What is a field?

A field consists of at least one element believed to be true by at least one thing/animal/person. Couldn’t get loftier than that, right?!?! I promise I’ll bring things down and shower you with examples.

Consider the field of English polite behaviour whereby a great deal of English people contribute towards. One belief shared by the people fostering that field is that queueing is the right thing to do when waiting for a bus at a stop. (But hey, what is an Englishman but if a lonely queue...)

At the core of an established field, we have repetition and compulsion. We take something to be true and we do it again and again until our contribution to a field evolves into us handing over the power to believe anything different. That is, eventually the notions that started up a field solidify until we perceive them as the (god almighty) TRUTH in all possibilities and anything else is perceived as untrue, impossible or not real.

To play a bit with that element of compulsion I invite you to ponder, is the sky blue or pink? Can you make yourself believe that the sky is any other colour but blue until you actually see it that way? How does it feel not to have power over how you perceive the sky? How does it feel to have your perception of reality so attached to what other people perceive as real?

Since we are talking about reality, let’s talk about matter.

Perceiving matter is a compulsion and like all compulsions, it’s not good or bad, it just is.

However, by perceiving the absence of that compulsion people often lose ground (pun intended) and start shouting in sheer panic “We live in a simulation!”, “Nothing is real!” and “I’m in the Truman show for realz!”. That’s why some people prepare for decades to avoid the straining aftermath when experiencing the absence of matter. Some others, like me, make a leap of faith, hoping to be caught and bounce back.

Oh, the perils of being deliciously addicted to matter! Anyway, enough about our mother/matter.

As you may have already guessed, it gets spookier. You may not remember agreeing to surrender to any of those fields/truths/compulsions. Probably because in your mind you were born and things were as they were, but fear not, let’s play a game instead.

I want to introduce you to a game you can play so you can better understand fields. In this game, there is no need to spiral down into paranoia and uncertainty, no need to rock ourselves chanting “I am not crazy!”. It’s a game where we all can win and be cool about it.

For starters, everything you believe to be an absolute truth is perfect and valid and truthful in your realm, so let it be. The sky is blue. Foreigners who don’t queue are rude. You’re sexy as hell. All true if you think they are true.

If those truths/fields/compulsions are serving you (i.e. they make you happy as a clam) stick with them.

In the odd case one of those pesky god almighty truths is bringing you down, then let’s play.

The first move of this game is to step out of a field that is not serving you and joining one that is more of your liking.

There are many ways to do that, but the simplest one I’ve found begins by considering that what you perceive as true may NOT be the case. No actions. No denying your experience. Just entertain yourself with the possibility of a different truth without figuring out what that real truth may be.

The point is NOT jumping into believing anything else but just doing a simple inquiry similar to an exercise used to learn to lucid dream. Lucid dreamers start their journey by constantly questioning themselves whether they are awake or sleeping. In the case of a field/truth/compulsion, we can start by pondering every now and then “is there a chance that this thing I entirely believe to be true is not true?”.

This inquiry invokes the beautiful neuroplasticity of our brain and allows us to re-train ourselves to be out of the field we are not enjoying.

For example, let’s say you believe you can’t get along with Tracy, a friend of your parents. Tracy has the cheek of visiting them often and because you avoid Tracy you end up not seeing your parents often enough and missing them. A daring move to disrupt your current allegiance to the field of “Tracy and I don’t get along” is asking yourself every time you both meet, “Is that so? Is it really true that we can’t possibly get along?”.

Repetition and curiosity are key to this move. Other moves in the game of fields can take you out of a field faster but they aren’t as simple nor they aim to safely place you into another field in such a gentle manner.

As much as I like my Tracy example because it is straightforward, I get it is very sanitised and detached. So now I want to get real and raw.

For years, I was certain that I believed that men were NOT superior in any way to women. I was mistaken. I was raised inside a civilisation serving the dominant culture, thus I was well trained to perniciously believe that men were superior to women (despite my puny attempts to think otherwise).

So once I became aware of how I was earnestly contributing to the field of “men are superior to women” and I was more than certain that such belief did not serve me, I wanted out.

I used the aforementioned move and I picked a particular nuance of the field. I focused every day on the times where I welcomed new content, like a book or a movie. I gently asked myself “Is the content written/produced/directed by men really much better in general?”.

I simply observed my answers and what happened afterwards. No judging. No frowning upon the male gaze. No hating the kyriarchy. Just having plain curiosity.

With time I started seeing my patterns of consumption and I was able to disrupt them by deliberately describing to myself the outcome of my choices. I didn’t tell myself off. I didn’t force myself to watch every film made by a woman in the last ten years. No. No. No. I just noticed my choices and the outcome of them.

I eventually became bored with what I was usually consuming because every so often I would randomly get a film or an article by a woman and something got touched. A depth. A wrinkle in time. A random room inside my being. Something I didn’t even know existed. By noticing those touches, those strokes, I realised there was a lot to explore that was not covered by my usual patterns of media consumption.

Then, the media I normally consumed started feeling far too bland for a taste that was developing and getting educated. Before I knew it, I was scanning who the creators of what I was about to consume were and organically postponing the fellas with a very Mexican “ma?ana ma?ana” in favour of the ladies, the queerfolk or basically anyone bringing true diversity to my media experience.

The results of that move were quickly extrapolated by my mind to other areas and in due course, I made it out of that unconscious field of “men are better than women”. I jumped into another field, a field hungry for diversity. A field I am still exploring it.

I hope you’ve enjoyed what I said about fields and my musings about how to play the game of fields. I am dying to know if you’ve identified a field you want to get out or if you have a cool way to get out of a field that you want to share with me.

Last but not least, one of the many skills I possess is the ability to make advanced moves to step out of a field and join another one (or even better to create a new one!). I am also able to guide people through a transition between fields.