Spiritual Futurism?

Things I think about at 6am

The term “Spiritual Futurism” popped into my head this morning. Assuming it existed I Googled it only to realize that among the many terms related to futurism, Spiritual Futurism is not one of them. Consider this post me coining it today. We’ll get back to that later in the article. First, please join me on the journey of reflections and memories I had this morning.

I wake up at 5:48 am, grab some water, have a little stretch, pee, and get back into bed.

I say out loud, “Good morning, everybody,” referring to my Divine Support Squad and Ancestors. I give thanks, say some prayers, and feel into how I want to use my sacred morning time.

Deciding to read, I get comfortable in my pile of sheets, pillows, blanket, and comforter and reach for my Kindle. I flip to the book Stolen Focus by Johann Hari that I’ve been slowly working through and digesting for the last six weeks or so.

One of the things I’m really enjoying about this book is the mix of data and story telling, and the delivery of data within the telling of stories. Too much data and I check out. That kind of detail doesn’t work for my ADHD brain - but serve it up within a story and I can grasp it because while raw data bores me, seeing how exactly things impact life or people in context fascinates me to no end.

Chapter Six of the book kicks off an exploration of the rise of technology that can track and manipulate you, and my friend Johann, as I’ve come to think of him, is interviewing Tristan Harris, a former Google engineer of The Social Dilemma fame.

Fun fact: I never watched The Social Dilemma because I didn’t want to know. Now, as I’ve logged out of social media and am not really planning to go back, I want to and I am ready to know.

This passage strikes me enough to highlight it in the chapter,

He could see that his friends were setting in motion changes that were transforming the world in ways they couldn’t predict or control, “The reason we have to be so careful about the way that we design technology, he said, is that, “they squeeze, they squish, the entire world into that medium —and out the other end comes a different world.”

Later on, Johann shared that when Tristan warned about the negative effects, most people inside Google sympathized and agreed, but when he suggested alternatives, people changed the subject.

There’s a #youcantmakethisshitup moment happening right now. What made me reach for Stolen Focus this morning was thinking about an Akashic Records reading I had yesterday where I asked if people were ready for some things I’ve been wanting to share or if I needed to figure out how to titrate it.

The answer was: titrate it.

Sigh. But ok.

Here’s where the Spiritual Futurism comes in, I’ve done this wrong A LOT. It’s exciting to share insights, ideas, and visions. It just is. It’s not exciting when it’s beyond people’s level of hearing.

As I approach 40 and the 10-year anniversary of building my body of work, I’m getting much better at tuning into what people are and aren’t ready to hear and demonstrating restraint and patience.

This used to be physically painful for me, I had to do some real ego and shadow work to grow out of that. It was very worth it!

This might sound arrogant to some, but if you’re a mystic or a spiritual seeker, you understand that this is not a hierarchy or a superiority thing. It’s about truly working with the soul’s gifts and wisdom, Ancestral gifts and wisdom, and divine right timing.

It’s about being driven by something bigger than living my best life.

I remember sitting in mastermind groups 10-12 years ago now, knowing in my bones that all the business growth, platform building, and amassing of influence people were so hungry for would eventually reach a tipping point.

We are at this tipping point now. Again, I don’t say that to be smug. This is not an “I told you so” moment.

It’s just a fact. The evidence is all over the internet.

I remember being subtly shamed for not wanting what other people in those rooms wanted. I remember trying to talk myself into wanting what they wanted and occasionally buying their nonsense that I was playing small or perhaps needed to look at my self-worth.

I did my fair share of conforming. I’d say I’m not proud of it, but it has nothing to do with pride. It was a stage of my life that I had to go through and I don’t regret it. As I recently wrote on the new About page of my website,

Much of my journey has been about drinking the poison so I could discover an antidote. I’ve gone into the belly of a lot of beasts – intense family dysfunction with emotional and psychological abuse, fitness and diet culture, New Age spirituality, and perhaps the most insidious – the online entrepreneur / Digital CEO / Girl Boss world.

I had to let myself be consumed by the toxic systems and cultures that these beasts thrive on so that I could map my way out.

While I have been known to “hide in plain sight,” it wasn’t about playing small or struggling with self-worth. I’ve just always had a sense of and curiosity around sufficiency.

What’s actually enough? Why is business success only measured by revenue growth? What’s the harm in the constant pursuit of growth - to ourselves and others?

I was always sitting in those rooms feeling into what the impact of all of it was going to be on humanity in the future - and not in a good way. Chalk it up to my Virgo Sun + Mercury and Capricorn moon, maybe, or my indigenous roots, but I’ve always been inclined to more systemic / collective thinking.

Only thinking about myself and forwarding my own interests doesn’t turn me on. What does turn me on is unconventionality. I love looking at things as if they are ecosystems and wondering how manipulating various parts disproportionately or with unsustainable velocity will ultimately shake out so that I can build differently, more responsibly.

Much of my hesitation in my business life has been rooted in caution and care for something much bigger than my own bank account. You feel me?

I remember joining a mastermind in 2017, it was one of those groups for six and seven-figure women and the culmination of the experience was a trip to Necker Island to meet Richard Branson. I could cringe about this now, but instead, it makes me laugh that somehow I convinced myself that I gave a single fuck about meeting Richard Branson.

Listen, I was 34 and still mildly susceptible to other people’s visions for what business success should look and feel like. If I could go back and pat my younger self on the head and tell her that she will be fine without any of that nonsense, I would.

Clearly, we made it out ok.

Phew.

Thinking about Tristan Harris trying to warn people at Google and get them to care about the responsibility they had and the potential negative impacts of all the technology they were creating while being dismissed in favor of the bottom line, reminded me of being in those mastermind rooms.

People would act interested, nod their heads, and validate my insights and “big heart,” but ultimately weren’t trying to listen to me talk about the impact that everything they/we were envisioning might have on people in the future.

And by people in the future, I also meant us.

In that Necker Island mastermind, I was not a “seven-figure woman,” and let me tell you something interesting, even about “impact-driven” and “heart-centered” entrepreneurs, if you don’t make as much money as they do, they aren’t that interested in what you have to say.

The people who made the most money were the queens of the group.

They were also the most stressed, had the most complaints about their relationships, and some were even ill because, in their sprint away from conventional employment toward entrepreneurial empire-building, they’d ended up with even more responsibility - like other people’s livelihoods. Despite their high gross revenue, they were now facing a dilemma they hadn’t anticipated.

They were making all the money, they had all the stuff, and some of them had “retired their husbands,” but they hated it and struggled daily with wanting to quit because it was making them miserable to keep it going.

I realized that this was the real reason I joined the group. In getting to witness the behind-the-scenes of some of these women who make everything look all shiny and bright on Instagram, whose glossy images you’ve probably seen on book covers in Barnes and Noble or maybe even your own bookshelves, whose articles grace the digital pages of Forbes, and whose lives look entirely aspirational but could be just as dumpster fiery as anyone else’s, I knew that shit wasn’t for me.

I believe that what this world needs is deeper, wider, more inclusive, encompassing, encouraging, supportive, healing, inviting, and nourishing spirituality. And the people who can bring that to the world are the true mystics.

It’s important to note that this kind of spirituality is not new. It’s ancient, it’s indigenous, and it’s in all of our DNA. It’s where we all came from and what we need to return to.

In other words, it’s here already, we just need more courageous people willing to push against the intensity of modernity’s obsession with technological advancement at all costs and offer alternatives.

If you’re reading this, it’s probable that like me, on some level, your soul has sent you whispers about this throughout your life. Whether you’ve heard them or not is another thing and I will not be getting into why or why not in this post today - but here’s what I can offer for those who are curious -

On Saturday July 22, I’m running a workshop about Soulful Prosperity. Check out the details here and sign up if you’re interested.

Toward the end of 2021, I started developing a framework for Soulful Prosperity - sufficiency, sustainability, satisfaction, and soulfulness. This year during my REAL Uplevel interview series, I asked most of the guests what their relationship to those four things were and we got into really personal, nuanced, and interesting examinations.

The thing that my story has in common with Tristan Harris’ is seeing into the future and bringing up deep and looming issues in rooms with people who say they care and probably do in a way, but who cannot put anything above a bottom line.

Soulful Prosperity is about putting a lot of things above a bottom line without sacrificing your very real and basic needs for food, shelter, and survival, or your very valid dreams for more than just that.

This is just one aspect of what “Spiritual Futurism” could be built upon.

Caroline Myss talks about this - she says that the biggest fear people have about listening to their soul is that they will go broke. It’s not true. The last decade of my life is proof that it’s not true. There are many lives out there that are proof that it’s not true. If you would like to be one of them - come to the workshop on July 22.