Emergence

The world is constantly evolving, ever-emergent.

I used to feel like I couldn’t keep up on the hamster wheel, like nothing I created made it far enough or withstood the test of time to keep me afloat beyond a few months to a year.

Then I started feeling like I had to catch up to it, like I had to learn all the new ways of being, digest all the trends, and that where I wasn’t able to keep up was still a failing until I could find a way to close the gap.

But then I started noticing that some ways of being were going out as quickly as they came in, entire empires rising and falling – and I started feeling grateful that I’d skipped them. I never read or watched Harry Potter. I never implemented the business tactics that were just a few years later dismantled. I saved myself so many clicks.

Lately I’m getting the feeling that I’m skating to where the puck is going. I’m increasing my bandwidth so that I can continue expanding both my business and my music, but instead of feeling like I’m on a hamster wheel trying to keep up with everything I’m “supposed” to be doing to stay relevant, I‘m seeing how quickly those things are changing and evolving, and getting the sense that what’s actually going to happen is that at some point in the future, probably not too far off, the edge of my expansion is going to coincide with an evolving trend.

Perhaps relatedly, in my advanced container we’ve been studying Dzogchen Buddhism this month, and one of the themes that has most resonated is impermanence.

As Dzogchen Buddhist master Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche once said, “I have seen so many things during my lifetime. So many young people have died, so many people of my own age have died, so many old people have died. So many people that were high up have become low. So many people that were low have risen to be high up… When you look deeply, you realize there is nothing that is permanent and constant, nothing, not even the tiniest hair on your body. And this is not a theory, but something you can actually come to know and realize and see, even, with your very own eyes.”