Category: General

BTW just an additional thought about my fear of stepping into a larger role (which is embodied through a Self-Transforming Mind).

I think the key fear is that I’m stepping into a larger role where knowledge is no longer sufficient to help people through it.

In effect, to help someone through the transformation process, you can’t just give them knowledge and get them to go through a 1-2-3 sequential series of steps to understand something.

Instead you can still give them knowledge but the process feels more like a maze where you’re continually going back and forth many times before things begin to make sense and your perspective begins to shift, grow, and expand.

In other words, you can explain endlessly about the knowledge of the process but most of it won’t fully make sense to someone until they actually decide to step into the experience itself and grasp the wisdom of it.

This is the very thing I’m embodying and undergoing myself.

It’s like stepping back and forth into and out of water to get yourself familiarized with the feel of it, so it doesn’t feel so scary, letting you eventually plunge deeply within it and fully immerse yourself within the experience as a whole.

It’s funny.

I’ve described creativity before as a process of connecting, empowering, and inspiring whereby it feels like being an explorer, navigator, and storyteller of a new world(view) you are adventuring towards.

But the last inspiring stage isn’t so much storytelling as much as it is storyliving. In effect, think of the empowering stage as navigating and finding the right knowledge. But just knowing something externally from the outside isn’t enough. You have to fully experience it immersively from the inside to grasp the wisdom of it.

This is the inspiring stage of storyliving. You have to fully embody what you know, step into it, not just know it.

This is why it’s inspiring.

It’s not because you’re inspiring others.

It’s because you’re inspiring yourself.

You’re doing and being the very thing you both are excited about but also scared shitless about.

In effect, you are embodying the very thing I’ve described many times.

The adventure of your life.

In other words, you can’t have an adventure without leaving safety behind and stepping into uncertainty.

And I think what all these fears I’m playing with are telling me is that what I fear the most is letting go of my old safe sense of self and stepping into a larger sense of Self.

Yet that is the very “adventure of life” that I need to embody and live.

Yet paradoxically, what’s interesting in this all is that even though I haven’t made that step yet, I truly know what it feels like to experience this hesitation and reservation of going through this process.

It’s strange. Sometimes I wonder if I’m taking so long to go through this transformation because it’s enabling me to better understand it and articulate it for others, when it comes time for me to help them with their own transformational journey and adventure.

What if my greatest fear isn’t about articulating my work or people thinking my work is crazy but the one I’ve intuited generally before as a natural part of the growth and development process?

That being the fear of having to fulfill and play a larger role that I’m not sure I have the experience or capacity to handle just yet.

In effect, if my work resonates with people, they will want me to help them directly through the transformation process.

I’m not sure I’m ready for that…primarily because I don’t feel like I’ve figured everything out and made sense of it all yet (i.e. not an “expert” know-it-all).

Yet what if in helping them, they are the missing link in actually helping me to understand the process in a deeper way?

Two ongoing fears come to mind this morning with regards to my life’s work.

1. People will think my work is crazy. 
2. I won’t be able to articulate my work. 

What I realize is that these fears arise due to questions of trust.

1. I need to trust that the right people will resonate with my work. 
2. I need to trust that the right words will come at the right time from the ocean of wisdom within me and I don’t need to force it or control it.

To put this another way, my perceived problem isn’t an issue of articulation. It’s an issue of resonance.

In other words, my words will resonate with the right people. It’s not about articulating them in the right way. 

This was proven this week when I few days ago my wife bumped into a friend of hers and they began talking about the issues surrounding the teaching profession which my wife has just retired from.

When asked by her friend what I do, I explained that my work related to the struggles that they were going through and I explained some aspects of it, such as mindsets, which, surprising to me, resonated with her quite a bit.

She then went on to say that the school system should hire me because I seemed to be aware and knowledgeable about these issues.

I explained to her that the school system wouldn’t hire me (or anyone like me) because they aren’t ready to change. This is evident in how they are trying to control teachers and staff more and more because they believe that by taking more control, they’ll be able to stop the breakdown of the system.

This is the same thing that’s happening to a lot of people in the private sector as well.

But the paradox is that the more the heads of the school system try to “take control” of the situation, the more they are actually worsening and speeding up its collapse and breakdown.

Afterwords, when reflecting upon this encounter with my wife’s friend, it got me wondering if my role wasn’t to help organizations to transform (which I’ve intuited for some time) but rather individuals (or perhaps communities of individuals).

Why? Because it seems more and more like the very people who are the most primed and ready to hear what I have to say and seem to resonate with it the most, are the individuals within the organizations rather than the management or “leadership” teams.

So unlike conventional change agents who traditionally work from the top down, I have this feeling and intuition that I’m supposed to be helping people from the bottom up in some way.

How I’m not exactly sure.

Wonder, Play, and How to Be More Alive

We build our lives around structures of certainty — houses to live in, marriages to love in, ideologies to think in — and yet some primal part of us knows that none abides, knows that w…

https://www.themarginalian.org/2025/08/11/intention-trommer/

We build our lives around structures of certainty — houses to live in, marriages to love in, ideologies to think in — and yet some primal part of us knows that none abides, knows that we pay for these comforting illusions with our very aliveness.

Wonder — that edge state on the rim of understanding, where the mind touches mystery — is our best means of loving the world more deeply. It asks of us the courage of uncertainty because it is a form of deep play and play, unlike games, is inherently open-ended, without purpose or end goal, governed not by the will to win a point but by the willingness to surrender to a locus of experience and be transformed by it.

Maria Popova
Wonder, Play, and How to Be More Alive

More synchronicities this week, this time from a post by Maria Popova on her website The Marginalian.

Her quote above perfectly embodies the type of “play” I’ve been seeking for quite some time.

It isn’t trivial or frivolous.

It is deep.

It requires us to step outside of ourselves, exploring new territories of being.

If I could describe the paradox of the experience, it is one in which to be transformed by the experience, one has to be willing to give up the security of knowing it before you’ve lived it.

Even then, based upon what I have lived over the past couple of decades, there is not even a guarantee that one will understand, know, and make sense of the experience fully even after one has lived it for quite some time.

It’s strange.

It’s like you’re following a quest that is amazing and full of wonders but it seems never-ending.

Thus you never reach an endpoint where you’re able to step outside of it, look at it externally, and fully know it.

You’re always within “the locus of the experience” instead.

And somehow that experience transforms you…just by being open to the playful experience of it.

This is what I mean when I say this experience feels like “The Adventure of Your Life.”

I think the core of everything for me comes down to this.

Having an experience of being so excited from your playing, exploring, and discovering beyond the veil of what’s known and possible that you want to passionately share it with others and the world at large.

I think this touches upon this blissful feeling I momentarily had the other day.

No ego. No fear. Just an unbounded sense of expansive exploration, with one’s sense of self expanding in synchronicity with one’s exploration of one’s worldview.

So the question is this.

What would you passionately pursue beyond the horizon of your mind, beyond your ego, and beyond fear itself?

Or perhaps more appropriately the question is this.

What completely disintegrates your ego and deathly fears from your awareness when one fully focuses one’s attention on the playful exploration and wonder of it?

In effect, something that causes you to completely lose your “self” when exploring it.

There lies your path and purpose.

Roles

The Characters We Play in Real Life

In life, we all play roles — not fake ones, but real ones like employee, friend, partner, parent. These roles help us fit in, belong, and make sense of the world. We usually don’t choose them at first; we’re handed them by family, school, or society. But as we grow, we start to question:
“Is this really me?”

• Early on, we follow the role like a script.
• Later, we customize the role to better match who we are.
• Eventually, we see through roles — knowing they’re useful, but not our whole identity.

Just like in an RPG, you start the game as a certain class — but as you level up, you might multiclass, change builds, or break out of the system entirely.

A role isn’t who you are, it’s a way to try on who you’re becoming.

Question to explore: Which roles in your life still fit? Which ones feel like armour that’s too tight?

Playing

Learning by Trying, Not Just Knowing

“Playing” sounds like something for kids — but in reality, it’s how we all learn and grow. When we play, we try things out. We take risks. We imagine new ways of doing things without fear of failure.

• Kids play to figure out how the world works.
• Adults play (often without realizing it) when they test ideas, start side projects, or take on challenges they’re not sure how to solve.

In an RPG, you don’t just read the rulebook — you explore, fight, fail, and grow stronger through experience. Real life’s the same. Play isn’t goofing off. It’s how we experiment with who we are and who we could become.

Play is practice for change. If you stop playing, you stop growing.

Question to explore: Where in your life are you still willing to play — to try without knowing the outcome?

Game

Reality As a Kind of Illusion

We think we see the world clearly, but we don’t. We each live inside our own “game world” — shaped by our beliefs, past experiences, fears, and habits. Like an RPG’s graphics engine, our brain renders a version of reality based on what it expects to see, not necessarily what’s actually there.

• Most people assume the game is real and fixed.
• As you grow, you start to see it’s a mental model — not the world itself.
• Eventually, you realize you can recode the game — change how you see, think, and act.

This is like going from a first-person player to a modder or game designer. You realize: “The rules I thought were fixed? Someone made them up — maybe even me.”

You’re not stuck in the game. You’re shaping it, whether you know it or not.

Question to explore: What if the rules you live by aren’t universal truths — but just part of a game you inherited?

I was just browsing through the Alternative: Best of 2023 station on Stingray Music, looking for songs to add to my Favourites playlist on Amazon Music, and something strange happened.

As I discovered a series of songs, one after the other, that really resonated with me and my taste in music, thoughts started flowing into my head.

As these thoughts emerged, my entire feeling and outlook shifted.

It was as if instead of looking at the last two decades of my life as a misadventure that felt “wrong” and off track, suddenly something shifted and the last two decades of my life instead felt like an epic adventure that felt so “right” and completely on track.

Over the last hour though, this feeling slowly faded and disappeared.

For some reason during this time though, it felt like I fully and completely shifted from a Self-Authoring Mind to a Self-Transforming Mind…and then back.

Even thought the feeling and outlook is now gone, it was an amazing experience and feeling nevertheless.

These are the thoughts that emerged below…as well as the songs that birth them.

I have no idea what I’m doing. 

No wait. That’s not true.

I’m following my intuition and synchronicities and seeing where they lead me.

I’m just following myself and seeing where I lead myself. 

My questions guide me. 

Your life isn’t about a linear progression.

It’s about how everything connects up into a larger narrative.

This is what my life feels like.

It feels like an adventure…where I have no idea where it’s going. 

I have no idea where tomorrow will lead me. 

Yet this truly makes me feel alive. 

What if everything you thought you were doing wrong turned out to be right?

Stop trying to control your life.

Let it unfold on its own. 

Your expectation of who you believe you should be is preventing you from being who you truly are. 

When the World Shakes

The Soul’s Response

https://barrettvalues.substack.com/p/when-the-world-shakes

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.

My brothers and sisters, in the course of a long life in the service of our Mother the Church, let me tell you that the one sin I have come to fear more than any other is certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end. ‘Eli Eli, lama sabachtani?’ He cried out in His agony at the ninth hour on the cross. ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith.

Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, Conclave

I didn’t have much desire to watch this movie at first but was dramatically surprised as it went much deeper than I expected or assumed.

And when the quote above was spoken within it, I was simply awestruck at the poignancy and synchronicity of it, as I struggle to let go of trying to control things and seek certainty in my own life.