TIME How we screwed up our relationship with the universe and how to get it back, Part 16 By Dr Eric Zabiegalski and Per Brogaard Berggreen

End of the road?

As a species that frequently struggles with life and ultimate meaning in the universe and their purpose within it, are we approaching the end of a road? Maybe, maybe not.? But it is the home stretch for writing partner Per Brogaard Berggren and I involving the search for our biggest questions about life, its purpose and meaning, and of course about time. With this said, Per and I make no promises how long this last leg will take. It might very well continue for six additional chapters and months; or go on forever.? And that would be fitting as it would stand true to our adventure. The reason we can’t tell you when this discussion will end isn’t due to masochism, shrewd marketing, or secret agenda. It’s for the same reason we set out in the first place, we don’t know ourselves.?

No end

And so, (and yet), we plod along, comfortable and content in knowing there are things we don’t know and things we can’t control. With curiosity as our default, we feel it’s important to note that we could have decided on other ways of feeling (and behaving) along the journey and found ways to protect and fortify ourselves against the murky dark of unknowing. ?Fearful, embarrassed, indifferent, avoidant, whatever feeling we’d settle on to comfort us, one thing would be evident. ?Whichever way we consciously chose to behave is our decision (the sub-conscious is another matter). ?We could have stopped our search early knowing there was further to go. But why do this at any point along any of life’s trails?? It doesn’t make sense. Why ever stop wondering (and wandering) while there are questions to ask and answers to discover? Greek Philosopher Heraclitus once said, “change is constant”.? While there’ll always be part of us that wants to be “finished”, snapping a chalk-line on done, like the continual persistent phenomena of life why would we do that? The greater truth is we just don’t know enough to ever stop questioning and searching. ?This perhaps is the secret of our true nature, of our purpose, our meaning in life, the value and significance we seek, and of time, it is motion.? And what do we know? While one answer is little, another is plenty. If you’ve curiously stayed with us, you might have discovered something already about the universe. Answers are all around us, and some are in the pages of these articles. Let’s continue the journey of discovery. Enjoy. Eric and Per.

Agendas, energy, universal responsibility

One thing humanity can do to change its trajectory and the (cultural) climate in the world, perhaps experiencing a quantum leap in things like peace and stewardship with 100 million other species on the planet is to simply relax. ?It’s tough because there is a part of us which is stubborn in this capacity.? Instead of focusing on things like creativity, love, suspension of judgement and the unknown, embracing and leveraging diversity, inclusion, collaboration, and emergence to tackle problems, most of us will turn to more familiar tactics.? As a result habitual behaviors such as, brute force, control, willpower, anxiety, and neuroticism, are things which will more often navigate and inform our operational lives. Surprisingly, instead of them culminating in optimal strategies, I suspect they more often exhaust us over the course of a lifetime.? And then as if to add insult to injury, we pass on those behaviors to our offspring. One of the core truths of our nature is that we want belonging, collaboration, and community and at the same time crave independence, power and viability over our environment and others. What’s the solution? A couple of things. The first is simply to know this truth regarding our makeup and learn to live with the contradiction. ?As writing partner Per and I learned from psychiatrist Dr. Iain McGilchrist and also from Niels Bohr and his ideas about complementarity and duality , life is neither “either/or” nor “both/and” but instead both either/or and both/and. The next thing is to “inventory our energy.” How we are using it, moving through the world with it, of what quality (coherence level) is it and what do we want (and want to achieve) from it? How could you consider and discover this energy in new and different ways?? In an earlier ARTICLE Per and I surmised that even “money” was a form of energy hiding in plain view, how do you use money?? It all comes back to energy.

Weve talked about purpose, meaning, and value before, and those things are also foundation ’ed by energy. ?When you’re in the presence of remarkable people, or a remarkable experience you know it (notice it), and you feel it.? When you do, you’re feeling their energy or the collective energy of the moment, and it’s likely you are also feeling purpose, meaning, significance and value. If you can tune your perception and awareness at will, you will feel the energy created around you and in you coming forth in different and remarkable ways more frequently, even daily.? Discussing the search for meaning in life, late Physicist David Bohm suggests that if you’re searching for meaning “it’s a sign your life lacks value to you” because the two are linked. ?He says the deeper question however is “what is the source of this value?” He offers a suggestion that the source of your value (meaning) is your energy. Incidentally, the root of the word “value” means valor, valiant, and strength. Value is the energy to do what brings you meaning, purpose, and value. ?What does this all mean? Maybe that we can’t escape this energy side of ourselves even though we are continually fixated on and chasing our physical side.

Energy

Sometimes the energy around us feels electric. At other times the energy around us feels weak or squandered. By us, by others, individually and collectively. ?Sometimes it’s wasted because of its agenda or bent and sometimes it’s because of its pinpoint specificity. What’s the purpose of energy and why does it feel so vital? Does this question seem obvious? Perhaps not so obvious is the notion that it’s because we are energy, action, and motion personified.? Channeling and expending this energy in sustaining ways in ourselves, to others, and the living world might well be our one simple purpose in life. I think Bohm would agree.

Expression

While we’re busy using all this energy how are we using it? Think of it as a question. What if we are the universe’s muse? One of its most complex and diversely creative expressions; artistic, poetic, energetic, flowing. What if each of us in our own way is like a flower, growing, blooming, and withering? From seed, to germination, to flowering, pollination, dispersal, and finally physical death and the releasing of our energy. ?What would life mean to you then? And what if we were meant to sit at an important crossroad in the universe and time? A sentinel, guardian and “carer.” A steward, and perhaps a catalyst and impetus for something yet realized.? Should we sit at our sentry box with expression, emotion, or action? And what would it be? Creativity, love, helpfulness, purpose? If you think about it, we spend a lot of our vital energy in all manner of potentially wasteful ways. Incoherently, and on agendum, selfishly attempting to control activities. Does the universe notice our incoherent behavior or is it just us? ?And is humanity’s “incoherence” the source of most of our problems, our incoherent thought?? If so, it’s easy to intuit why. Purpose, meaning, value, significance, connection, these are the things our heart most yearns and longs for.? And what can we do about incoherent thinking? Bohm says, “merely seeing the thought process can change it.” “The rational mind is at the service of irrational impulses; we have allowed thought to become our ruler.” One way to remedy this is to practice cognitive self-management using proprioception of thought , and learning to UNTHINK. Find out more about this Bohm-inspired technique in this VIDEO. ?

Sustainability in the cosmos

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Some of my favorite sci-fi movies involve mankind searching for new worlds and keeping humanities DNA strand alive, this is a dream worth dreaming. ?But what about keeping humanity alive in our world, and keeping our world and all its creations alive? ?Per says and I agree that human Social Sustainability?is the greatest of all our challenges, even above that of the environment and certainly above our petty personal concerns.? Chiefly because it is the foundation for successfully handling all other challenges and at the center of this lies what Per calls “Humainability.” Heavily inspired by the work of Ole Fogh Kirkeby, it’s the ability to hold tight to the idea that we are human. ?Per says humainability is the place where signs of a “global Communitas” can emerge. What is communitas? It’s the inner being of an organization, beyond its organizational manuals and its management, it is the liminal life, the space between boundaries, between thresholds. It is the inner life that cannot be expressed by manuals, management, and organizational charts. This can only be built on a platform of true “Humanitas”, the idea that human nature, civilization, and particularly kindness must prevail if we are ever to stand a chance for survival. ?Per says “we could exemplify all the organizations of the world by mapping them out, but it would never capture the inner being of the natural human experience. Communitas is the heart of the organization, social and relational, it is the sense of sharing and intimacy that develops among persons who experience liminality as a group. Interestingly, only humans have the power to alter the sustainability of the earth, no other species have that power. If we don’t build a “global communitas” on a humanitas of kindness, but one on artificial systems like finance or economics, that is what will drive human existence, and maybe the existence of the world.

Running around with soup cans on strings

Do you remember as a kid making a telephone from soup cans and string and then marveling at how something so simple and rudimentary could be used to communicate? Language is a little bit like this, powerful, but it has its limits. Yet we hang a lot (most) of the definitive meaning-making of reality on words.? And why not?? We’ve been relying on language to get around for 150 thousand years.

The geography of real

“Whatever you think a thing is, it isn’t” says Alfred Korzybski (pronounced “cor-zib-ski”) followed by “words are never the thing.” ?These are powerful statements, especially when you consider they came from a man who’s thought of as the father of modern linguistics, the science of language. Why did Korzybski feel this way? As much as he knew of the power of semantics Korzybski also felt that human knowledge of the world was limited by both the human nervous system and the languages we have developed.? Arguing that just as a map cannot completely describe a geographic location, Korzybski said language cannot completely, and solely, describe the embodied rich experience of reality.

In other words, our thoughts (expressed through words) make abstractions and create representations of life that guide us like maps so what we say something is, it really isn’t, it’s only a “representation” of reality. We don’t treat thoughts and words as re-presentations of reality however, instead we treat them as real. The difference between thinking, which is in the present and requires effort, and thought which is in the past and automatic, is a topic for another day. But it is perhaps the reason for many of life’s contradictions. Physicist David Bohm also says mechanical rigidity doesn’t fit reality or the whole of life yet there is a part of us which likes it. Consequently, there is a deeper coherence and “whole” of life which will not show itself or surface if this rigid structure rules our day, choking the whole of life. It diverts energy, nullifies expression, taints outlook and intention, widens contradiction, and denies sustainability, humainability, and communitas, negating experience and robbing us of making the most of time.? Ultimately, we cannot see what is truly going on. We see disorder outside of us but the disorder outside is a result of a disorder inside. As the Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus said: “as within, so without.” Think of it like this. If you were to drive somewhere and there was fog, you would be unable to travel. The interesting places you could go would be inaccessible to you. ?

Contradiction and life

And yet while words may never be the thing, there are times when they also can be.? Case in point is Helen Keller.? A woman who from a young age could nether see nor hear and was described by her teacher Anne Sullivan as a wild animal before learning language.? Perhaps It’s not language shunting us from mastering time and synching with the universe and life perceiving a clearer reality, but only when we rely on it exclusively or dig in our heels refusing to use or ignore our other senses and means of communication that we get ourselves into trouble. Neuroscientist Rudy Tanzi once joked that using “Laryngeal grunt sounds” to make words, and meaning, was extremely limited though we behave as if it provides all the answers to knowing. What’s this got to do with time and our relationship with the universe? Just that we could probably use time more wisely, efficiently, and be happier if we didn’t hang our hat solely on language in the encountering of reality.? And when we do use it be thoughtful and deliberate. Only speaking or writing after observing, thinking, and then carefully explaining what it is you want to say.

Joni, Neil, and Cousin Jeremy, perspective as the key to time

When sharing thoughts about this month’s article on time with friends and family, a family member commented that they were going to put a 1971 song from folk rock singer Joni Mitchell (The Circle Game) on in the background when they read it. Initially, I misinterpreted the comment, assuming they were speaking tongue and cheek, perhaps giving me a hard time about writing something they thought would be too ethereal, or whimsical, or liberal. When I commented to that effect expecting to “call-out” the good-natured ribbing, instead, they explained the song was about the passing of time and life (specifically ageing) and was written as a reply to a friend of Mitchell’s, Neil Young, and to his song Sugar Mountain.? Young wrote the song at the age of 19 saying that when he turned 20 it would be time to give up his youthful energy and change.? Discouraged and saddened by such a dreary prognosis (and hoping he wasn’t right) Mitchell answered him with her own song, The Circle Game, proposing her own perspective of time.? I was intrigued by the following video explanation shared with me you can also watch HERE. And to my cousin Jeremy I say thank you for sharing such a thoughtful insight and story I never knew, broadening my knowledge. What does this have to do with time and life? Everything.? Both these artists were characterizing, and more importantly sharing, the passage of time as they saw, felt, and were living it at that moment. Perhaps using time successfully is no more difficult than in this example. When you have the chance what will you say about time and life for others to learn and grow from?? What’s going to be your authentic story with time? I’m not sure about mine just yet, but I’m going to give Jeremy a big hug the next time I see him.

Dr Zabiegalski and Per Brogaard Berggren are available to talk to your organization or venue about ambidexterity research or speak informatively and eloquently about organizational culture, leadership, strategy, learning, complexity, IT, business neuroscience, creativity, mindfulness, talent management, personal success, emotional intelligence, Action Learning, and storytelling. Contact Eric, or Per on LinkedIn about a talk, keynote presentation, or workshop today!