Cultivating Curiosity

A week ago I returned from a one-week vision quest into the Swedish wilderness. It took me some time to fully let the experience sink in, but now looking back at it I can honestly say it was a turning point in my life.

Lost Compass

When I received the invitation, I signed up without hesitation, more than a little inspired by Into the Wild. I felt I needed to get away from it all to rediscover who I truly was.

Closer to the event I felt like I was fumbling in the dark, having lost the inner compass that guides my way in the tough decisions in life. My career was at a crossroads, yet I had no idea what my heart was calling me to do. So I set forth…

Windswept Mountains

After almost 20 hours of travel by plane, bus, and train, I met with the other participants at the Vålådalen nature reserve. Our base lay by a serene mountain lake, flanked by ancient fells on all sides. And there we got acquainted with the practicalities of the vision quest as well as with methods of awakening our intuition and getting closer to nature, as we spent the first day and a half settling down to a calmer pace of life.

On the second day we packed up our tents and headed off through the marshland and forest, through increasingly steeper terrain until we finally found ourselves above the timberline. We ceremoniously parted ways, listening to our hearts and senses for where we were each called to spend the three-day solo period of the vision quest.

I found my spot in a miniature valley flanked by two ridges and split by a clear mountain stream. I set up my tent and soon found myself fogged in as the clouds gathered all around. The uniform cloud wall further added to the isolation experienced by switching off our mobiles, leaving all distractions behind, and fasting. With the rain beating on my tiny tent and wind sweeping down the mountainside, I ended up spending most of the first day inside my tent, just relaxing into it.

Simple Feeling of Being

On the second morning the sun started peeking from behind the clouds and I ventured out from my shelter. As I enjoyed my time alone in nature and explored my surroundings, I noticed that the tumult within was calming down and my true voice was rising forth.

In a moment that seemed simultaneously both profound and mundane, I realized that my inner compass had never been broken or lost. I had simply shoved it aside and ignored its signals out of fear for the path it pointed towards. But in that moment of clarity, I also discovered the courage to follow my heart.

That evening the rain and clouds returned but I was no longer bothered by them. As I packed my tent the following morning, I spotted a white reindeer—supposedly a good omen—and met up with the rest of the participants in silence, with the wind still beating the rain against my face.

Painful Decisions

After a peaceful reentry and journey back home, I faced some sad decisions that my heart called me to make. I decided to quit my job by the end of August and, more painfully, to end my relationship with a wonderful woman.

Now that the pain has subsided and a calm clarity has taken its place, I’m certain that I’ve made the right choices. My heart is opening up to the world and I feel excited to be alive. And I believe with time the people I chose to part with will ultimately be better off.

At times living your truth may be a painful way to go but it is the only way we can go.

Margaret Wheatley came by The Hub Amsterdam on Wednesday to share her thoughts on social change and the times of transition. She’s definitely a thinker and author worth getting familiar with. And to share her ideas with the wider world, we decided to film her presentation:

I lie awake, thinking. What does the world need from us? Our current trajectory is a self-perpetuating suicide, yet what should we do instead?

Incremental Improvement

Simply getting better at what we’re doing is not enough. It seems very unlikely that for example the automotive industry in its current form will ever recover from the economic crisis, let alone be in a shape to help us avert the climate catastrophe. The same goes for banking, energy, and practically every single other sector of industry.

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.

—W.E. Deming

Leaping Ahead

But surely next generation energy technologies will generate millions of jobs and drop the emissions to an all time low? I certainly hope so. Even then we are not out of the bushes yet as we face crisis after crisis; water, food, resources, cultural clashes.

And technological progress, the very tool that seemingly saved us will bring us ever new challenges. Our best intentions are accelerating the speed of change and increasing the volatility of our already unpredictable world.

How will we respond to the ethical challenges and existential risks created by biotech and Artificial Intelligence? What will be the limits of human greed fueled by ubiquitous nanotechnology? These questions await us just beyond the horizon.

Our Capacity to Adapt

I believe that our only chance for survival hinges on cultivating the capacity to change, to adapt to new life conditions, to answer ever new questions. Fortunately we have a role model right at our doorstep.

Life itself has evolved over millions of years, survived natural catastrophies, and produced a staggering variety of thriving life forms. Life does not resist change, it adapts, not fearing to abandon what did not work.

Life celebrates diversity and embraces functional fit over competitive analysis. Life self-organizes on all levels; cells, organs, food chains, and ecosystems, all in partnership. Life adapts, survives, and flourishes.

This is what I mean by a more natural way of being. This is why I think it’s so important.

Different authors might call it different names—true calling, vision, or even career ambition—but practically everyone agrees that your purpose in life is important. Find it and follow it. Except… How will you know you’ve found it?

As You Evolve, So Does Your Purpose

My claim is that purpose is not something that you can find and be done with. Rather, it is an ongoing process of uncovering deeper and deeper dimensions of yourself. Over the years, you grow and change, why should not your purpose?

Here’s how I’ve described my life purpose over the years:

• “Get a job and build a life” (as the society expects me to)
• “Bring about a revolution in education” (influenced by AIESEC and Anthony Robbins)
• “Evolution of human consciousness” (after getting into Ken Wilber and Spiral Dynamics)
• “Uncovering a more natural way of being” (re-reading Presence was a key turning point)

What Can We Do?

If our life purpose is this elusive and constantly evolving, what are we to do? Most of us have at least a vague guess of what we feel called to do, even it’s something as mundane as our favorite hobby. My advice is to take your best guess and follow it with all your heart, but hold it lightly. Never stop expressing your heart’s call. Never stop looking within.

A friend of mine recently brought up the question of how to communicate experiential practices to businesses. Pondering on this I came upon the thought that there seem to be three different levels to view the practice on.

1. Activity

On the superficial level each practice is simply the activity we do, be it corporate yoga classes or musical improvisation workshops. Viewed this way, many practices seemingly don’t develop any tangible business skills and appear mostly useful for their immediate effect of relaxation, energy, etc.

2. Metaphor

If we go one level deeper, we can see each activity as a metaphor of a business activity. We can then use the activity as a laboratory to test out various mental models, e.g. yoga might be used to explore questions such as “Which is better, a slow stretch or a fast, jumpy movements?” And music might help us look at thoughts such as “What is the importance of a common idea and tune?”

Note also that these metaphorical explorations can take the form of key learning points, an intuitive understanding, and anything in between.

3. Embodiment

Deeper still we find embodiment. Here we can observe the characteristics that the practice cultivates moving from physical attributes into ways we live our lives. Yoga, for example, might help us bring resilience into stressful work situations, and music can get us in tune in more ways than one while building our capacity of entering flow states.

Applying these three lenses can help us deepen our own practice and offers an interesting way of building workshops for other people. And for you Ken Wilber fans out there, the levels roughly coincide with body, mind, and spirit.