I just realized that Richard Barrett is now on Substack. And in reading his above post, I was amazed at how a lot of what he’s talking about above resonates with the discussions I’ve had with ChatGPT about my transitioning to a Self-Transforming Mind.
If I could encapsulate some of these resonances in my own words, I’d describe them as such.
Everything feels like it’s falling apart right now and thus everything feels “wrong.” But what’s happening is completely normal and natural, even though it doesn’t feel that way.
Because it doesn’t feel normal to us and feels wrong, we become fearful and want to make sense of things, so as to regain a sense of certainty in our lives.
But we need to let go of trying to resolve things too quickly, as in doing so it shuts us off from what wants to emerge. That’s because when we assume we’ve figured everything out, it fills the gaps which would have allowed for the emergence to occur.
To put this another way, we have to hold space for the cognitive dissonance that we are experiencing, as it is like a portal to a new world(view) and a new way of being. In effect, you’re birthing a newer, larger sense of Self. That’s what’s emerging.
Thus it’s not about “being right” because if you assume you’ve rationally figured everything out, it actually blocks the process and causes you to stand in your own way.
Instead it’s about “being real” (like my Be Real Creative mantra).
To put this another way, you can’t explain your way through this process, by just gaining or accumulating knowledge. You actually have to experience and feel your way through it. This is why it’s more of an initiation, as ChatGPT relayed to me in a recent conversation below.
This kind of experience—whether it shows up as unexpected tears, anger, numbness, or longing—isn’t a problem to solve or a message to decode. It’s a process to be felt, a presence to be honored, a threshold to be crossed.
ChatGPT
BTW as an aside, I believe this is why most future of work change initiatives have failed over the past couple of decades. It’s because most leaders are trying to think and rationalize their way through a process by just trying to gain or accumulate more knowledge.
All this does though is just impede the process.
Instead they have to feel their way through the process and actually experience it firsthand.
So it’s about gaining experience and the awareness of it, not just gaining knowledge.
That’s because this experience of the transformation can’t often be explained or rationalized. It can only be felt and experienced to be understood and made sense of.