I’ve been in the content creation world now for almost 10 years. In that time, I’ve done some great things, made some mistakes, learned how the media world works, how to get people’s attention, and how to better make sense of the world.
One of the biggest passions for me has been bringing a new level of consciousness to the way we make sense of our world. To consider not just the facts of a situation, but a bigger picture.
Our world is rife with challenges right now. Perhaps more than we could have possibly imagined. There is a deep level of complexity to it all yet surface level, reductionist, and basic political framing rule how people make sense of the world. This in itself is a problem because people are then trying to solve problems in ways that are short sighted, narrow and that will inevitably create another problem somewhere else.
It’s not helping because we aren’t getting to the core of what is happening. We aren’t defining our problems well. We aren’t truly understanding the drivers of what is occurring in various situations in our world, including the ways large scale government or consensus narratives are leaving people in a trance. We’re not including the level of consciousness driving the way we think, act, relate and choose to be.
To look at the ‘bigger picture’ might be to ask things like:
What are the cultural drivers within a story or situation? What worldview is driving the ideas or conclusions? Are the assumptions being made that are only held due to a lack of information? What else might be affected by an action or a solution taken? Who might be benefiting from a certain narrative, and how might that be coloring what facts are available or what story is going emerging? What game dynamics and incentives are at play that might be causing a manipulation of narrative or perceived solutions? What forms of societal or generational trauma are at play here, and perhaps coloring perspectives of a single event differently?
Most importantly, can we ask these types of questions while not jumping to rash conclusions and allowing anger to stick around for too long such that we lose sight of our ability to make sense. We don’t get stuck in records of the past or old ways of looking at our world and instead open up for new perspectives to emerge.
Making sense of these things in this way requires us to slow down, be more intentional, curious, open, and embodied. I call this ‘Embodied Sensemaking.’ We’ve been practicing and raising awareness about this way of making sense of ourselves and our world as a core practice at Collective Evolution since our inception in 2009, fleshing out and refining the practice over the years.
Consider This…
During major global events, or quickly unfolding events, it is common for people to want answers immediately.
What’s happening? Why? Who is involved? What will happen next? What should I do? Are we being lied to? Who is to blame? Is this a psy-op etc.
Getting these answers with certainty is usually impossible. But it doesn’t stop millions of social media users from claiming they have all the answers. It can even drive us to want to take a stance of certainty on something because we feel uncomfortable being uncertain (a whole other topic to address.)
In seeking certainty, chaos ensues as people race to be FIRST to have an answer, often leading them to jump to conclusions that may not even make sense.
This is our current culture for many reasons. From a lack of capacity and resilience which adds to our discomfort with uncertainty, to media and social media dynamics of benefitting from being FIRST even if we are dead wrong, to our culture simply creating a mindless habit of moving fast.
In this chaos, so much is missed as we become stuck in the mind and perhaps driven by emotion.
We forget to sense how we truly feel about the global event, what it might mean for us, how people are being affected by it, the layers of human consciousness acting upon it. We forget all the things we don’t know, aren’t sure of or the layers of complexity at play. We often don’t ask those questions about game dynamics, drivers or incomplete narratives – if we do, they are usually surface level and quick assumptions that usually come from our preconceived notion of who the bad guy is.
In this, we miss out on being conscious of the psychological, spiritual, emotional and other important physical drivers of global events. We also miss out on what our intuition or gut might have to add. By this I don’t mean that intuition tells you the exact truth, this is a misconception. moe so, intuition provides us with useful cues around what might feel off, what might be misleading, what might be correct, what might resonate or where we might look next.
To be clear, I believe this problem is rampant in mainstream and alternative outlets for news. Both are generally operating at fairly limited levels of consciousness.
Embodied Sensemaking
To me, critical thinking and sensemaking are not just cognitive processes. We make sense best when our entire being is in play. The HeartMath institute has done some great work in showing how this all functions with their research on heart and brain coherence.
We have biological forms of intuition for a reason. We can see the benefit of heart brain coherence in our ability to better think, synthesize and connect ideas. All of this comes from being consciously connected to the body intentionally. This, as opposed to quickly rushing through content, totally cut off from our body and ready to move onto the next video or article.
When we bring on the sensing and relational capacities of the body and nervous system and when we synchronize the mind, body, and emotional state, it also opens the doors for implicit and explicit intuition to be more clear and available to our awareness. Further, it enhances our higher order thinking and ability to sense into and explore complexity with curiosity.
Consciously staying connected to the body is one of the simplest ways to practice bringing about these synchronizations.
If we do this while taking in news or our environment, we expand our awareness beyond JUST the mind’s currently retained information and ways of seeing things. Plus, we bring about an emergent way of sensing emotion, consciousness, connection to others and even a connection to the sacred.
Our society is typically very mental in its approach to living. We have become absent from deeper levels of knowing within ourselves. But the suggestion isn’t to throw away the mind, but to bring it into balance with our other capacities.
I formally incorporated ‘a nudge’ into this form of sensemaking within the reading experience on CE in 2016 by adding a simple exercise at the start of our articles inviting the reader into a deeper understanding of what they were consuming.
With this approach, we are experimenting with the idea that this might create a cultural practice of slowing down, sensing more deeply and looking at world challenges from a new level of consciousness. This would of course allow us to then solve problems from a different level of consciousness.
The hope is we move from reacting to what happens, to being about to take responsibility for what happens. Coming together in a more centered nd relational way to empathize and collaborate better.
The more of us that be in this way, the more capacity there will be to collectively change our existing systems or create new ones.
Simply put, emodied sensemaking allows us to understand and witness more deeply what is happening in a situation, not just current events, but even relationships, local situations, work disputes or even basic conversations. It reveals how we truly feel about a situation, and what might be driving it. Even if there is no conflict to solve, it creates more meaningful connection and deeper relationship that resembles what is available to us as a birthright.
Awareness of that allows us to do anything from healing our past or traumatic wounds around a situation to seeing the world through a clearer lens so solutions can come about and cycles can stop.
We make the unconscious conscious and are empowered with choice.
Emergent Elements of Embodied Sensemaking
Embodied sensemaking happens through the conditions of being present and embodied. This allows us to connect with others more meaningfully and even invites other ways of knowing like intuition. It involves committing to curiosity and noticing how we feel in our body before unconsciously reacting to things.
Through embodied sensemaking there’s a spirit and emergence of:
- discuss tough subjects with openness and honesty
- bringing unfolding intuition into the mix
- being curious about our differences and seeking to openly understand them
- explore the underlying drivers of our thinking and perspectives via meta-awareness
- a deep sense of listening to others, more akin to attunement
- a sense of neutrality via curiosity, quelling reflexive judgment
- the emergence of new ways of thinking and seeing people, life events, systems etc.
- expanded consciousness to the multilayers of the human being and consciousness (me, us, all of us, galactic)
I’ll stop here for now on this subject, but to begin practicing this starts with building our awareness and self awareness muscles. Make a note to truly practice sensing how you feel in your body when you are at home, at work, watching or reading news or engaging in a relational situation.
Practicing this over time will expand your awareness to be more present to the signals, energy, and information already existing in your body and field that you have become absent to. As you continue to practice and hold awareness, bring it more readily into conversations and see what other details and depth is available to you.
The body is incredibly intelligent and intuition (in various ways) is your birthright. Be curious about what emerges, and keep practicing.
