselves, belittling ourselves with our imperfect bodies, our imperfect minds, our left/right broken hearts, all the while doubling down on courses, workout classes, yoga retreats, low fat-keto fat-animal protein-vegan diets, all the while measuring our self worth by the likes our — superficial, glossy, made for streaming, I am camera ready always, even when I am crying my eyes out — social communities.
How do we transcend who we are to make room for who we are becoming.
The answer is that we must transcend our current self without leaving it behind. This means that we can erase ourselves, even the parts we may not like, rather we have to include who we are today as we become our future selves. That rings true, right?
So I get out of bed, uneasy, and breathe…and stretch…and settle into my future self, without having to reconcile or repress or make my uneasy experience wrong. It is just what it is, an uneasy feeling today, a sad one tomorrow, and something else the day after. I am just how I am. Who I am becoming is okay with that, more okay than today’s self is.
That feels a lot like evolution. It’s a good day to become. That’s true for me. That’s true for the future of humanity.
In the meantime, we’ll be looking for PROOF of a thriving future for humanity.
The Generative Futurist
Editor PROOF
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Proof 50 – World Building from the Inside Out
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