Co-evolving towards a Higher ↑ Civilization (Part 4)

I don't know, but you must have an intention - and intention is directed attention.

And what might you be doing afterwards as a result of paying attention to my writing?

For sure you will do something if only infinitesimally different. In other words, you will, intentionally or not, integrate having read this article into your emerging future.

Study Change Cycles. I find this one very useful:

Time passes by anyways. How many days have you unintentionally scrolled your social media feed? (unless mindless distraction was the intention). For me, intention has a higher priority than attention: I can proactively guide my attention - rather than experiencing life as happening to me which we explored in Part 2.

My intention for each day is to not get fearful or angry (Complex PTSD), to have as little back pain as possible (long-term recovery process) and to be of service to something greater than myself: my family, my clients, systemic change, the fantastic farcaster flywheel etc. So how do I not get stuck in my rut, or regress to my younger parts that are not capable to be of service?

I define an intervention as an intentional act to get out of my rut, to disrupt the patterns of my auto-pilot. My structured morning routine is a good example for this. Instead of just getting up and start working, or eating, or reacting to the incoming demands of life (or checking my Warpcast feed) I structure the first few hours in a particular way: breathwork, meditation, and on most days also walk in the forest and cold shower in the garden. Why?

Because I am then much more likely to access flow states, more capable to solve problems and stay positive and resilient no matter what the day has in store for me - incl. brutal red candleson the charts. What others might call their day job between 9to5 is simply my integration of a carefully curated sequence of self-care practices before 10am into my daily proceedings of life incl. work after 10am.

Intention-Intervention-Integration is just one variation of a theme. You can see change cycles almost everywhere. If you have a business background you might be familiar with these:

• Build - Measure - Learn (lean start-up)

• Plan - Do - Review (Lean Mgt)

• Observe - Intervene - Interpret (Systemic Consulting)

Politics has cycles, too. 2024 is the year with the most national elections in a century or so, and it basically follows this cycle:

• Campaign (postulating your intentions for being in office)

• Election (voters making an intervention in distribution of power)

• Office Term (integrating your intention - and adapting to emerging realities

I bring in politics with a specific intention: we all know that most if not all politicians are not honest with their intentions. (Quick tangent: the system unfortunately doesn't hold them accountable enough to deliver on their promises. There are hardly any KPIs or OKRs (Objectives, Key Results) that anyone in charge of a country is held accountable against at mid-term review. All they need to do is convince enough people on the next campaign trail to take more pain away than their rivals. This is one reason why our political institutions are not fit for purpose imho).

Back to you and me: how can I be sure that my intentions are pure, honest, and in service of others? Well, this is inextricably linked with my level of consciousness explored in Part 1:

If I am stuck in the egoic state coloured Red where it is all about me, my needs and my advantage, then my intention will direct my attention towards extracting from others. If I am on the path towards the integral state called and coloured Teal, then my intention will most likely be taking into consideration the needs of others, and not just you, but all animals, plants, all life form on our planet, Gaia. What got me out of the egoic state?

I have ten years of experience in using psychedelics with a specific intention: to heal, grow, transform and seeing the bigger picture. A ceremony is usually a biggish intervention in the flow of my life as it can involve weeks of preparation, days of dieting, stopping any work, and if in a group, building the social container when on the land where the ceremony takes place.

You may have heard of the term set & setting. You can take MDMA on a festival to dance your face (and arse) off and descent into a love puddle with fellow ravers...or you can lie down, blindfolded, in silence, and receive agreed prompts by your therapist or sitter to evoke traumatic childhood memories with the intention to process them here-and-now by releasing them somatically where they are stuck in the body. Same medicine, totally different experiences and outcomes.

The latter (outcomes) is particularly influenced by the degree and duration of your integration. The same trip can be life changing or just that, a nice trip. It's really hard to convert altered states into altered traits without meaningful and disciplined integration. Why?

Psychedelics are one of the best technologies known today that get your mind out of its rut. It sends the Default Mode Network out for lunch and allows other parts of the brain to communicate with one another, that this DMN normally prevents. This part of the brain loves the auto-pilot, which basically is your genetic and cultural programming, the imprint. The DMN is also largely where your sense of self lives, hence we speak of the ego-death during psychedelic experiences.

I integrate all the time, psychedelic experiences and any remarkable intervention that I made in my life. The intention of these integration practices is simple and self-perpetuating: to grow every single day so that I will have become the best possible self when I die, whenever that is (had a near death experience in 2013).

The following might sound tedious to some, yet it compounds over long time frames, just like most crypto bags would...;-)

• Daily: I reflect on what has gone well and what I found challenging in the bath before bed

• Weekly: I write down my key learnings (plus key results) in my /weeklyreview (check my FC channel)

• Monthly-ish: I journal a bit longer prompted by some staple coaching questions (DM me if interested)

• Quarterly-ish: I check in with my OKRs very broadly and loosely

• Annually: I spend up to a week filling in this amazing booklet over Xmas

• Biennially-ish: I update my comprehensive time cone on a Miro-board that comprises my 5-10 year vision of the future and the life I want to live incl. the structures I can put in place for that to manifest. I don't share this publicly but if you are really interested let's have a short Zoom

The point in all of this is to have maximum possible agency over my life by committing to the practice of riding the flow of life in a meaningful and impactful way. Change is the Single Truth in the universe as we explored in part 3.

But how does change actually work, in practice, IRL?

After studying change and transformation both personally and professionally for 30 years, one lens and one often overlooked book from the 1980s stands out from the crowd:

In a nutshell, humans are hardwired to resist pain, discomfort and change, because the latter is potentially risky, so we fear the potential pain and discomfort that might come with it.

On the other hand, we are hardwired to seek pleasure, comfort and repetition because our brains are prediction machines and feel calm when they (think they) know what comes next.

As Robert Fritz explains in his seminal book, we can create structures in our lives that foster the desired behaviours. Drop a boulder into a river and the water re-forms almost instantaneously along a new path of least resistance.

For us humans, such structure could be a morning routine as described above, but it could also be a new identity or mental models. More on that in part 5...

As almost always, putting in a new structure into a system, making an intentional intervention, comes with unintended consequences. Those, too, form a new path of least resistance pretty quickly.

Let's bring this back to the origin of this article series: the scene coin called $HIGHER on the base blockchain. What is the intention of this emerging headless brand want to be? What is the current path of least resistance in our niche of the internet?

What structures can we co-create so that we indeed go higher, together? What is our identity? What are our mental models? What are our conscious choices?

This is the fourth of six planned articles.

Part 1: Crypto needs to aim for a higher consciousness

Part 2: Level up in the Game of Life

Part 3: Realizing the Realms of Reality

Part 5 – Compound your Consciousness of Choices

Part 6 – Idea for a very different Farcaster Client

I hope this will prompt comments, critique, ideas and above all: higher ↑vibrations.

antaur.eth