We're experiencing a tremendous evolution of 🪐consciousness🪐

Are you ready for this jelly? (Am I)?

Hello + happy Tuesday!

Register for this week’s group calls here:

🌀 Group Call #1: (Tuesday, 2/20/24 @ 6pm PST // 9pm EST): Register here.
🌀 Group Call #2:** (Wednesday, 2/21/24 @ 9am PST // 12pm EST): Register here.

**This call features structured breakout groups of 3-4 people.

NOTE: Call #2 is canceled this week. I’m going to see KM, my energy healer, and I’m more or less at the mercy of her availability 🪐

Once again I’m coming at you with an essay I didn’t intend to write. But I’m trusting that this is what I’m meant to share.

Consider it a Self Made…

😎 Vibe Check 😎

Today I’m sharing some ideas and knowings that are still simmering in my own personal Soup of Consciousness, meaning, they aren’t *quite* fully cooked. I questioned whether or not I would share this but then I was like this is MY Substack so I can say whatever the hell I want. Here we go.

A big theme for me lately as I’ve been revisiting posts from four years ago when I first started this newsletter is how things actually seem to be just as hard or even harder than they were during first couple of years of the pandemic/the first couple of years of the Trump presidency. I continue to be gobsmacked by the fact that in general, society is still operating with a vibe of business as usual and that we continue to cling to systems even as we see them crumbling at an extraordinary rate.

A BIG transformation we are collectively living inside in this current moment is collapse. Specifically, we are witnessing, and experiencing (as in, we are influenced and effected by these changes: this collapse is not passive thing we’re simply witnessing, like images on the screen—though of course most of the information we get is through screens—we are daily, bodily, experiencing this transformation) the collapse of the majority of external structures we’ve historically attached to as sources of meaning and purpose.

Throughout this essay I’ll be using the collective “we.” Your unique, individual experience might/will differ, of course. I’m sharing what I’m seeing on a more general, macro level. Also: caveats annoy me sometimes but I’ll just say that I’m American, so for my international readers, forgive me, but a lot of this is highly specific to that perspective.

Examples:

• Government/political affiliation: The deja vu of the same two old white men running against each other again is evidence that the old way is dying. In fact, I believe it is already dead, and we’re clinging to the old way because we haven’t imagined, and thus have been slow to create, anything new. We still believe the “right” candidate will “fix” what’s dead. More and more of us are disgusted by the whole thing, regardless of what “side” we are on—not to mention the fact that the extremes on both sides are looking increasingly similar to each other. Democracy is at stake and a big reason so many of us feel so uneasy (I know there are many reasons to feel uneasy) is because we know that regardless of who wins in November, this year, and probably the next few years, are going to be difficult and chaotic and full of even more death. We are increasingly uncomfortable with aligning ourselves, our identities with either side of this corporate-run theater (yes, I’m becoming more and more of an anarchist in my advanced age. Don’t worry, I still vote, ha).

• Institutions: Long entrenched institutions are cannibalizing themselves. A couple of cases in point are higher education/academia and healthcare. On the higher education side, more and more people—young people—are questioning the risk of leaving college and entering a tumultuous workforce while shouldering massive debt. Professors are beholden to a disgusting tenure/adjunct bureaucratic carrot-dangling nightmare.

  With our healthcare system, we’re witnessing an increased corporatization, where doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers are being forced into structures they did not sign up for and that go against what they value as providers. On the consumer side, we have people going into extraordinary medical debt just to live that will financially debilitate them for the rest of their lives, and more and more people are becoming skeptical of a system that purports to help but often causes more harm.

• Family: The idea of the “nuclear family” as the norm and standard is being reimagined. Birth rates continue to decline. Relationship structures are evolving and expanding. Family structures, too.

• Work: Gone are the days of worker/company loyalty. Many of us are waking up to the fact that these big corporations we’ve invested so much of ourselves into could not care less about our loyalty and will drop us like a bag of dirt if we don’t fit into the bottom line anymore (also hell yes that unions are strengthening back up again).

• Religion: Less and less people are affiliating with any religion, especially as the Christian right continues to weaponize the teachings of the Bible to fit their agenda (for an exceptional deep dive into this that will 100% freak you out so bear that in mind, I recommend you add the podcast “Straight White American Jesus” to your queue).

• Anything you would add?

Here’s what’s been coming through, unignorable:

Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash

The machine is collapsing.

and

I believe we are experiencing a tremendous evolution of consciousness.

The old world is dying. We understand this mentally. We feel it on other levels, too—viscerally, emotionally, psychically. We watch it unfold on the news, in our cities, in our lives, in our environments.

But this is only one side of the story. When something dies, it follows that something else is being born. And we exclude this side of the story at our own peril, for if we do not center and focus our attention on what is dawning—and how to participate in what’s dawning—as much as we do with the death and the collapse of what is ending, well, when shit inevitably hits the fan, we will be dangerously unprepared.

Death and birth are messy and violent events. And as these external sources of meaning and structure continue to collapse, we must seek meaning from within.

And now you understand why I use these little squiggles - they’re my “order - disorder - reorder” babies. Good reminders, as it were.

Have you ever had the experience of being in the middle of a period of major growth and change, where if feels like there’s one foot in the old way, the other foot in the new? And how this in-between time is marked by incremental successes that are often followed by what feels like backslides or regressions (that “one step forward, two steps back kinda dance)? And how, slowly, over time, you begin to spend more and more time in the new way, and then one day you look around and you’re like, oh wow, I live here now, the old way receding further and further into the rearview?

That’s where we are right now. Some of you can already feel it.

This is how change happens both in our small, insignificant little lives, as well as on a global level. We have so much more of a say than we can even fathom right now, goddamn relentlessly dark and troubling news headlines be damned.

If this sounds intense or even scary, that makes sense, though it’s not my intention. My intention is to invite you off the death machine and into the garden.

Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

There will eventually be a reorder (order leads to disorder leads to reorder) but in the meantime, we will have to learn how to adapt inside of disorder (which is a slightly less panic-inducing word than chaos).

What I’m describing is not a call to spiritually bypass, nor to stick our heads in the sand during these times of breakdown, collapse, genocide. We absolutely must stay engaged.

What I am saying—and what I’m doing my damndest to practice every single day of my one wild, precious, speck-of-dust-hurling-through-infinite-space-little-life—is that at the same time we are working to dismantle the machine, and to protect those most vulnerable to its terrifying, ongoing collapse, we must also spend time creating and living in the garden, now. And the way we do this is by first creating the garden within ourselves. This means developing enough inner authority that we can discern what is authentically meaningful to us—who we are as individuals free from our out-of-date programming, our social conditioning, our societal acculturation—so that we can cease looking to external systems for direction and meaning and instead create something fundamentally and profoundly new.

Not different. New.

This is not about bootstrapping, or hyper-individualism. It’s about unfettering ourselves for real, for finally, from systems that are screwing over literally everyone but a handful of people. It’s about power, and agency, and looking to ourselves as our own authority instead of externally. It’s recognizing that we, as people, have far more power than we understand.

Once again, I return to my June 2020 Pisces horoscope, courtesy of Chani Nicholas:

“I am not trying to win the awards of a system built to fail, but I am trying to love myself through the process of dismantling it, keeping generativity at the center of my days and ways of being in relationship to myself and my life.”

Here’s a question I’ve been asking myself, when the despair of the world lays itself over me and my throat closes up and my heart folds up and my feet fill with concrete:

What is something I can do, right now, that might move something 10-15% in the direction of the garden?

What I love about this question is that it always, always gets me back into action. Sometimes, the action is to use my voice, to speak up and out. Sometimes, it’s to give money. Sometimes, it’s to be more thoughtful about where I spend my money (i.e. only buying meat if it’s ethically raised/slaughtered; boycotting Amazon and other megacorporations; catching myself online shopping when really what I need is connection). Sometimes, it’s sensing that my pobrecita nervous system is on the verge of burnout and needs rest. Sometimes it’s inviting my favorite friends to dinner and laughing, laughing, laughing. Sometimes it’s rolling through my contacts list and reaching out to people I haven’t connected with in a while. Sometimes it’s wandering through nature, phone-free, and presencing myself to the wonder and generosity of the earth. Sometimes it’s taking a break, putting my brain on the shelf and zoning out with a book or a show. Sometimes, it’s setting a boundary that’s gone a little leaky. Sometimes, it’s moving my body, powerfully, rigorously, as a reminder that I’m strong enough to absorb all that is coming. Sometimes it’s energy healing and therapy and massage.

All of these actions are ways that I embed myself into my life, my community, my environment a little more deeply. These actions, when coupled with your actions, weave a web that can hold and carry and nourish us all. And we keep weaving the web, and it covers the planet, and here we are looking around, and we’re like, oh wow, we live here now.

And now I will close with two things.

1. Register for my upcoming workshop—Close to the Bone: Stay Fortified to Stay Engaged. It’s on Monday, 2/26 - less than a week away. We will be exploring the themes I’ve presented today, and talking practical tools for entering—and sustainably maintaining—our own unique experiences of the garden.

For more information, click here.

2. I’m presenting this week’s issue of Nick Cave’s “The Red Hand Files” (hella highly recommend you subscribe, btw) because it speaks so directly to what this moment is asking 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽

My muses have left me and I have lost all motivation to create as a film and music maker. Have you ever felt alien to yourself and your identity as an artist?

TAM, CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

Every time I set foot in my studio, intentions blazing, I crumble with pathetic and flaccid paralysis. Do it, paint. No. Fuck. Why not? I can’t get my brain right in that space anymore, and I thought my whole life was going to be devoted to my art. I don’t know how to reconnect or reconcile making art in a world made of war and cruelty, how would painting a fucking picture ever help. How do you create in this environment?

DAN, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Dear Tam and Dan,

What makes our particular job so exceptional that it requires inspiration or a muse to do it? We are artists and we labour in the service of others. It is not something we do only if and when we feel motivated – we create because it is our responsibility to do so. In this respect our occupation is no different than that of most people. Does an ordinary adult go to work only if they feel in the mood? Do doctors? Do labourers? Do teachers? Do taxi drivers? We are duty-bound to do our job, like everyone else, because the space we occupy depends upon our participation and breaks down if we don’t. A committed artist cannot afford the luxury of revelation. Inspiration is the indolent indulgence of the dabbler. Muses, Tam, are for losers!

The idea that you can’t paint because the world is ‘made of war and cruelty’ has to be the most faint-hearted excuse not to work I have ever heard, Dan. How will painting a fucking picture help? — it will help because art is the noble and necessary rejoinder to the sins of the world. When the world rushes toward us with all its streaming wounds – wanting, needing – do we cover our eyes and shrink away, do we sit and wring our hands in despair, do we run and hide, or do we hasten toward it, like we hasten toward an injured child, with our arms outstretched?

If we are to call ourselves artists then we must avoid the myriad excuses that present themselves and do our job. Yes, the world is sick, and yes it can be cruel, but it would be a whole lot sicker and a whole lot crueler if it were not for painters and filmmakers and songwriters – the beauty-makers – wading through the blood and muck of things, whilst reaching skyward to draw down the very heavens themselves.

These are perilous and urgent times. This is not the hour to sit around moaning about the condition of the world — leave that to the posturing inhabitants of that most morbidly neurotic of spaces, social media — and nor is it the moment to fruitlessly wait for inspiration to find us. It’s time to get to work, to reach up and tear the divine idea from its heavenly cradle and proffer it to the world. Create, Tam! Create, Dan! Create like your life depends on it, because, of course, of course, it does!

Love, Nick

If you made it this far, thank you, I love you, now I’m going to go lay down for a week.

xo,
your pal
dani

If you’ve dig what Self Made is up to and are able to support this work, I invite you to become a paid subscriber.

+ If you are curious about working with me, you can click the button👇🏽 to get on my calendar and we can talk.

Finally! I’m putting together a three month group coaching program. Maximum 8 participants. We will be in community around ENTERING THE GARDEN. Once there’s enough interest, we’ll begin, so if you’re curious and would like to be kept in the loop on that, sign up for the waitlist.

P.S. I’ll keep sharing my midwinter Spotify playlist, STAY TOASTY. Recommend you listen on shuffle. Two hours! and I keep adding to it.

Spring playlist is growing 🌻

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SELF MADE is a call to deeply connect with the self—self-knowledge, self-trust, self-development—and then to make, small step by step, a life that you savor. Posts are written by me, Dani Cirignano, writer, Certified Integral Coach, and Holistic Recovery Guide, based in San Francisco, CA. 

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