I once thought the flood in my heart would drown me, blindsided by the urgency of being underwater.

Now, from my center everything echos. Feelings ripple out and I come up for air.

Sometimes I can reach into this space and feel its expansiveness. Despair and hope holding hands, gently moving with everything else.

Sadness is a precious teacher.

It moves through the landscape of experience.

Everything lives here.

Insight orbits inside of me, packaged in the form of instantaneous emotion.

I let my heart soar.

I welcome sadness as it arrives, moving through the chambers of my heart like floodgates opening.

I am wading in the tides of my sorrow; floating as if I am flying.

This lesson I must learn a hundred thousand times.

My sadness is also my joy.

Everything lives here.

Independence, a recognition of connectedness to everything.

Sadness, a temporary storm in the vast open sky of my mind.

Awareness, an ever-present space that cradles my delicate heart.

A meditation for sadness:

Sweep or vacuum, open a window, light incense or a candle

Sit or lay comfortably on your floor, make sure you are not too hot or cold

Close your eyes and take a few breaths through your nose

Breath normally, and become aware of the sensations of the breath

Locate the place in your body where you feel sorrow

Be present to the physical sensations without letting the mind take control

You may notice the mind wants your attention, try to come back to the physical sensations

Sit with this, allow any tension or dis-ease to shift, continuously bringing attention back to the body

Inhale feelings of love, exhale feelings of sorrow

-KnowOther

Sometimes you need your God
to be a simple invitation
not a telling word of wisdom.

Sometimes you need only the first shyness
that comes from being shown things
far beyond your understanding,

so that you can fly and become free
by being still and by being still here.

-David Whyte

Share KnowOther

Endless reflections bouncing off one another, multiplying and reshaping with every glance; a true hall of mirrors.

Our ordinary experience of reality is illusory (Maya), filtered through the senses and what we call the mind. Without awareness, we wander this dreamscape, mistaking reflections for what is real.

The Illusory Nature of Experience

“yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ” - Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind. (Sutra 1.2)

In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali points directly to this hall of mirrors. Thoughts, feelings, and sensory impressions behave like reflections folding back on themselves. What we take to be solid and real is, in truth, awareness playing dress-up.

Maya and Perception

Though Patanjali doesn’t explicitly use the word Maya, the idea lives within vrittis - the mental fluctuations that shape perception. We don’t see the world as it is, but as it is filtered through habit, desire, and fear.

Sutra 1.3 sums up yoga:

“tadā draṣṭuḥ svarūpe’vasthānam” - Then, the Seer abides in its own nature (Kaivalya or Self-realization)

Kaivalya is often translated as absolute aloneness. This doesn’t mean isolation but aloneness as radical independence from everything once it identified with.

When awareness is clear and the fluctuations of the mind settle, insight arises on its own.

Without awareness, we are sleepwalking; taking the dream to be waking life.

Lucidity

In this hall of mirrors, everything we observe is temporary, mutable, passing.

We expect permanence from what is inherently transient; even our reflections refuse to repeat themselves.

Glimpses of our true nature reveal what the teaching points to - not as an abstraction, but as something directly accessible. Over time, this discernment (Viveka) becomes almost instinctive.

It is not about denying life by turning away from its reflections, but about seeing the difference between what changes and what is ever-present. Paradoxically, this isn’t a ‘pulling away’ from life, but a way to cut through to the direct and immediate.

This is not something you become; it is what you have always been, prior to all becoming.

Waking Up in the Dream

The invitation is to still the mind. Not to fix it or escape it, but to see clearly - the mirrors, the reflections, the sense of being inside or outside, the shifting patterns that appear separate and real.

Through awareness, we begin to wake within the dream. Even briefly, we touch the quiet, unchanging reality beneath the illusion.

One unbroken awareness, appearing as everything.

- KnowOther

The room settled into itself gently as everyone arrived. There was a natural ease in being together.

We spent the evening moving, breathing, and listening. Sharing simple practices that offered a way to reconnect with the body and its own sense of balance; allowing space to notice, to feel, and to be guided by what was already there.

It became a shared exploration; unhurried, open-ended, unfolding in its own time.

This was shared after the evening by one of you in the room:

“I think it’s gatherings like these that seem to emerge at precisely the moment we need them most. For me and I know many other people in that room, you both created an atmosphere of deep awareness, a union between mind, body and spirit, that centred our hearts in a loving stillness. I had no words when the session ended but now feel them coming to me in waves. The most poignant seems to be that of nourishment. I feel deeply nourished and nurtured and cared for and loved by Sunday evening. Thank you both from the deepest valleys of my heart.”

Thank you to everyone who came and made the evening what it was. We’re really grateful for the openness and warmth of this community here in Australia, and for the way you welcomed us so generously.

Gathering 02 - next gathering details coming soon.

With Love,

Juliet & Keely

KnowOther

It’s an inner climate that grows, repairs, strains, and ages like land shaped by seasons.

Energy surges and recedes.

Sensations spark and vanish like heat lightning.

Emotions roll through in pressure systems.

Thoughts mass on the horizon, darken, and break apart.

Nothing holds still. Everything moves.

This is the landscape of being human.

Terrain and Weather

In the natural world, fluctuation is living terrain, not defect.

The landscape changes constantly.

No season or storm lasts forever.

Even stone, given enough time, erodes.

There are low places in me; spaces of sadness, tenderness, reflection.

There are high ridges of determination and clarity, sudden tempests of frustration.

There are quieter cycles too in sleep, wearing down through effort, mending in ways I rarely see.

Understanding the grace of the body as a landscape encourages me to have patience.

These places are meant to be inhabited.

The Shift in Freedom

There is a vantage point within me that observes.

It registers the dynamic field of my inner landscape; quickening pulse, tightening chest, the rush of irritation, the ache of grief.

So much effort goes into trying to redesign the inner terrain, but landscapes are not meant to be perfected.

The being-with of ecology is dialogue, not backdrop.

Freedom may come not from perfecting the terrain, but from recognizing that I am the one moving through its passing conditions.

And in that recognition, there is a steadiness that does not depend on clear weather,

I am not confined to a single season.
I am the one who walks the ground.
The one who feels the wind shift.
The one who witnesses the changing sky.

It feels like looking across a wide horizon knowing that whatever passes through this landscape, I am here to experience it.

I can’t escape the terrain.

There is no solid ground beyond this shifting earth and passing storm.

And yet, I am the space in which it all moves.

Vast enough for all of it.

-KnowOther

PS: We are one week away from our very first in-person gathering in Sydney; also marking the Australian launch of KnowOther! 🌿 🫂

This will be an intentionally small, intimate evening for thoughtful people to share presence, movement, and conversation together.

Expect:

• Gentle āsana to arrive in your body and transition out of the day

• Breathwork + sound therapy to create internal space

• Casual conversation, tea, and connection

📅 Sunday, March 8 | 7–9 pm
📍 Temple Yoga, 281b Old South Head Rd, Bondi
🍵Suggested contribution: $30 AUD via Beem @knowother

Spaces are limited to keep the evening intimate, so your spot is confirmed once you RSVP:

RSVP HERE

Warmly,
Juliet & Keely

It also marks our Australian launch.

This event is intentionally small and intimate.

Limited spots.
A smaller room.
Thoughtful people sharing presence and space together.

If you’ve been reading quietly, this is a chance to finally meet in real life.

What the evening will include:

~ Movement through āsana
A steady, accessible practice to arrive in the body and transition out of the day.

~ Subtle practice with prāṇāyāma + sound
Breathwork and sound therapy to down-regulate the nervous system and create space internally.

~ Time to connect
Casual conversation/Q&A. Tea, names, faces, shared context.

We are so grateful to have you in the room at the beginning; helping shape what KnowOther is becoming.

Details

Sunday, March 8, 7-9 pm

Temple Yoga

281b Old South Head Rd, Bondi

If you’d like to join us, you can reserve your place below.

click here : RSVP

Suggested contribution: $30 AUD via Beem @knowother
This supports the venue and future gatherings. Thank you for your contribution.

Spots are limited to keep the space intimate and are confirmed once RSVP is received.

We’d really love to see you there.

Warmly,
Juliet and Keely

KnowOther

My days require occupancy of my own existence so that I may remain attuned. Yet I am frequently being ushered out into the world of constant messaging and communication.

It has been made normal to spend most of life chasing attention, rather than sitting in it; our days are often inevitably full of enduring noise and motion. This endless feedback loop can feel falsely comforting. It offers the illusion of rest, of solace, of connection, yet ultimately leaves me less whole, less calm, less myself.

If you feel overwhelmed by the amount of information you take in on a daily basis, I can assure you there is nothing wrong with you. In fact, your animal body is probably telling you to adjust your pace, allow the mind to rest, and clear yourself for greater and more pleasant moments. It might be asking you to settle in, be bored, digest or dream; rejoin with what is of value in your life, because less really is more.

This is my current list of practices to reset my being-hood. To embolden moments of spaciousness, to feel that time is on my side.

My wish is that we may take more time to do nothing; sit on the train and watch people order coffees in the underground bodegas, go for a walk and allow thoughts to tangle and untangle themselves, without rushing.

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1. Clean your space in silence, wash your sheets, dust, and reorganize your books

Refine your living space to bring forward peacefulness. Use this time to be present with each movement and your thoughts.

2. Dim the lights and lay on the floor, don’t do anything but feel the sensations of your breath and body

Lay down and get comfortable, close or cover your eyes, take some slow deep breaths, exhale into complete stillness. Feel what is occurring in the body, bring yourself back to physical sensations.

3. Make yourself something nourishing to eat, enjoy your meal while people-watching or being in nature

Prepare your favorite meal or try a new recipe, do not rush at any step. Sit down, offer gratitude to your food and eat slowly. Be aware of the world around you and your emotional body as you eat.

4. Try doing a breath work practice

Nadi Shodhana, or alternate nostril breathing balances the hemispheres of the brain and body and stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system.

5. Talk to your most trusted comrade (friend, parent, sibling, pet)

Try to inspire positive conversation. Don’t complain or talk about other people. See what conversations arise.

6. Practice a Metta meditation

Sit comfortably, take some slow breaths through your nose, bring to mind someone in your life and wish them well. Send them thoughts of joy, health, and love.

7. Take a walk and let your mind wonder

Let your legs move underneath you, take the listening seat, observe and allow your internal conversations to come to their own resolutions.

8. Move the spine in all directions

Forward, back, right, left, twisting, upward.

9. Consider what habits you can lay to rest

Get out a piece of paper, write them down, imagine what your day would look like if you let them go.

10. Create a small sacred space

Clear a corner in your home, place a picture of someone you love or a teacher, a beloved trinket or piece of jewelry, a vase with water or flowers, anything else that brings you feelings of love and beauty.

11. Make a tea or warm drink and let the steam warm your hands and face

Self-explanatory.

Our inner landscape, which we are constantly shaping, propels us into our lived future. Its cultivation requires listening, being with ourselves, and sitting in the sometimes uncomfortable moments of nothingness. Being present with absence of stimulation is a wellspring for our own creativity and artistry.

You are not required to be busy constantly, you are not required to consume at the pace which we are encouraged to. It is your birthright to enjoy this life, and to be free of your pains and worries.

Life expands in every direction as we give ourselves the space and time to just be. Unclouded recognition of time is what brings us forward into the world, with desire to attend to the moment carefully.

Becoming an active participant in our lives requires choice, and choosing attention over excess indulgence. To transform one’s life at any rate takes immense focus and discipline. By purifying the mind we come into the world through the Self, non judging, unattached, complete.

The world we wish to be a part of is made up of our own willingness to create it. Our being-hood is influenced by our commitment to declutter our existence. Clearing away the no longer useful, and freeing up more space to deal with what is constantly flowing through us; a never-ending spring to drink from.

It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy - Krishnamurti

Mine doesn’t seem to.

It scatters across the timeline of my entire life in continuity.

It travels in all directions, moving backwards and forwards, connecting me to traces of a thing once lived, now a resonance underneath something I’m currently living.

It lives in my mother, who carried me before I even had a name, who built my bones with her very own body. Who bled for me to exist.

It flows from me in the tears I’ve shed. The evidence that love and grief are often inseparably leaking into the cracks of experience.

Today i feel my heart stretch to every corner of the planet; wide open, unprotected, pulsing with equal amounts of awe and pain.

A teacher of mine said to me once, “We are chambers for other people’s hearts.”

I had written it in my notes and forgotten about it. Finding it again lately has made me reflect on all its possible meanings.

At the root of the word chamber I found its parallel, “camera”.

It’s striking that the truth of holding something dearly in our hearts is a kind of capturing.

The human heart is a vaulted room. It contains the way we give and receive, what we trust, what we long for, and what we guard.

How we occupy it is not emotional but existential.

Maybe that’s why my heart doesn’t feel like it belongs exclusively to me.

It belongs to an ongoing inheritance, passed between bodies, and preserved in stories for generations and lifetimes.

My heart is a single drop in an ancient river, making its way toward the ocean of everything that has ever been celebrated or mourned.

To swim towards its ocean-endlessness with the time that we are given is simply to feel it fully without fighting its breadth.

The physical heart, in the end, returns to the earth and is taken back by the mother who made all things.

But the eternal heart is different. It isn’t attached to a single home, story, form, or identity.

It can’t be claimed or owned.

It neither binds nor seeks freedom.

It liberates itself by simply being what it is.

Whatever arises, wherever it lives, all of it is the collective heart.

It’s pure white snow reflecting a blue, cloudless sky: exposed, expansive, bare.

I am certain our hearts must be everywhere. How could something so vast fit inside the boundaries of one body?

The collective heart beats in all of us everywhere,

endlessly.

- Knowother

It was about seeing it. Lucidity is the first step toward Moksha - freedom from the suffering we unknowingly create. Meditation isn’t forceful silence; it’s clear attention.

mindfulness → lucidity → disidentification → freedom from compulsive suffering

When we observe our thoughts instead of identifying with them, the stress, fear, and pain begin to lose their grip.

To explore stilling the mind, preliminary to a yoga practice, it feels necessary to first define yoga itself. Yoga, coming from the Sanskrit word Yuj means to “yoke” “join” or “unite”. At first, as we begin to explore yoga through postures (asana), breath (pranayama), or meditation (dhyana), we may begin to feel this union at a physical level. Joining awareness with bodily sensations like the breath or pulse. ​​As we follow this tender union between the self and the greater whole, the boundless comes into view.

Yoga often starts with the body, an access point to our internal world. As we move into the body with deliberate awareness, thoughts become less and less interesting - they are simply a byproduct of the mind which has a tendency to latch, creating a constriction within the many layers of our being. We call these layers Koshas (which we’ll return to shortly).

The more we learn to observe thoughts, and then feelings, that arise as a transient derivation of the mind, the stronger our yoga practice becomes. Simply, consistent practice draws us into relationship with what is timeless and unbound by form. Little by little, letting go of our history to create undivided attention in the now.

yogash chitta-vritti-nirodhah

“Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind” (Yoga Sutras of Patanjali 1.2).

Yoga, therefore, is not merely an isolated practice of postures, it is something that is entirely beyond the physical. It integrates bodily awareness with consciousness and situates it within a broader system. A clearer understanding of “me” that washes clean through discipline and undivided effort.

To better contextualize the more subtle parts of our existence we can use the Koshas (sheaths/layers) which represent the human experience from the most physical to subtle. The Koshas can be observed as Russian nesting dolls, layered and interconnected.

Through yoga, we become more and more attuned to subtleties which can be removed; slowly peeling back layers to reveal a deeper reality beyond the body.

The Koshas from most gross (physical/material) to most subtle are as follows:

• Annamaya Kosha (Food Sheath): The physical body, and body systems: bones, muscles, organs, skin, etc.

• Prānamaya Kosha (Energy Sheath): The vital life force (Prāna) which exists in and moves through the body

• Manomaya Kosha (Mental Sheath): The “lower” mind i.e. thoughts, emotions, dealings with the individual worlds we create

• Vijñānamaya Kosha (Intellectual Sheath): The “higher” mind which is concerned with intellect, discernment and a deep sense of intuition

• Ānandamaya Kosha (Blissful Sheath): The most subtle layer which is unconcerned with physical sensations and thinking - representing oneness, enduring joy and connection

The Koshas reveal specific dimensions of our being and give context to a practitioner’s aim in the pursuit of yoga. Stilling the fluctuations of the mind, as stated in the sutras, goes beyond presence classified commonly as mindfulness.

It allows for more subtle ways of experiencing our lives. Unbinding ourselves from our stories and the past creates room to explore who we are beyond that.

Mindfulness at its best is not a meditation practice. Yoga, itself, is the ability to see past our lived experience without any confusion about who we are. To foster each moment with an unrelenting presence and clear understanding of our choices. To find harmony with what is. Unmistaken and undimmed.

My eyes which devour the moment, my quiet heart which beats with uninterrupted tenderness to all that is

I do not try to change to past, I do not beg to know my future

I am here, on my feet, wading in the ever-changing tides - Knowother

We are passengers on a spaceship. This planet is a closed system with finite resources, and there is no resupply coming.

That’s how Buckminster Fuller understood Earth. Not as a battlefield, but as a shared vessel.

His radical premise was simple: there is enough here for everyone. Enough resources to support all of humanity at a high standard of living, if we choose to design our systems accordingly.

Scarcity, in his view, is not natural; it’s manufactured. A political story we keep telling ourselves to justify hoarding, hierarchy, and harm.

Fuller believed the real work of humanity was not “weaponry,” but livingry, the intelligent design of systems that sustain life rather than destroy it.

If our ingenuity were aimed at cooperation instead of competition, at care instead of control, war would become obsolete. Selfishness would lose its logic. And no one, not a single person, would be excluded from the abundance this planet is already capable of providing.

In a mid-1960s interview with the CBC, Ram Dass echoed Buckminster Fuller’s insight, he said, “Look, we now know there is enough to go around. All right? In other words, if we could truly collaborate with our fellow man, there would be enough to go around the world.”

The statement is almost disarmingly simple and that’s the point. The problem has never been a lack of resources. It has always been a failure of collaboration.

So the question isn’t whether this realization is possible, it’s how we arrive there.

How do we loosen our grip on the models we’ve inherited, long enough to see beyond them? And how do we reshape our ways of thinking, organizing, and acting so that this understanding becomes lived reality, rather than abstract belief?

In our culture, we’re trained to fixate on individual differences. We scan a room and immediately sort people into hierarchies: smart/dumb, old/young, rich/poor.

We slice reality into dimensions and then treat people according to the labels we’ve given them.

In this way we can take a complex, messy world and assign categories such as gender, class, ability, race, etc. These are conceptual tools to help us understand our multi-layered world.

Over time, this becomes the only way we know how to see one another. Not as extensions of ourselves, but as separate; defined almost entirely by the ways in which they differ.

Humanity emerged from conditions where there truly wasn’t enough. Out of the jungle, out of survival, out of competition.

From that scarcity, we built an entire ethic: fight, secure, protect, accumulate. That ethic made sense once. We survived by it.

But we carried it forward into a world where the conditions have fundamentally changed. On Spaceship Earth, the old survival logic no longer fits the reality of a closed system capable of supporting everyone. And yet the motivational patterns remain.

Scarcity is no longer material, it’s psychological, cultural, inherited. Shifting that ethic is difficult precisely because it’s woven so deeply into how we understand ourselves.

Only when we truly accept that there is enough, can the illusion of “the other” begin to dissolve. Then we can return to we, not as objects competing for limited resources, but as subjects in relationship.

Unity isn’t a construct or something we manufacture; it’s something we experience naturally when we collaborate honestly around what we share.

One of the most striking features of this realization is what happens in relationship. You’re with another person and, instead of instinctively cataloging the differences, you suddenly notice the ways they are like you. Not metaphorically but essentially.

In that moment, the idea of separation loses its grip. You recognize that you belong to one another in the deepest sense: that which is most essential in you is the same essence moving through me.

Not two things trying to coexist, but one life, momentarily appearing as many.

When the context shifts in this way, something fundamental changes in our motivation. Life stops being an achievement-oriented competition and becomes a collaborative enterprise.

I’m no longer working against you ; we’re working together so that we both make it.

On Spaceship Earth, this isn’t idealism, it’s realism. In a closed system, my success is inseparable from yours. Collaboration isn’t about virtue; it’s how the system survives.

I wasn’t born “[insert name here].” I was born a human being. Everything that came after, the story of who I am, whether I’m good or bad, successful or failing, was learned. Absorbed. Reinforced over time.

When you really look at it, you can see those layers for what they are: constructions, not essence.

Roles, measurements, identities that were added on top of something far more basic. And beneath all of it there is a kind of nobody.

Not in the sense of absence or insignificance, but in the sense of being unconditioned, unranked, and fundamentally shared.

Seeing that “nobody” in ourselves makes it possible to see it in others. And from that place, separation starts to loosen its hold.

There’s an inherent “nobodyness” in our existence.

Buckminster Fuller’s idea of radical transformation lives inside that truth. He suggested that change doesn’t happen by forcing the old structure to become something else.

It happens by trusting the unknown process of development and by allowing what seems like limitation to be simply the starting form, not the final definition.

The caterpillar is a perfect example. On the surface, it looks like all it can ever be, but the future is already hidden inside it.

Deep inside, unseen shifts are happening. The caterpillar dissolves into a kind of “soup,” and only then does the transformation begin.

It’s messy. It’s internal. It doesn’t resemble the future self at all. Yet, in that breakdown, the organism is using what biologists call “imaginal cells”, its innate potential, to rebuild itself into something entirely new.

The point isn’t that we should fight the dissolution. The point is that we must trust it. Trust that the process is real, even when the current state feels far removed from the person we will become.

Because the caterpillar’s form doesn’t define the butterfly. It’s only the beginning.

Even the “you” you think you are isn’t really you.

Human beings become themselves through relationship.

Every shared moment is a small act of co-creation; a weaving together of inner worlds.

What we share in the presence of another living being accumulates inside us like sediment, forming layers of meaning, identity, and belonging.

What we’ve lived becomes the invisible architecture, the soft clay from which our lives are built.

To be nobody and to KnowOther is to remember our belonging.

It is to recognize the earth, the body, and each other as reflections of the same source.

If I had to choose one resolution for the coming year it would be this: I simply wish to know awareness in such a way that my experience of life continuously moves with unwavering ease; a life in which I am me and no one else.

In reflecting upon the past year, I have come to notice my resolutions do not hold ground without the distinction of reality and non-reality. A practice that evolves slowly over time, with immutable repetition and patience.

I’m not suggesting to throw all resolutions out the window, or forgo the eagerness that is met with setting new aspirations for the coming year. Yet, I am exploring why releasing the binding nature of resolutions can be the truth to everything I desire for myself this year and years to come.

Note 2:

As each January passes, I feel less inclined to take on the urgency and pressure of changing my entire life overnight. Setting resolutions and sprinting through January only to feel resentment towards myself when the final days of the month sneak up and I am well and truly still me. Surrendering to the impossible feat of creating an entirely new identity (one which isn’t even supposed to be mine in the first place) momentum slows and my resolutions come crashing down.

Resolutions aim to address aversions and attachments, both products of the mental afflictions which we experience through misinterpreting our reality. They point to our disliked habits and suggest they ought to be revised and resolved. Imbued with worthiness and tethered to an idea of ourselves, resolutions can actualize our perception of being intrinsically flawed. It fragments the mind, creating a fundamental misunderstanding of our conscious lived reality.

My commitment to revise old or create new habits this new year does not dictate my ability to be free. The clock striking twelve does not clean the slate. In fact, if anything, the new year gives witness to the jumble of anxious and agitated thoughts that continue to cloud my ability to float in the expansive space of clear awareness.

January is an invitation to see into this perpetual cycle of my mind. To consider what it would be like to live in the lucidity of my mind and body. To sit with these agitations, distracting thoughts and to notice my own distortions of reality.

I see the condition of my own mind and seek who is creating my experience. Who is living my life? Can I become certain of who I am and detach from who I am not?

Note 3:

I am writing to you from the middle of it all, a point in space and time where processes fold, spiral and overlap. I feel certain that there is nothing to resolve within me, only multitudes of paths to follow, each winding towards the same truth. I am a planet on fire humming through the atmosphere, I am a stone nestled silently at the bottom of a river.

To live in pure awareness is to allow the renunciation of the internal commotion; deep presence with the true self that is resolute already. This unmistakable resolution of internal renunciation is not a process of external renunciation. I can still be within the world without my mind being the derivation of those attachments and aversions.

Being in the middle of my life does not require me to resolve anything, still I do not entitle laziness or loss of direction. Unbinding awareness allows space for the many worlds that live inside of us to take shape, for us to explore and find playfulness in the here and now. Opportunity and growth unfolds with our ability to be malleable and resilient.

From this place I can act on my desires, surrendering all efforts at the feet of the divine and uniting with what is.

The future never arrives, your resolutions are only a product of this exact moment.

May the vivid devotion to each present moment bring you more peace, more clarity, and more conscious creation this year.

May you be who you always have been.

Happy shedding x

This feels obvious because consciousness appears unified.

But when we look closely, that unity starts to fragment.

In reality, we are multiple and responsive.

This is where the idea of iteration matters.

We utter who we think we are, mostly internally, to confirm a reliable feeling of center to ourselves.

These iterations hold us together not because we are singular, but because we repeat, reform again and again from familiar patterns.

The feeling of a center comes after the fact, as a story we tell to explain coherence that emerged on its own.

The myth persists because it’s useful. A central self makes responsibility, continuity, and identity easier to manage.

It lets us say “this is who I am” instead of “this is how I’m composed right now.”

Neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy all point in the same direction: there is no single place where “you” live.

What we call the “self” functions less as a commander and more as a moment by moment convergence.

We are all a temporary arrangement, converging in a dynamic relationship with the world.

The Self: An Ongoing Collaboration

When we talk about freedom from the self, I think we are longing for relief from rigidity, not from selfhood.

The idea of a final and complete self creates expectations we will never be able to fulfill.

Each moment of selfhood is a version, not a final release.

There’s no endpoint where you fully “become yourself.”

Old traits return, new ones emerge, some fall away.

Creativity doesn’t just happen within the self; creativity is how the self keeps forming at all.

We are what Dr. Vandana Shiva calls, “generative organisms”, inherently creative, self-organizing, and a part of nature.

Creativity is our way of answering back in collaboration with all things, rather than through interference.

Creative Organisms

Creativity reveals that the self is not a fixed identity, but rather a moving ecology.

A living system of selves that take turns leading.

The brain doesn’t consult a CEO; it negotiates.

What feels like authorship is often a narration of what has already happened.

There’s a question I’ve been coming back to over and over:

How is it to be an environment that registers the world as it is?

The answers and stability we seek are not the absence of change, but the result of cycles that return often enough to feel solid.

Four Phases of Touching the World as It Is

1. Observation : Creativity begins in noticing; observation is never neutral, even the noticing is selective. If we can stay here long enough, we watch ideas form and meaning arise.

2. Meaning-making : The process that allows us to interpret experiences and create narratives that make life feel coherent. Here we weave stories out of the flux of perception and memory.

3. Expression : The only external part of the cycle where we take action, communicate and touch the world. Expression reveals selfhood, our iterative selves are otherwise invisible.

4. Integration : This is where we create continuity amidst change. Without claiming permanence or finality, our selves become a working whole. What we integrate becomes the ground from which future work grows.

   

These four phases: observation, meaning-making, expression, and integration loop continuously.

Each cycle compounds the next.

Previous forms break down and become nourishment.

Our past expressions aren’t killed, they’re composted.

What we create becomes a more honest interpretation of making contact with the world.

What we become is a more spacious structure, capable of carrying greater truth, compassion, and complexity;

And spaciousness comes not from destroying the selves within us, a kind of self-directed violence, but from letting them move, exchange places, and be malleable.

Is there anything at the center?

Creative growth isn’t a straight line; it’s a closed loop.

It’s our cyclical creative evolution.

Each turn brings us back to the beginning but with more nuance, depth, and trust in the process itself.

It’s a self-encounter.

Letting go of the central self isn’t a loss.

It’s a release from the pressure to be consistent, complete, or finished.

If there is no core to constantly compare ourselves to, there is room to evolve.

You don’t have to “find yourself.” You are already doing what you’ve always done: iterating.

And that may be the peaceful truth behind all the noise.

Not that the self is splintered or fragmented,

but that it was never meant to be singular in the first place.

Each version of ourselves is a step into a river that has already moved on.

When heard over and over again, clichés can lose their essence, dampening their meaning.

They often present versions of the truth, which we accept repeatedly until, eventually, we stop testing them for ourselves.

This one is observable, all you need is a pulse.

The Heart Field

The human heart generates the most powerful and consistent bioelectric field in the body.

The magnetic field of the heart is estimated to be about 100 times stronger than that produced by the brain. Instruments can detect the heart’s electromagnetic field at a distance of up to approximately 3 feet from the body.

Because of its range and coherence, the heart’s field is thought to play a central role in bioelectromagnetic communication within the body.

Your heart rate is not steady. Working in tandem with your nervous system, the heart subtly accelerates on inhalation, and slows on exhalation. This natural oscillation called heart rate variability (HRV) is one of the clearest signals we have of how regulated or stressed the nervous system is.

When we experience negative emotions such as anger, frustration, or anxiety, HRV patterns become chaotic and erratic, indicating autonomic imbalance and physiological stress.

In contrast, positive emotions such as appreciation, compassion, or love generate smooth, sine-wave-like HRV patterns, reflecting harmony between body systems.

When the heart’s rhythms become smooth and ordered, cardiovascular function improves and emotions stabilize. The activity of your vagus nerve is stimulated by this even pulse, signaling your body to relax into “rest and digest” mode. High vagal tone is also shown to lower inflammation in the body which supports healing.

This state of psychophysiological coherence reflects synchronized activity between the heart, brain, and nervous system. Sustained coherence brings a more organized cardiac electromagnetic field, supporting clearer thinking, emotional balance, and overall resilience to stress.

Our breath awareness is important here because it’s a direct lever into the system.

A Simple Experiment (3 minutes)

1. Sit comfortably.
   No special posture. Feet on the floor or lying down is fine.

2. Find your pulse.
   Wrist or neck, whichever is easiest.

3. Inhale slowly through your nose.
   About 4-5 seconds. While you inhale, notice: the pulse subtly quickens.

4. Exhale slowly.
   About the same length. Notice: the pulse softens and slows.

5. Repeat for a few breaths.
   Without force, let the breath be smooth and continuous.

At some point, you may feel the pulse and breath start to move together, like two waves harmonizing. This is coherence.

What You’re Sensing

When breath and heartbeat align, your nervous system shifts into a parasympathetic state:

• Entire body systems regulate and relax

• Saliva and stomach acid are stimulated to improve digestion

• Capacity to respond rather than react expands

If you track HRV with a wearable, you’ll often see it rise due to a combination of variables. If you don’t, your body still knows.

Why We Pay Attention

“Follow your breath” isn’t just advice, it is a choosing to listen; An invitation to notice a feedback loop that is always running.

The breath influences the heart.
The heart signals the brain.
The brain decides whether you’re safe.

Each heartbeat, guided by the breath, generates electromagnetic signals that reach beyond the physical body.

Your nervous system is communicating in a field much larger than you can see.

Descending Into the Heart

As a final note, a quote I love:

“You know that our breathing is the inhaling and exhaling of air. The organ that serves for this is the lungs that lie around the heart, so that the air passing through them thereby envelops the heart. Thus breathing is a natural way to the heart. And so, having collected your mind within you, lead it into the channel of breathing through which air reaches the heart and, together with this inhaled air, force your mind to descend into the heart and to remain there.”

- Nicephorus Blemmydes (thirteenth-century monk)

The way water rounds stone overtime

The way a fig slowly ripens on the branch, turning from green to deep purple, its insides ruby red and sweet with sap

I want the edges of my life to soften

The way morning breaks, orange and blue over a mountain drowned in snow

The way tea is steeped and poured slowly, then sipped over and over again like a prayer, warming cupped hands

As I pass over days and years of my life, the gentle unfolding of progress becomes unavoidably holy. A ripening which only occurs alongside the altar of discipline

Progression is not steeped in severity, it is not sharp with punishment or resentment

It runs like a current, sometimes shifting liminally, yet never fully still; intelligently carrying me to what is next

Momentum is in the mundane; nestled between landmarks, seemingly forgettable moments bathed in devotion of the everyday

It is the softening into self discipline, the doing it anyways, even when it is not perfect, even when I don’t feel like it

It is the clear presence with my inner dialogue and fully embracing the range of ways I coexist with myself

So, moving with tides of discipline, I pour myself into the stream of awareness and I move forward

Without thinking, without worrying I arrive where I need to be

I let water rush over my head, eyes gently closed but not shut to the multitude of possibilities that constantly surround me

Routine adorned with simplicity that cleanses me

I’ve read that action is the antidote to despair

I’ve felt it too

In the gentlest of ways, I have started revolutions within myself

-Knowother

The unfolding demands so much patience. It demands that we be still and pay close attention, when it would be much easier to have certainty, quick answers, or “something other than this”.

It feels like a cycle that builds on itself: Discomfort becomes resistance, resistance becomes new discomfort, and the loop circles back on itself again and again. Physically it’s tight, it contracts, it braces. But when I soften into it, even slightly, I start to see it differently:

The hardening to my discomfort is the interruption to my own becoming.

In this way the discomfort becomes an opening;

I see this opening like a window. It is both a boundary and an invitation. It separates the familiar from something far less defined.

It often arrives in the moments we would rather skip. The inconvenient truth, the pause before a difficult conversation, the quiet (or sometimes noisy) space where old patterns rise to the surface. It asks us to notice the urge to escape, and watch how the body adapts when we give it time.

To look through the window is to acknowledge that something is happening. Then I get to decide whether to simply observe or step closer and take part in the unfolding.

Discomfort isn’t a sign that something is wrong.

It has its own way of communicating and is often gesturing to each of our gradual becoming.

Discomfort then emerges as a threshold, a place to pass through rather than a wall I hit, and my ability to be with it becomes the force that drives the unfolding.

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May we build our homes with windows everywhere, so we can live surrounded by openings; spaces where everything that wants to emerge can find its way through. - KnowOther