World-selfing and self-worlding 🪬

In today’s Level Up ⬆️ immersion I was noticing how much our coping strategies assume and defend a world. For example, “I’m quiet because I’m afraid I don’t belong”, assumes and reifies that belonging is a thing that others can grant or deny. This was beautiful to see, and apply to myself (“I’ll share deep insights to earn loving acceptance”, assumes loving acceptance is somewhere other than here already) but then I noticed how I was only emphasizing the world-assumption. I don’t know how any human could ever know of a world without a knower—so whenever we say "world”, we really mean “world+self”, and whenever we say “self”, we really mean “self+world”. So if I’m assuming and defending a world, I’m also assuming and defending a self. 

As another example I was reconnecting with an old friend as he described how complex the world is and how simple and low-bandwidth our models of it are. Yes! I agree! Applying the world+self awareness, I see how my self-concept is extremely simple and low-bandwidth compared to the wild complexity of who I am in ‘reality’.

Recursively, the recognition of self+worlding/world+selfing still enacts a world and a self. I don’t think we can stand outside of such a process; we can though shift our sense of what a self and a world are, to become more aware of/surrendered into/as the process of this happening. As serious as this sounds, the outcome, if done right, should be more access to a light-hearted playfulness (because we’re always a little mistaken about what’s real and who we are) and heart-break (because everything we love is ephemeral). The heart breaks open to be more with what's here rather than what we hoped—but the grief for what was, is, and what we wanted, is felt more intensely.

Recognizing the process while being the process shifts the locus from defending particular self+worlds to fluid participation in constructing. Self becomes verb rather than noun, world becomes activity rather than container. 

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With love, Jordan