Speaking from Stillness is a fun series transcribing unscripted thoughts while on morning dog walks in my jungle valley. I walk in stillness, then allow whatever arises to get recorded and transcribed. I try to keep them short. The transcript is lightly edited for clarity.
I grew up in North America. There were things that we were taught that were ‘true’.
‘I think, therefore I am.’
To get to truth, science is required…that which you can measure, define, quantify.
‘We are all created equal.’ Hmm.
Democracy is the political expression of freedom and equality…and Capitalism is the economic extension which allows us each to prosper…if we just work hard enough, anything is possible.
And as a young man, well, let’s say boy, I believed these to be true.
It’s funny to realize that most of these ideas are not ancient ideas. They’re constructs given to us, largely in the last 300 years. So to think of them as truth is so interesting, especially when now my Connection with Truth is so much more ancient, and non-culture-determinant.
Because make no mistake, that way that I thought earlier in life was very cultural-determinant for someone growing up in Canada, thinking everyone was free and equal…with no regard for the indigenous folk living just over that hill. Remarkable.
So I guess it’s not surprising to watch the liberal-democratic-order flailing at the moment, when those who don’t believe in it use the institutions that it creates and the values that it represents…if those institutions are taken over and the values disregarded…it’s easy to overthrow those concepts. And I get to now live through a time where we re-look at those structures, or the world does.
This One has a remarkably new and ancient and simple concept of Truth. Where the concerns about these other things…melt away…as experiences, as stories, as narratives that are transient. And the Connection is to Truth.
I did see a recounting of a story, which prompted this discussion, this morning online, on Easter Sunday, and it was the Ojibwe concept of the ‘Windigo’.
The insatiable creature that devours not because it is hungry, but because it loves to devour. What makes this creature so dangerous and unstoppable (is) there is no rhyme or reason…it does not eat when it’s hungry, it devours for the sake of devouring.
And the Ojibwe used this term to…this ancient term for a Great Sickness…to describe the Colonizers, with their insatiable need for money, powers, resources.
Capitalism as the Windigo.
Something that I realized early on, working in the technology startup ecosystem at a cutting edge of growth-growth-growth-growth capitalism, value-creation value-creation value-creation, is that the entire Capitalist system is built on the need to grow, the need to devour resources to get larger. I never wondered…or I always wondered…why someone could not build a company of the size they want, that did good meaningful work that you enjoy, get to a particular size and then stay there, creating the lifestyle that you want to live. For me that was always the goal, and those are the companies that I have respected the most. They are small companies…and in fact I helped to create one that still sustains to this day.
It is the insatiable appetite for growth, it is the believing that our thoughts are ‘what we are’, it is the sense of individuation which is accelerating at a rapid, rapid, rapid pace today. It has always been there. It is part of being a human that is alive.
But now, instead of being concentrated in an elite few rulers, kings, monarchs, who would drive the serfs, that belief system, the Windigo, has propagated into each of the individuals. To try and grow, to strain to grow, and to feel unfulfilled. Always.
And that is fuelling a disenfranchisement…discontent…in the things that we grew up believing. The foundations are cracking.
‘But I thought this was true, and if I did this, happiness would await.’
What this One came to realize, after all my foundations cracked and crumbled, was that…
Truth is in Presence.
Truth is in Now.
Truth is in One-ness.
And allowing that to wash over you is the most wondrous realization of all!
This does feel like a time of acceleration. But acceleration with the Windigo also creates an acceleration of those whose foundations crumble…and it’s those with the foundations crumbling who are arriving at the One-ness, the place they need…to share…and that’s what this is for.
To create a rich soft-landing,
For those whose foundations have crumbled…and are looking for One.
It’s Right Here, It’s Right Now,
And…It Changes Everything.
