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Purpose is always local.
"Local" is subject to scale.
Sometimes one's purpose is clear before the purpose's locality — and vice versa.
If you happen to get clear on the purpose before the locality, try executing on the purpose at different scales. You might be called to a wider/larger scale, a more general one — or a narrower/smaller one, a more intimate one — than you might have thought.
If you happen to get clear on your locality before the purpose, just spend time there. Soak it in. It'll feel like home. Breathe in the air, be with the aspects of that locality, remembering that every system and stratum is a living neighbor of yours. Purpose arises naturally when one lives in community.
Every metaphor works, but not evenly. Stick with metaphors that feel alive. Things flow best when you stick with your own preferred metaphors without insisting that others use the same vocabulary.
"Executive function" is how some people do things. "Instinct and impulse" are how some other people do things. If one of those metaphors works for you, awesome — roll with it, as long as it feels alive and generative for you. The next step to take tends to present itself more naturally and more recognizably, when one is rolling with a metaphor that feels alive and generative.
Massive storm last night over Chicago. It rolled in edgewise, roiling layers of darker and darker grey curling in over the buildings. Looked like you could reach out and touch them, feel the underside of the beast.
Hours of lightning. The direction that the storm came in, I didn't notice the lightning part until it was directly overhead — flashes from a place above I couldn't see, from our place halfway up a residential tower.
One of my databases went out, around the peak of it. Came back when the storm cleared its apex.
Earlier I had asked: show me something.
Fear of the unknown — this must be resolved and absolved before the next chapter begins.
When tough emotional moments land, I accept them on behalf of collective consciousness. When I accept and hold fear and anger and frustration and other disintegrative emotions, when I add them to my being and thus transform both the energy and me, I am a part of transforming the collective. It's like the comedy of expensive homeowner crises that unfolded, starting our first day in our first-ever purchased home — crises that we were able to absorb and pass through, leaving the home better than we found it when we sold it a month later (lol). We were the right ones to carry that place through, in that moment. Another new homebuyer might have been crushed. We were able. I'm glad it was us. :)
The database outage was the climax of a day of database performance uncertainty, haha — all consciously chosen, though very early on it went sideways in an unexpected way, and I chose then to forge ahead just to see what would happen. ;) When it hit a point that I could no longer hold alone, I asked for help, trusting peacefully that help would come and all would be well. It was.
I imagine that the lightning picked up on the transmutation of energy: my choice to accept the uncertainty and the fear it brought along, to walk directly into it all, to believe that the unknown always yields what is needed, to trust that help would come as necessary, and that the outcome would be generative. I imagine that the signature of that event was picked up in lightning, synchronized between air and earth, driven upward and downward and then outward across both planes.
It feels important to be in Chicago. I never identified with place before, and while I'm not sure I do now, it feels nonetheless important to be here, at the heart of a continent and a country, as I navigate to a world that is well.
From Tao Te Ching, chapter 42:
The Tao begot one. One begot two. Two begot three. And three begot the ten thousand things.
The ten thousand things carry yin and embrace yang. They achieve harmony by combining these forces.
I saw a missing person sign, posted twice: once in English, once in Spanish. "Missing"; "Se Busca". The latter can be translated as "wanted", or "sought", or "looked for".
That pairing is still ringing in my head.
You are missing, you are wanted.
You will be found when, in your own eyes, you move from being missing to being wanted.
we live in a recomposable mind, about time we acted like it
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