I woke up at 3:32, one minute earlier than the more charmed 3:33 that I often awaken to. Despite the fleeting distraction of wishing the clock presented a more favored set of numbers, I was met by the pressing presence of a word ricocheting through my consciousness. Hushed, but urgent, the word “BRITTLE” rang through my mind with clarity and assertiveness. Its arrival felt important. Still abiding in a liminal state of slumber and wakefulness, I asked “BRITTLE” what do you want me to know? Its clarity dissolved into liquid fragments of possibility.
Because I am always hopeful to find my way back to the delicious sanctuary of sleep, I have resisted the oft suggested placement of a notebook in my nightstand for these early morning arrivals. There is something about sitting up, turning on a light to find my glasses and a pen that feels particularly antagonistic to my preference, so I often allow these elusive moments of insight to easily slip back into their ephemeral home. But “BRITTLE” decided to swirl around and take hold of different ribbons of consciousness. Even though I made no attempt to harness its intended meaning, it lingered, inviting me into its spell like an alluring hooked finger. I knew we would rendezvous again during my meditation.
As I write this, the date is January 20, 2025, and my furnace is working overtime in meeting the current -15 degrees of this particular Minnesota morning. So, sure, there are timely and good reasons the word “BRITTLE” decided to make an appearance within my consciousness. But I have come to respect the arrival of my intuitive messages and never reduce them to the rational mind’s conclusions. Their mystery keeps me curious while their resolute precision demands my attention. With experience, I know it is I who will be of service to them. And so, I listen…and become receptive.
I’m sure it is no accident that “BRITTLE’s” early morning presence had me moving through my routine of making coffee and taking a shower a bit differently. The freezing weather made me particularly mindful of how I summoned water through the pipes. Most days, I would absent mindedly rotate the handles briskly and make full demand of their capacity. Today, I moved levers cautiously and was content with a slower delivery. It felt as if I were looking after the 60-year-old pipes, showing a cautious regard for their current conditions. This new way of interacting in my morning routine caught my attention and felt like a potential breadcrumb to “BRITTLE’s” lesson, but we had not reconvened, and I was sure I had not yet found its intended ‘Ah Ha’ moment.
As I sat in meditation, I held space for the feeling of “BRITTLE” in much the same way as I looked after the cold pipes. I was attentive and gentle to its presence. The first thing I did was sit with the word and feel into it. I asked, “Are you within me? Am I brittle in some way?” Of course, the answer is yes. It always is. But what I wanted to feel was if it was a uniquely personal growth opportunity. It did not feel that way. The word felt outside of me. Like something I was witnessing in others. It reminded me of how I felt shortly after the COVID shut down. I remember feeling anger under the surface of everything. The fear, frustration, limitations, and distrust left everyone with a raw nerve that felt like a live wire to high voltage anger.
This morning as our nation faces the transition of leadership, I have friends within my circle who finally feel like they can exhale. And I have friends who have taken a deep inhalation and will be girding themselves for a future that feels misaligned to their preference. To say the world is “BRITTLE” today feels quite exact. Regardless of your view of things, I believe all of us sense that the systems that once felt so foundationally firm feel different today. The hardy material that once felt like shared values has become brittle.
What conditions have made us brittle? I suspect a myriad of answers could address this question. The one I offer is this…unchecked SELF INTEREST.
When we are more concerned about ourselves and are constantly looking for what we can get out of a situation, or hold our thoughts, ideas, and opinions at the exclusion of others, we are creating a hardness that makes us collectively fragile. As I write this, my mind argues, “you must give examples! To move your audience towards agreement you must provide rational explanations.” If that is what you are looking for, this post is likely to disappoint. Instead, I start where I believe most of us can agree… we have become more divided the more we identify with any view, story, opinion, group, or preference.
While this can take many forms, the engine behind it is the same. Becoming identified with anything is a manifestation of human will. It is a choice. We choose to hold onto something and give it importance. That is actually good news. Choice is a self-generated, intentional act that we have a measure of control over. We are constantly making choices throughout our day to day lives. Many of them are in service to unexplored social rules or unconscious fears. But with the right attention, we can shift to a more pliable and expansive set of options.
I am not an active student of A Course in Miracles, but I know one of the most foundational building blocks of the program is that there are only two emotions: Fear and Love. Every thought and every action is a choice between them. Love is our natural state, and fear is the construct of our egoic mind. Love naturally creates connection where fear, by necessity, creates separation. Fear creates BRITTLE conditions. But fear is a complicated emotion and our relationship with it naturally matches in complexity.
You often hear higher consciousness teachers speak about the primal wisdom of fear. They will repeatedly site the proverbial encounter with a tiger and how fear’s function is to move us out of harm’s way. But that kind of pure fear is rarely the one we are dancing with in our current industrialized nations. Certainly, there are conditions in some communities that pose real risk to personal safety and pure fear is a reality for those community members. But for a better majority of us, our fear resides in things like losing our jobs, or social status. We fear rejection, judgement, and exclusion. We fear not being heard, not being understood, not being relevant. We fear being left behind, missing out, or being ignored. We fear confrontation, being wrong, or failing at something. We fear the future, our own capacities, and maybe even our own potential. In essence, we have an utter crisis of trust in ourselves, each other, and the world we inhabit. When we feel cordoned off and consumed by our own self-interest, things start to feel pretty brittle. One wrong move and it could all shatter before our very eyes.
In many ways, YOU.logy intuitively recognizes this quality of hardened self-interest and strives to move us beyond it. Without directly saying it, most people’s confusion about YOU.logy is its focus on “Others.” I have been directly asked, “In this model of communication, when does it become my turn to talk? What’s in it for me? Why would anyone do this?” Much like the game of tetherball, we enter conversations seemingly willing to move a subject around with another person, but each of us possesses a conversational centripetal force that assuredly seeks to draw everything inward toward ourselves.
YOU.logy attempts to counteract that force by utilizing a choice we already know how to make. When a loved one has passed and everyone is feeling BRITTLE, we naturally choose to share about the good times we’ve experienced with the person and the ways they have positively contributed to the world. Just like the focus of a traditional eulogy, YOU.logy challenges us to make our conversations a “goodness seeking mission.” We can choose to enter our conversations with rapt attention on the other and a genuine desire to find ways they have brought something generous and generative into our experience.
But how do we do it? Our biggest challenge is in how we enter the conversational space. I believe our best starting point is to discover what type of person or situation naturally elicits a selfless version of ourselves. For example, I know when I encounter a scared child, my entire focus becomes about helping them feel safe and regulated. I also have the ability to see their behavioral choices as expressions of their fear and not misbehavior needing judgement or scolding. I try to enter most of my interactions with people from this place, adopting the attitude that I am about to share time with a scared child. I do not do this out of disrespect or with the intention of being reductive, rather I do it to draw my loving, selfless heart forward.
There is another part of me that I call forward. I have learned when I visit a zoo, I observe and watch the animals with such a heightened presence that I often forget there are distracting sounds and movements happening all around me. This ability to drop in and tune out is the other kind of presence I try to bring into my social interactions.
And while I have not had the opportunity to do this, I can imagine if I were sitting vigil with someone who was int their final hours of time on earth, my time with them would feel precious and held with reverence. My suspicion is the desire to speak is replaced by a simple need to witness and attend. Admittedly, the pace at which we live life makes this one a bit harder to do, but I try to bring this kind of intention into my interactions because none of us have guarantees with time. I ask myself, “If this is the last time I have with them, what feeling do we want to create together? And how will we remember this visit?”
When I successfully bring any one of these qualities into a social interaction, I loosen the hard, unyielding nature of brittleness that derives out of choices of fear and self-interest. When I can access this “selfless sweet spot” I feel much more pliable and easily fall into a more receptive participation with life.
Now it is your turn. How are you entering your conversational spaces? Do you know what kinds of people or situations elicit your most selfless version? Just for one interaction today, practice dropping into this version of yourself and offering selfless, gentle regard for the other? How did it go? Tell us about it. Have you found other ways to access this more pliable version of yourself?