Writing

The complexity of faith

Faith is complex. It demands nothing. But asks everything. Faith in what. For what. What’s worth having faith in? It only makes sense to have faith...

Cosmic PerspectiveInternal CompassQuestioning Norms

The absurdity of persuasion

Within a structure that values internal autonomy it seems absurd therefore to take the route of revolution; to demand that the other follow the same c...

Interiority Vs ExteriorityInternal AutonomyQuestioning Norms

Walls and compasses

Rules have a multiplicity of purposes. But at core they’re there to protect. To protect you. And to protect others from you. But the fundamental fall...

Internal CompassPersonal ValuesQuestioning Norms

Deliberate insecurity

The call to freedom for almost everyone is loud. Everyone wants to be free in someway. Free from fear, or insecurity, or hunger, or terror, or death....

Deliberate InsecurityFreedom Of ChoiceVulnerability

On rebellion

Exploring rebellion and its distinction with revolution leads you to a funny place. There’s the insistence that revolutionaries are those who have sa...

Inner VoiceInternal CompassRebellion Vs Rebellion

Service and contribution

Service and contribution are central to the notion of a deeply personal rebellion. But crucially one that comes from the inside out and not from the i...

ContributionInner VoicePersonal Values

Boredom and stagnation

What does it mean to stagnate? For life to be stale? Perpetual boredom? Are these beliefs that originate internally? Or do they come from values expo...

BoredomInteriority Vs ExteriorityStagnation

Boredom is dangerous

For a structure to exist it must eradicate personal boredom. It’s the most dangerous state. A state of emptiness and openness marked by a sense of fru...

BoredomInteriority Vs ExteriorityUntamed Self

The plateau

So obsessed with progress is contemporary society that it sees all plateaus as stale. As a kind of holding space to be done away with as soon as poss...

Embracing ChangePerspectiveQuestioning Norms

Magnetic North

Freedom itself can be trapping. This sounds counterintuitive based on everything that has been so passionately put forward. Wasn’t the system and ex...

AuthenticityInternal CompassPersonal Rebellion

The Narrow Channel

All powerful claims to your personhood begin by laying claim to something buried deep inside. All of the best sales pitches, from religion to the mar...

AuthenticityPersonal ValuesSelf Definition

A barrage of choice

Attention and awareness are a choice. In systems where the market place is barraging you with constant messages what you tune into becomes significant...

Freedom Of ChoiceInteriority Vs ExteriorityTuning In

Holding back

If you live in a system that repeatedly chooses to punish or sanction a particular type of behaviour. Over time you have almost no choice but to hold...

Fear Of SanctionSelf ViolenceSocietal Pressure

Systems of fear

Systems try and build a sense of urgency. A speed that is often not your own. They seem in a rush. Constantly imperilled by the sense of being extingu...

Personal ValuesQuestioning NormsSocietal Pressure

What is worthwhile

What is worthwhile. What is worth doing. What gives a life meaning. If the answer was singular, it would have been sold to you by now with a lifetime...

AuthenticityPersonal ValuesSelf Definition

The directness of symbolism

Symbolism is a powerful portal that bypasses the controlling lens of grammar. It offers meaning or understanding that has a direct route to the interi...

Interiority Vs ExterioritySymbolismUntamed Self

Wholeness

You can sell time. If you break it up. Demarcate it. Make it a discrete block. Package it up. Name it. Separate it from other moments in time. But th...

Being Vs DoingQuestioning NormsWholeness

An inner compass

Even the idea of an internal guide can be confusing. Incredibly natural once you realise there is no other guide, very confusing when all you’ve relie...

AuthenticityInternal CompassSelf Definition

The unclaimed space

Be wary of society and culture’s imposition of meaning. By consumerising spirituality, seeking and personal reflection the marketplace tries to own th...

Interiority Vs ExteriorityQuestioning NormsSocietal Pressure

The rebellion of nature

Existence within nature is always living in a carefully balanced state of fragility. Or is it. Perhaps it is from the relative point of view. From t...

NaturePersonal RebellionPerspective

Systems of nature

Systems aren’t objective entities that live outside of nature. They are from it and of it. They are manifestations of nature. The incentives they run...

Questioning NormsSelf DefinitionSystems Change

Systems that propagate

Systems of nature need to incentivise you to survive. If they didn’t then your very basic needs wouldn’t be met. You need to feel hungry to feel a de...

Endless DesireNeed To SurvivePersonal Rebellion

Becoming someone

From an early age, your environment shapes you. Mould you into something, someone. From parents to school, to the workplace. The insistence is that so...

AuthenticityInternal CompassSelf Definition

The retreat into silence

Do you need to take yourself away to escape the forces that seek to mould you. Or can you retreat into yourself. The interior space is so vast, and s...

Interiority Vs ExteriorityQuestioning NormsSelf Definition

Change and suppression

To not listen to the internal voice is to empower a wilful deafness. A deliberate shunning of something that is at essence what makes you, you. Shunni...

AuthenticityInternal CompassSelf Definition

Change as the imperative

If systems, religion, dogma holds that change is dangerous, then there must be good reason for it. Or not. They hold change as dangerous because it...

Embracing ChangeQuestioning NormsSystems Change

Absurdity and freedom

Absurdity is freedom. It’s the very essence of freedom. It’s the removal of all shackles of constraint. It’s deliberate stupidity. Silliness raised to...

Anti EstablishmentFreedom Of ChoiceQuestioning Norms

Rebellion is not contrarianism

Rebellion is not resistance. It’s not a position that exists solely in opposite to someone, something or an idea. It’s far beyond that. If it existe...

Personal RebellionRevolution Vs RebellionSelf Definition

True friendship

The friend has no agenda. Serving no purpose. No desire is fulfilled by the friend. For if the friend had an agenda they are not a true friend. Explo...

AuthenticitySelf RelianceTrue Friendship

Believing stories

Capitalism tells stories. It thrives on them. People tell stories. They thrive on them. The two are not the same. We tell stories to pass on our li...

Freedom Of ChoiceQuestioning NormsSystems Change

Fatigue and vulnerability

Fatigue is exhausting. A comically obvious statement. But so often wrapped in statements about burnout, stress, anxiety. All pointing to the same thin...

Interiority Vs ExteriorityMisalignmentVulnerability

It's good to be free.

Control. Oppression. Rules. Constraint. None of these things feel good. They take away, they add on someone else's agenda. They don't feel good. You...

Freedom Of ChoicePersonal RebellionSelf Definition

Freedom from your own judgement

The greatest risk of absorbing the values and beliefs of a system outside of yourself, is it leads you to judge yourself. Often harshly. Inappropriate...

JudgementPersonal ValuesSelf Definition

Not yet, not yet

The power and allure of external systems is they promise reward. But only if you follow a certain path. It’s a guarantee. A promise. A 100% money back...

Conditional ExistenceQuestioning NormsSocietal Pressure

The Grand Arc of Life

Lives are often judged minute to minute. That’s the vantage point you’ve got and that’s the vantage point society judges you from. Minute by minute....

Interiority Vs ExteriorityJudgementPerspective

Dead wood

A system persists by insisting what has happened before will never happen again. By promising security it cocoons you from reality. And it’s deep abid...

Conditional ExistenceFreedom Of ChoiceSystems Change

The Powerful Song

Systems and the structures they inhabit are designed to make you powerless. Mostly not through malign intent, but rather through self-serving structur...

Internal CompassPersonal RebellionSelf Definition

Myths and sacrifice

Whose myths will you believe? Yours or the world outside? It’s easy to fall into the slipstream of mythologies and beliefs that aren’t your own. All...

Personal ValuesQuestioning NormsSocietal Pressure

Death and achievement

You’ll be forgotten. Everyone is. Even the greatest actors in history are largely forgotten. Does this diminish a life? Absolutely not. Perhaps, howe...

Being Vs DoingEndless DesireInteriority Vs Exteriority

Space, time and insanity

Contemporary market driven society compresses space. It constrains space and time by demanding your attention, either to consume or to make you produc...

MisalignmentQuestioning NormsSocietal Pressure

The promise of more

In contemporary society there is the relentless promise of more. Do this, get more. Don’t do this get less. A constraining force that drives capitalis...

Conditional ExistenceSelf SufficiencySocietal Pressure

Awareness and Choice

Society hurries you along. Your school, your work, your death. Hurried. Moved along. A queue, waiting to be served a final gesture that never really c...

Freedom Of ChoiceQuestioning NormsSocietal Pressure

Freedom and judgement

Buried deep in our judgement of others are unwritten rules of how to be. How to behave. And how to think. Much more oppressive than the boundaries and...

Freedom Of ChoiceJudgementSelf Definition

No point to prove

There is no point to prove. Not right or wrong. No single line in the sand to which you just conform. There can’t be. That which was wrong yesterday...

Internal CompassPersonal RebellionQuestioning Norms

Sufficiency and Deficiency

Society will always sell you the vision that you are deficient, insufficient in some fundamental way. Contemporary market and competition driven socie...

Doing NothingSelf SufficiencySocietal Pressure

Systems Change

Systems change. Sometimes violently, sometimes gradually, always imperceptibly at first. They do this seemingly without your involvement. External fo...

Interiority Vs ExteriorityMisalignmentSystems Change

Burnout, stress and confused values

Contemporary society in particular diagnoses stress and burnout. An aberration. A disorder. A disease. A personal failure. Mounting stress on stress....

MisalignmentPersonal RebellionPersonal Values

Play and imperfection

Play is unproductive. It offers no value to a system based on outcomes. Play has none. It’s just play. It’s being not doing. It’s deeply aligned becau...

Doing NothingQuestioning NormsUnproductive Play

Ridicule and humiliation

Ridicule serves a powerful function in modulating behaviour. As is well established, in any social environment ridicule, humiliation and shame can all...

Fear Of SanctionQuestioning NormsSocietal Pressure

Loss and struggle

Both are a deep part of existence. The profound deception is that society repeatedly claims that loss can be averted and suffering can be avoided if o...

Acceptance Of SufferingFreedom Of ChoiceSocietal Pressure

Life and Adventure

Adventure implies an open road. Freedom. A path without a destination. It’s how life starts and potentially how life ends. Why then does contemporary...

Fear Of SanctionPersonal RebellionSocietal Pressure

The market friendly view

What does the market provide? A lens from which to view the world. A collective mass of desires and opinions. Rewarded and provided for. Undesired and...

Freedom Of ChoicePersonal ValuesSocietal Pressure

The need to perform, the fear of sanction

External voices provide security. Cover. They provide the feeling that ultimately it's someone else that bears the risk. That appears the bargain. But...

Internal CompassPersonal RebellionSocietal Pressure

Wisdom survives challenge

If personal rebellion invokes following your own path, your own voice does that dismiss the value of external advice. Whatever the source? No. But it...

Internal CompassPersonal RebellionSelf Reliance

Conviction and Voice

External voices drown out conviction.

Internal CompassPersonal ValuesSocietal Pressure

Satiated Desires

Society provides a promise of the trenched desire. And the problem with that is soon as that desire is completed, another one is served up. That endl...

Endless DesirePersonal RebellionSocietal Pressure

Striving and Tension

Nothing about personal rebellion is a dismissal of the reality of societal pressure and tension. Instead it's a question of alignment. Alignment behin...

Personal RebellionPersonal ValuesSocietal Pressure

A Quiet Rebellion

A quiet rebellion isn't one that demands attention. It doesn't require external validation and it doesn't play to the conventional metrics that the system demands.

Internal CompassPersonal RebellionSelf Sufficiency

Rebel v Revolutionary

A rebel is from the system, but not of it.

Internal CompassPersonal RebellionRevolution Vs Rebellion

The Pathless Path

So much of self-help and wisdom in contemporary society is offered as a salvation.

Personal RebellionSelf DefinitionWisdom

Unconditional Rebellion

We talk about unconditional love and reserve it for either the spiritual and the religious or alternaively for the young or infrim.

Conditional ExistencePersonal RebellionSocietal Pressure