Being With Complexity
Journal prompts, recommendations, and tarot—for when the centre cannot hold.
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The unknown is terrifying to humans. It contains within it everything that we can name as a fear; fear of death, fear of deep water, fear of the dark, fear of creatures like spiders or snakes whose bodies and subjectivities are far from our own, fear of clowns whose bodies are like our own and yet behave in unpredictable, chaotic ways. Fear of anything unfamiliar. Fear of the Other.
Our minds are planning machines. They rely on pattern, prediction, and the known to feel safe and stay calm. Of course, no one really “stays” calm. That’s not anyone’s experience. But we allow ourselves to suspend disbelief momentarily, so our brains—little dumb babies that they are—can be lulled into momentary relaxation. Telling our mind “everything’s alright” is just something we do, even though we know it’s not entirely true.
When we say “everything” what we really mean is “for this moment…who knows what’s next?”, but we say it all the same because it helps us to self-soothe. And self-soothing, like fear of the unknown, is a predilection most of us share. How cute that in our darkest moments, we’ll turn to someone we love and say “everything’s okay” when it’s very much not. How cute that we’ll voice our very innate fears by saying something as simple as “I hate pigeons, they’re pests!” when it’s us who abandoned one of our oldest domesticated friends (and it’s us settlers who introduced them).
English is said to be the most wordy language on the planet, and yet so much of the way we use it daily (espesh online) makes life seem so matter of fact, straight up and down, black and white, right or wrong. And simplification has its place. It’s memorable, so it helps us learn. Plus it’s fun and funny.
My partner has spent the last few years writing down things I say that they find funny or “autistic” of me (for lack of a better word). These quotes make me seem extremely opinionated about possibly inconsequential things. Also kinda like a weary old vampire who’s lived a thousand lives. And I am opinionated. But one of my greatest joys is looking at something from all angles. Is having my mind changed. I love thrashing things out. I love a real exchange, where you make a strong case for something. Where you try on someone else’s position and see how it fits. Or where you get curious to see what commonalities dance in the space between you. I love entanglement. I value complication.
I think most of us, when pressed, value complication. And yet when it shows up, we so often feel discomfort. Discomfort so strong that our bodies, our minds, our communities even, can react in a multiplicity of ways; for better or worse we seek to get “back” to our self-soothing, our imagined soft, safe place where complexity doesn’t exist. And this is our whole struggle as a species—our expectations of soft, safe, simplicity cannot exist alongside our unique living realities as unfathomably complex, nuanced beings, entangled in an intricate, humming, shifting web of contexts. Contexts that are in flux, as our lives are in flux, as our meanings are in flux, as our stories are in flux.
Whether you consider yourself a “sure” person, or a flexible person, you have to admit that your surety (about anything) has emerged from the conditions of your particular life. Everything that we think we know and love is entirely dependent on our context. How scary is that? It hits the nerve at the heart of our fear of the unknown—that nothing is stable. This is the gift of complexity. It’s alive with possibility. It’s forever emergent, destabilising quality is the quality of nature. It’s the way all of life itself, which we are a part of, functions and thrives.
Complexity says one creature’s waste product is another creature’s fertiliser. Says one ecosystem’s bug catcher is another’s poisonous killer. Complexity says we’re a product of the environments, systems, and stories we develop inside of. And it says, so is everybody else. More than that, complexity invites us to embody this knowing fully and meet each other not just with the unconscious, accidental relationality of living in the same spaces, but with intentional inter-subjective awareness—cognisant that in every exchange, neither of us will walk away the same as we were.
Being with complexity is the opposite of a mechanistic assumption of what we think we know. Instead, it’s being curious (in head and heart and gut) about what stories, what voices, what power struggles, are behind our passing thoughts and feelings. What values (or value conflicts) are behind our correct-ness, or our sure-ness, or our judgement of someone else’s wrong-ness.
When I read about how in ancient times, the Charvakas were invited into temples and holy sites to give speeches and debate, or when I watch a biopic of Fred Hampton and remember that he formed the Rainbow Coalition alongside the leader of the Young Patriots Organisation and the Young Lords, I’m reminded of the power and wisdom of taking positive intent for granted and choosing to dance with difference.
Bayo Akomolafe on the “crisis of form” that is life, and often-oppressive systems, in the anthropocene says “we tend to repeat and inscribe these crisis events even with our best efforts to resolve them because we’re still stuck within the same epistemological space. We need to go beyond critique and maybe edge towards experimental liminal spaces of transformation. That requires a different kind of movement and thinking altogether. It requires getting lost.”
I think it also requires getting fucking scared. Welcoming that fear and discomfort as important aspects of the complexity needed for positive learning and change. As signs of fruitful transformations, of new possibilities, and of choice—the choices we get to make again and again.
Complexity is a growth serum. It asks us to slow down. To listen. To be with the is-ness of a different story, a different living experience, from the one we hold most precious and most right. And it’s one of the greatest teachers we have. By building our tolerance to being with complexity, we acknowledge the living, breathing, continually-shaped connective tangle between “I” and “you”. Between “us” or “them”.
Certainty and safety are not stable states. Nothing about us as people, as a world, is stable. How will you stay anchored to your personal centre when the wider centre cannot hold? How can you learn to meet change? To greet the unknown? To look complexity in the face? To show up for another? You don’t need to not be scared. You don’t need to fix complexity, or explain it, or argue it away. You only need to practice being with it.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.” — جلالالدین محمد رومی
Journal prompts
~ What do you think you think about being with the unknowable or complex?
~ Take a deep breath and exhale. What do you feel emotionally about complexity?
~ Where does that feeling or sensing show up, embodied physically, for you?
~ When have you felt or sensed this before, if ever? Is there a memory/story attached?
~ What does that feeling/sensing provoke in you? How does it inform your behaviour?
~ How can you use your emerging knowing/sensing to support yourself?
~ How might you practise being with complexity, in your relationship to yourself?
~ What about in your relationship to loved ones, acquaintances, strangers?
~ What do you want yourself to remember, as you practise this?
Recommendations of the week
Here’s a new thing I’m trying where I recommend five things I’ve been curious about or impressed by! Let me know if you enjoy it and I’ll do it more <3
✰ A Slower Urgency ~ “The times are urgent; let us slow down.” A bit more reading on slowness from Bayo Akomolafe.
✰ Force of Nature: Gina Chick On Australian Story ~ Apologies in advance if you can’t figure out how to watch this outside of so-called Australia. But if you can find a way, do!
is the 53-year-old rewilding facilitator who won (with ease) the first season of Alone Australia last year (also an amazing watch) and is a truly inspiring example of a white Australian living in right relationship with Country. This 30min program details her incredible life story.✰ Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time ~ A documentary of the environmental artist. I found this clip off a resource list and was moved by it. You can watch the whole thing on Apple TV and elsewhere online.
✰ The Witch Belongs To The World: A Spell Of Becoming ~ The brand new book by my friend, four-time initiated witch, and teacher/mentor Fio Gede Parma! This was my endorsement for the book and I think it says it all: "A breathtakingly rich and poetic chronicle of modern witchery, a provocative call to arms, and a generous guide to empowerment and self-initiation for magical folk, old and new. Fio pulls no punches in lovingly daring emergent witches to uncover and embrace the dissent, responsibility, love, and power at the heart of their magic and reminds adept practitioners just what it means to commit to the path, again and again."
✰ The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Blooper Reel ~ Pretty self explanatory. If you liked the series, you’ll love the little gelflings singing in between takes and the skeksis towering over crew members, screaming at them. Such a visual feat, I still can’t get over some of the scenes in this.
Tarot card of the week: Strength
Swami Vivekananda (himself an indomitable embodiment of this card) said that he was once walking on a narrow path when surrounded by a troop of angry monkeys. Keeping his head down, he ran past them, but they began chasing after him. The monk watching on called out to him: “Turn around and face the brutes!” So he stopped running, turned around, and faced them. They ran away.
When we refuse to examine that shadow in the corner of the room, we allow our imaginations to make it out to be something horrifying. But if we hold the gaze with what feels too big, too much, too scary—we see it for what it is. Just a shape, a jacket on a hook maybe, that we signed our power over to.
It takes strength, not weakness, to identify our feelings and allow their expression. It takes strength to not judge ourselves for the times when we shame our feelings instead of just noticing them. It takes strength to avoid feeling cringe and regret when do let ourselves express what’s in our heart. It takes strength to call ourselves out on our destructive patterns of being. It takes strength to hold oneself to a standard, without falling into self-flagellation. It takes strength to learn from our experiences and apply what we learn the next time. It all takes so much strength to live a shame-free life, than it does to repress everything.
And that’s essentially what’s being illustrated in the Strength card. The energy of non-shame. Call it self-compassion. Or more accurately, self-acceptance. It’s the practice of being willing to take those parts of ourselves we think we need to lock up, or they’ll destroy us—and facing the brutes.
Xo Jerico