Questions I'm Walking Into 2023
Questions I'm Walking Into 2023
From the personal to the planetary, an attempt to bring some dilemmas into sharper focus.
Resonant World #14
Living in the Northern Hemisphere, I’m in hibernation mode.
I mostly try to do as little as possible between Christmas and New Year, apart from eat.
But since this is my first time to cross this threshold in the company of Resonant World, I wanted to try an experiment: See what happens when I share some of the ideas I’ve been working with, in the hope they might spark some new insights, or open new roads — even while still half-formed.
I’m not expecting any instant answers, but if any of the below resonates, I’d be glad to hear your thoughts in the comments. And I’d love to hear about the questions you’re walking — or maybe that are walking you, to borrow Thomas Hübl’s framing.
What kind of content should I develop to ensure Resonant World reaches its highest potential for serving the global healing movement?
What would it take to develop a new media platform, designed from the ground up, to support the healing of collective trauma? How to fund it?
What would this platform feature? Interviews? Documentaries? Live events? Something else? And what intention would they serve?
How to write a book that could do for collective trauma what Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind did for psychedelics?
How can I utilise principles of collective trauma healing to become a more effective climate journalist? What is “effective” climate journalism?
How can I leverage my background in corporate media to harness the industry’s reach on behalf of collective healing, including in relation to the climate and ecological crisis?
What are the risks and opportunities inherent in bringing the lens of collective trauma to bear in news coverage?
How can I find money to support more expansive creative projects, implemented by myself and others, to support the global healing movement?
What would it take to make the topic of collective trauma “culturally cool” — a prospect floated by Zhiwa Woodbury in a podcast hosted by Merritt Juliano?
How can I best support a more powerful and reliable process of cross-pollination between my creative and spiritual lives?
To what extent should I begin to re-imagine myself as a practitioner — as opposed to a chronicler — of collective healing work?
Should I form a dedicated “mastermind group” to support creative and professional expansion?
What aspects of existing culture could be harnessed to catalyse a Cambrian explosion in mainstream understanding of individual, collective and ancestral trauma?
How can an understanding of collective trauma be used to inform the development of non-polarising social movements capable of responding to the climate and ecological emergency, and other crises?
How can collective trauma healing work be harnessed to operationalise the kind of quantum social change described in Karen O’Brien’s book You Matter More Than You Think?
How I am going to get a men’s group for dads at my daughter’s school off the ground?
Should I revive keeping a diary of my personal triggers, as recommended during the Timeless Wisdom Training? How to ensure I keep it up?
What personal practices are most effective in helping me spend more time in a more emergent, creative flow — rather than stuck in repetitive cycles?
What cultural forms could be revived, adapted or developed to support collective trauma healing work, in all its many facets?
How precisely could one map the mystical and psychological principles of collective trauma healing into the 78 cards of the Tarot?
Is there a way to map, or otherwise visually represent, the global healing movement?
What kind of over-arching metaphysical constructs are most helpful for understanding the global significance of collective trauma healing?
How to maintain space for the awareness that individuals can only ever have a partial view of the whole, and that processes of cosmic significance may be at work on this planet in ways that we may not ordinarily perceive?
Is it possible to design some form of mass rollout of “shadow work” for climate activists that could make the climate movement more effective?
Personal work: A swirled marble
In my own process, an image keeps recurring: That of a child’s marble, with a swirl of muddy colour shot through the glass.
On days when I’m feeling clear and coherent, it’s as if the marble is tilted at just the right angle to let the sunlight stream through. But there are times, perhaps many times a day, when I let the marble slip, and instead of clear daylight, I experience darker colours — my thoughts once again caught in cycles from the past.
Through the ancestral healing work on the Timeless Wisdom Training, I’ve begun to pinpoint how much anger and shame I carry from my grandfather Charles’ experiences of war, economic hardship and social isolation. Knowing the source isn’t always enough to short-circuit the patterns, but these days I notice I recover much faster — and I’m starting to appreciate how much resilience I’ve also inherited.
Thank you, Charles.
Afghanistan crowdfunder update
A huge thank-you to everyone who has supported my Tarothon crowdfunder on behalf of Noorullah Noori and his family in Afghanistan, which has now raised £1,225. The idea emerged during the last Timeless Wisdom Training in-person retreat in Germany in November. I learned yesterday that Noorullah’s son had been beaten by Taliban security agents while going out shopping, landing him in hospital. I’m very grateful to have moved from feeling overwhelmed by Noorullah’s plight to a newfound sense of empowerment, and it felt very good to be able to send some money to help with medical expenses. The Tarothon also affirmed quite how much I love reading for people — and how energised the process makes me feel.
The crowdfunder is still very much open, so if you’d like to book a Tarot reading with me in return for a donation (literally any amount is welcome), then don’t hesitate to drop me a line.
What I’m Reading and Listening To:
Quantum Language and the Migration of Scientific Concepts, by Jennifer Burwell (2018). Since I love the word quantum so much, I couldn’t resist Burwell’s heavyweight exploration of the use and abuse of the term by everyone from literary critics to New Age gurus.
Ecology of Souls: A new mythology of death and the paranomal, by Joshua Cutchin (2022). Fascinating study of comparative mythology including shamanism, near-death and out of body experiences, and models of the soul.
How to Be Loving as your heart is breaking open and our world is waking up, by Danielle LaPorte (2022). Accessible and uplifting.
The Bodhisattva’s Vow and Non-Human Beings, the latest offering from the mind-blowing Aliens & Artists podcast by the inimitable Stuart Davis.
I really appreciate the donations that help make Resonant World sustainable — each one energises me, as well as helping to pay the bills. Thank you!
Dear Matthew- I have such a deep appreciation for the glimpses into your heart and soul that your writing offers, I'm so happy to have discovered your threads here and also to know we share community within the realms of learning/exploration/digestion and integration/healing that Thomas Hübl is so generously tending.
Thank you for sharing these intimate and essential inquiries... so many of them hit me at a vibrational level and I appreciate your willingness to share them as you live into their answers (as Rilke so beautifully invites us to do). Because I felt such deep resonance with a few, and you invited a space for sharing reflections, I thought I'd weave some threads for the sake of honoring the way energetic resonance finds a way to connect us even if we've never actually met (and actually even reside in different continents/hemispheres etc.). Here I'll reflect them back to you, as I feel the depth your own words hold, followed by my own thread wishing to weave its way in to whatever you've put forth...
- How to write a book that could do for collective trauma what Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind did for psychedelics? - Beautiful- can I be of any support to you in this journey and intention, I have a lot of experience in the particular realms of collective trauma that relates to/connects to (unprocessed) ancestral trauma of slave labor that has established the foundation of and continues to influence/drive/direct our current global economic systems/consumer culture (which are still essentially propped up on the back of modern day slavery) - an issue I have some sort of soul contract with as my vocation has pulled me into the depths of this aspect of our collective human shadow for the last 15 years of my career. Somehow I feel that we have to look directly at the immense collective trauma connected with money if we have any hope for true and radical transition beyond these broken systems toward a more generative, collaborative, and integrated/relational existence with this planet and our own species. If this piece of the collective trauma puzzle feels relevant to you and your work please don't hesitate to reach out and we can share heart/brain space to see if what I've learned over the years could support this intention you hold in a way that the broader human species might be able to relate to...
- How can I leverage my background in corporate media to harness the industry’s reach on behalf of collective healing, including in relation to the climate and ecological crisis?
Beautiful, thank you. I hold a similar question related to my background in corporate social and environmental sustainability...an industry where there is so much opportunity for healing and authentic, mature development, and yet also sooooo much stunted/stagnant/decaying "strategy" because the strategic response is still guided by a trauma response of the humans within the organization, rather than being able to proceed from a grounded, related, integrated and adaptive heart space that has the capacity to feel and digest the collective trauma baked into every major issue these professionals are trying to "solve" in order to make their company more ethical/responsible/sustainable/regenerative. I'm tempted to just start writing more directly about the topic and begin there (since no one is even doing that), but then that can feel so insufficient when looking at the mountain we have to climb. So anyway, perhaps this is just a note to say, thanks for speaking this one out loud so I can speak mine out loud and maybe now I should go write a post on Linkedin about why unprocessed collective trauma hijacks corporate strategy directed at ending child labor, eradicating modern day slavery, stopping deforestation etc...maybe it will change nothing, maybe it will change everything, but what do we actually have to lose from opening the conversation, right?
- How can I find money to support more expansive creative projects, implemented by myself and others, to support the global healing movement?
YES! I hold this inquiry and also have some ideas...would love to share what I've encountered and see how there might be a better way to bring these kinds of resources to this essential work.
- How can an understanding of collective trauma be used to inform the development of non-polarising social movements capable of responding to the climate and ecological emergency, and other crises?
Love this. Yes yes yes. Within this question I sense there is a beautiful invitation for more spaces that have the capacity for conversations that would typically be very polarizing to occur in a manner where people feel safe and there is a larger capacity for co-regulation among the space-holders.
- What cultural forms could be revived, adapted or developed to support collective trauma healing work, in all its many facets?
As I read this what comes to the forefront for me are community rituals related to grief, birth and death. Would love to hear what has risen to the surface for you in this area.
- Is there a way to map, or otherwise visually represent, the global healing movement?
What a beautiful inquiry.
- Is it possible to design some form of mass rollout of “shadow work” for climate activists that could make the climate movement more effective?
If this continues to resonate for you/tap you on the shoulder, please stay in touch on this one as it evolves/takes root...I love what you've planted and actually I've been holding a similar inquiry these last eight years that I've lived here in Southern Chile (where a lot of my own personal shadow "work" has been engaged). I have some ideas related to this, and they include doing this work with horses in nature, particularly with horses that live in herds with as much natural autonomy as possible (but not wild horses, I'm referring to domesticated horses, which seems important as we humans often over-romanticize the idea of wildness that further disconnects us from our natural kin as we co-exist today).
Asi es. What a delight to reflect with you, thanks again for opening the space. I'm happy to connect more directly if you feel the pull. Thanks again for the heartfull way that you share, I can feel it and appreciate it so deeply.
Love the questions you're walking, Matthew. Big ones, thanks for sharing! The overall vibe they gave me was your care for the climate crisis and how we can understand, collectively, the trauma behind our inadequacy to deal with such. How to get others to see the importance of their own unconscious energy wrapped up in this process. I wish you a fruitful journey in your walking :)