33 Questions I'm Walking into 2024
Some are more manageable than others.
Resonant World now has 945 subscribers in countries from the United States and Australia, to the UK, Germany, France, South Africa and Colombia, to name a few. Of these, 19 are paying supporters — to whom I am profoundly grateful. I write this newsletter to serve the global movement working to heal individual, inter-generational and collective trauma — and any support readers can provide, by sharing, commenting, or subscribing, helps this work to reach more people, and is a huge source of motivation for me. Thank you for your support!
Resonant World #59
A very happy new year to you!
I had planned to write more last month, but I was struck down by a virus — I strongly suspect covid — on the evening of December 18, and have only felt reasonably recovered in the past few days.
The illness was an intense experience, with the physical exhaustion combining with what felt like a slow purge of shadow material from my psyche.
Flat on my back, I was forced to confront how much unconscious resistance I carry to the circumstances of my normal life, and saw with new clarity how much suffering I create for myself and others through these patterns.
I also had a night terror — something I can’t recall happening with such vivid intensity, even during childhood. The imagery I confronted — Zombie-like victims of a dreamworld car crash — was so horrific that recounting the scene to my wife Genevieve moved me to tears.
So, if the holiday wasn’t exactly 100 percent festive at all times, it felt like a significant process was at work.
Levels of Reality
I can’t help but wonder whether completing the two-year Timeless Wisdom Training led by Thomas Hübl and his team (our final retreat closed on the evening of December 3) had primed me for this Dark Night experience. Deep layers of psychic sediment had been stirred up during our prolonged and intense work on individual, trans-generational and collective trauma, and perhaps another layer was only waiting for a catalyst — like a bout of covid — to release.
I have a mental image now of a kind of giant etheric snakeskin — a holographic, shapeless structure with a sinister iridescent glimmer, and big enough to enfold a baby dragon. Shedding this weird layer has left me feeling clearer, and calmer, and faster to notice when my mind is straying over the rumble strips into habitual resistance patterning. Let’s see how this process integrates.
It’s almost too daunting to contemplate writing about what I learned on the Timeless Wisdom Training — it feels like it would need a book-length account to begin to do the process justice. My friend Claude, ever quick out the gate, has just published her own insightful commentary, which I highly recommend:
For now, I’ll confine myself to sharing what I wrote for a yearbook we created at the end of the training:
“Doorways to new levels of reality have been opened. Capacities I never realised I possessed have come online. Relationships have acquired a new quality of depth and subtlety. I have felt seen and heard in a way I have never experienced before. Collective intelligence has become a lived experience. I have grieved for my ancestors, and connected with my father. I have forged new, lifelong friendships. Mystical teachings have taken on a practical quality. I have been confronted with my own shadow, and collective shadows, in ways that have been challenging and also profoundly healing. I've cried, laughed, felt deeply uncomfortable, and received profound blessings.
“I’ve felt inspired to document the journey, and share it with others. I have felt called to dedicate myself to supporting the global healing movement. I have released a lot of my insecurities, and tendency to envy and compare myself to others. I have become more of who I really am.
“I have had glimpses of greater meaning and new purpose; a conviction I am on the right path. I have offered an apology for a past transgression. I have learned to harvest my karma in the moment. I have learned to relate at a deeper level to women and men. I have met myself in silence. I have deepened my faith in humanity, and gained a clearer sense of the medicine the world needs right now. I have put creative ideas into practice. I feel more rooted in my body, and I can feel my soul’s presence guiding me — when I remember to ask. I have learned to connect to light, and receive inspiration from my soul. This soul connection is perhaps the greatest over-arching gift — in which all else is nested. I offer my profound gratitude to Thomas and all the team.”
Finishing the Timeless Wisdom Training feels less like an ending, than the end of the beginning. In April, I will begin the Collective Trauma Facilitator Training, a threshold towards my ultimate goal of learning to facilitate collective trauma integration work. Needless to say, I will be writing about this deepening process.
For now, I wanted to revisit an exercise I did a year ago, providing a stream of consciousness set of questions I’m walking into the new year. (The number 33, though highly resonant, was unintentional — I only realised the total when I totted up what I’d written). Any further resonance welcome!
Questions for 2024:
Note: These are not in any order of priority. I wrote them as they occurred to me.
How to create an “emotional resilience for climate leaders” course, based on the kinds of principles I’ve been studying in the Timeless Wisdom Training, to use this work to support allies in the climate movement?
We are at a tipping point in the global trauma healing movement — which I believe will soon become far more visible and influential in mainstream culture. How could I write a book that could help galvanize this process, say in an analogous way to Silent Spring’s role in raising environmental consciousness?
How best to deploy my networking skills to serve and integrate my core constituencies — the climate movement and the trauma healing movement — more powerfully and effectively?
What practices can best help me dissolve more of my default level of resistance to the circumstances of my life? (My hunch: Lots and lots of meditation).
The business world has the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. Where does the global trauma healing movement go for its news? What kind of new media platform is needed to support the global healing movement? How could it be funded?
What principles should inform much-needed initiatives to bring trauma-informed perspective to the news? For example, to what extent is it appropriate to analyse the character of key global power-brokers, such as COP28 President Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, through a trauma-informed lens?
Where to focus Resonant World? Interviews? Podcasts? Reported stories? My process? Something else?
How to exponentially grow Resonant World’s subscriber base?
How to find ways to write about healing work that cuts through to a more mainstream audience?
How to spread the word about our monthly men’s group more effectively?
How to build more strength, flexibility and suppleness in my body?
The phrase “Psychedelic Sex Tarot” refuses to go away. What is it pointing to?
How can we systematically drip light into karmic structures (as Thomas Hübl might say) on a global scale?
How can I sort out the sound quality of my podcasts?
Who could help me to create a more coherent visual brand for Resonant World?
How can I establish a deeper and more fluent understanding of the theoretical underpinning of quantum social change theory — with particular reference to Karen O’Brien and Alexander Wendt — and enough proficiency to discuss these concepts without offending actual quantum physicists?
How can I get more organised to engage with “subtle attunement” practice as part of the Timeless Wisdom Training sangha?
What new income streams can I develop that will support Resonant World?
What role can I play in supporting the healing movement to integrate more esoteric concepts around the unconscious, non-locality, subtle layers of reality, and autonomous psychological complexes (aka “entities” in some cultural idioms) into an account of collective trauma that can land beyond a niche audience?
How to integrate Paul Levy’s work on the Wetiko mind virus with what I am learning from Thomas Hübl about collective trauma?
What practices to cultivate to fulfill my highest potential as facilitator, when I embark on the Collective Trauma Facilitator Training?
How to leverage my role at DeSmog for maximum impact in the climate movement?
How to resolve my complex relationship with the corporate world, into a higher level of integration?
Can I tempt Diana Pasulka, author of American Cosmic and Encounters, onto the Resonant World podcast?
Would it be socially acceptable to use Nordic walking poles during the 20-minute walk to and from my co-working space, through suburban streets, as a convenient way to build upper body strength?
How can I best serve Kaiāulu?
How can I move into a larger living space?
What would be other appropriate platforms to write about the connection between science, spirituality and trauma healing?
How feasible from a time perspective would it be to create an enormous scrapbook to serve as a repository of a growing body of practical Tarot knowledge I am gleaning organically from diverse sources? And how can I grow my Tarot practice?
How can I cultivate a felt sense of connection with my energetic sense of purpose, more consistently and effortlessly, throughout the day? (Hunch: More meditation).
Is there scope for establishing a clearer connection with my grand-father Charles via my father? If so, how?
How can I rapidly get a handle on the implications of AI, if that’s even possible?
How can I deepen my engagement with addressing the collective and inter-generational trauma fields of slavery, racism and colonialism, perhaps via exploring my intuition that Britain has a lot to learn from Germany in this domain?
I would love to hear any questions these ideas provoke in return — or any suggestions for answers, if that’s not stretching this pinball-machine thought experiment too far. Thank you!
A Must-Read From the Medicine Path
Jacob Kishere, a friend of Resonant World, has been through a remarkable medicine portal in Oaxaca, Mexico in the past few weeks. I loved this recording he made to at least partially capture his profound experiences, with a soundtrack to match:
A labour of love, Resonant World is written in the gaps between work I get paid to do, notably editing investigations at nonprofit climate news service DeSmog. It’s a huge boost when people become paid subscribers, and support of any amount affirms that my mission to support the global community of practitioners engaged in supporting people to integrate individual, inter-generational and collective trauma has value. Thank you!
Wow, Matthew - you have a lot of questions! Of course, there is a common thread running through them all (see: def. of 'tantra'), which may suggest a more wholistic way of engaging them. As to the illness on the heels of profound spiritual retreat, in Buddhism we're encouraged to see these (and in dreams as well) as signs of successful purification. I know after my most intense purification retreat, 15 days on Cloud Mtn. when I could really see the negative karmic engines, I passed kidney stones in the Alvord Desert! So your intuition is correct (and I suspect Thomas would say the same thing). As to "without offending actual quantum physicists," good luck with that! I've found quantum physicists, at least the non-Buddhist ones, to be incredibly siloed in their thinking. Heck, they castigate their own kind when they dare venture out into philosophy (see, e.g., Amit Goswami, the Quantum Activist). And my experience, anyway, is that in spite of their field, many of them still cling to scientific-materialist paradigm. And thus, they have this binary way of thinking about physics and 'meta-physics' that doesn't really allow much room for creative thinking. Anyway, thanks for all that you do!
Since you invited questions and comments....
While reading your several mentions of "the climate movement" I had the feeling-thought to mention that I now believe it's time to let go of the very idea of "the climate movement" as a discrete thing apart from all of the other severe symptoms of overshoot, e.g., the biodiversity crisis, the surpassing of six of nine planetary boundaries.... More and more, I'm just thinking of it all as metacrisis, or polycrisis, with preference being "metacrisis".
I honestly don't think we can adequately address the "climate" situation without deeply contextualizing it within a paradigm which includes all of the many symptoms of overshoot, which themselves are symptoms to set within a broader context.
Now, that's not to say I should never mention my pinky finger on my left hand without also talking about my hand as a whole, my arm, and how my arm relates to my heart and lungs, and how that relates to the biosphere. But something terrible is happening with "climate activism". It's becoming increasingly narrow in its focus ... and is losing biospheric context.