Hi Friend,
Before I dive into the second issue of Transilience, I want to extend a special invitation to join me this Thursday morning for a Free Masterclass called Inner Sight: Weaving the Wisdom & Science of Visionary Practices to Expand What You Believe is Possible.
There's so much I feel inspired to share with you and only so much I can convey in an email, so if you would like to dive deeper into my Transilience framework, join me live on the new moon this Thursday morning at 8 am PST (yes, there will be a replay available!)
⋙Click here to Sign Up (for free)
👁️💜👁️
With that said, onwards and upwards...
In the last issue of Transilience, I introduced the concept of Kairos and the metaphor of the Titanic; we are straddling a time between two worlds – the ship is going down, but it hasn't yet sunk.
Kairos presents a unique opening marked by disruption but equally marked by new opportunities where the impossible becomes possible.
We often hear that we can't s
olve our problems at the same level of thinking that created them, and what got us here isn't going to get us to where we need to go...
But how do we actually train the mind to think bigger? How do we expand what we believe is possible so we can imagine the unimaginable and envision a new future that doesn't yet exist?
Of course, this is the golden question, isn't it, and it's the essence of what fostering Transilience is all about.
There are many entry points to this conversation, but one place to start is by questioning the hidden beliefs that define us.
How do we question our beliefs if they are hidden from our view?
We can take two approaches here: outward and inward.
First, we can take a good look around us.
Rooted in our current understanding of perceptual neuroscience we know that:
We perceive what we believe.
When we realize that the outcomes of our lives are directly tethered to what we believe to be true, then a courageous willingness to look life square in the face with fierce compassion and curiosity can become a powerful mirror for revealing what is hidden from our view.
We can also take an inward approach, by mastering the art of asking what I call "threshold questions."
Because every belief has an outer edge, a threshold waiting to be crossed, threshold questions invite us to stretch ourselves toward that edge, to the periphery of our awareness; the meeting point between the light and the dark, the seen and the unseen.
This meeting point is precisely where the alchemy of our inner transformation occurs.
As author David Grey so eloquently put it:
"Change happens at the boundaries of things – the boundary between the known and the unknown, the familiar and the different, between the old way and the new way, the past and the future."
At that precipice, the question extends a hand, like an encouraging friend extending an invitation, willing and ready to usher us through a new doorway that was previously hidden.
In this way, threshold questions remind us that the word Quest is firmly embedded within the word Question.
If we trace the lineage of both quest and question, we discover that they share a common root derived from the Latin word quaerere, meaning “to seek” or “to ask.” Literally “the act of seeking.”
So here is the quest I'm inviting you to embark on:
Do you believe that you carry within you something truly unique to offer the world, something only you can offer?
Are you willing to cultivate that gift and do you have the courage to offer it to others?
Threshold questions do not merely seek answers; they seek new ways of being, and in this way, they not only midwife us through change, they actively shape us in its making.
Accepting the invitation to follow the path of a threshold question becomes an initiation because it always requires letting go of something that once defined you in a previous chapter of your life.
It invites you to put down the baggage of old narratives that shaped your identity, and leave them at the door.
Letting go becomes a prerequisite for crossing through.
This particular question about our unique gifts invites us to examine and (hopefully) shed the conditioning of our educational system which was designed and built for the industrial era.
Many of our core beliefs about who we are, what we are capable of, how creative we are, and why we are here were an extension of a curriculum that emphasized uniformity and conformity, molding us to fit in so we could dutifully keep the wheels of the great machine turning.
Remnants of that conditioning still live within each of us, in the neural synaptic connections still firing and wiring, projecting an old reality we are ready to leave behind and reimagine.
One of the central invitations – indeed initiations – of our time is to reclaim and remember our inherent uniqueness and awaken to the gifts that we were born secretly carrying into this world.
After all, Nature, in her infinite intelligence, never makes copies; she only creates originals.
Which of course means there will never be another one of…
You.
Your path is 100% original, every single step of the way.
This also means, by definition of being truly unique, that you carry something that no one else carries.
But if you don’t believe that to be true, you likely won’t choose to embark on the journey of discovering what that gift is, because that path will be hidden from your view.
You see what you believe. If you don’t believe it, you won’t see it.
Each belief has a neurological underpinning, and one way to start rewiring your mind to perceive possibility is by learning new words and concepts, as well as reclaiming the meaning of ancient words that evolved and morphed alongside our culture.
One of the words ready to be reclaimed is the word Genius.
Unfortunately, we have come to believe that there are very few geniuses amongst us and only those who possess rare talents, yet this couldn’t be further from the truth or the original definition of the word.
