Finding Trusted Intelligence in Bewildering Times
How can we access other ways of knowing and wilder intelligence to guide us towards cultures of care and renewal
I have been really trying to limit my screen time this year, I got off to a good start but have fallen off the wagon in the last week or so.
I actually think quitting alcohol might of been less challenging.
My body has been feeling glitchy for some days, a tight gut, a nervous quality, usually a strong signal to disconnect from the noise and seek wilder inputs.
These days, scrolling social feeds, messaging apps and looking at mainstream media and news is often completely overwhelming for me.
This morning exploded my mental capacities to hold it all.
I see a post about the huge levels of mental health suffering in the UK, next to a post about climate collapse from the design of our death economy, next to a post about Trump ordering the cutting down of ancient old growth forests, next to a post about Gaza being horrifically attacked again with many children dead, next to a post about a must watch Netflix series, next to a post about UK Govt questioning the validity of mental health issues (!) and why everyone should be growing the economy.
It’s completely bewildering, a word that I hear popping up more and more.
And at the same time I know that what I choose to pay attention to matters greatly. It is a choice.
But it’s really not a simple thing to manage.
I don’t know if my Autistic and ADHD wiring makes me more prone to wanting to know about and bear witness to endless suffering on the planet. That’ a live inquiry for me.
What mind seeds are we feeding ?
But it’s made me think again about what we pay attention to, what we choose to feed ourselves with matters so greatly now in this moment and in how we will choose to navigate the emerging futures.
(I’m not referring to what we eat here, although we’re now discovering how even the food we put inside us can influence our thoughts)
I’m talking about the kinds of knowledge and information that we are feeding our minds with. And the sources of this intelligence.
And this emphasis on mind intelligence.
It’s something I learned from the Monastics at Plum Village.
I’m riffing in quite a simplistic way here, but here’s my takeout:
Every day we choose to feed our minds with information and intelligence from different sources, that intelligence nourishes and waters the dormant seeds that are always there in all human minds
There are many seeds, for example seeds of anger, fear, hate, jealousy, individualism etc as well as seeds of care, compassion, empathy, love, community etc
What we feed our minds with will inform which seeds we grow and the energies we carry within us and around us.
Feeding minds with violence, fear, division, disinformation and domination grows seeds and energies of violence, fear, division, disinformation and domination and so on.
Feeding minds with care, joy, awe, co-operation and community grows seeds and energies of care, joy, awe, co-operation and community.
See how it works ?
Screen becoming primary source of intelligence
I’m reckoning that much of our intelligence and knowledge is now being sourced through screens primarily.
That is now the main source for many of us.
Our primary way of knowing the world and our place within it is coming through a singular screen we hold in front of us.
That is an incredibly recent and mind-boggling shift for the human species.
We are a species that has evolved, navigated and made sense and meaning of life through tending to living relationships from many different sources of intelligence and ways of knowing. Human and more than human.
For example through connection with land and other beings, in intergenerational communities, through movement, celebration and service, working with our hands, through myth and story, art and creativity, rituals and rites of passage.
All of theses are sources of intelligence and ways of knowing.
Today it’s abstract, coming mainly through people who we have little or no connection with. From places we don’t know.
Who have no understanding of our own unique contextual realities.
It’s arriving to us through a murky algorithmic delivery system.
To a personal screen.
It’s a total disconnection from all that is alive.
A proper bewilderment system.
And yet we are somehow having to trust this intelligence, this knowing, to guide and shape our thinking, being, decisions and actions.
What does this do to how we know the world and each other ?
Intelligence and knowledge feeds
I’ve been thinking about the word ‘feed’ - from the old english word ‘fedan’ - which means to nourish and sustain.
How do these social, news, entertainment and messaging feeds nourish and sustain us ?
If we’re feeding ourselves with intelligence and knowledge that is often putting us on edge, making us feel insecure, overwhelmed, fearful and dividing us, and disconnecting us from our own aliveness, from our bodies and the land, numbing our full set of senses - then how can that nourish and sustain us to become caring, curious, imaginative, compassionate and co-operative beings ?
How can this primary source of intelligence and knowing nourish us to collaborate and grow the kind of resilience and capacities we need to meet a massively uncertain and challenging future coming down the line ?
Wild Intelligence Feeds
I went to visit my trusted twin oaks this morning after my overwhelming newsfeed meltdown.
It has been a few weeks since my last visit. I knew I had to go.
I sat in their enduring presence. My breathing slowed.
I spoke to them of my overwhelm, choking on grief and shed some tears.
I shared some gratitudes for these wise beings and then something shifted.
For a moment the wood went silent, the light shone brighter on the wild garlic carpet and a gentle breeze blew through.
My dog whined.
I felt seen, heard and held in some way.
I received something, a deeper exchange of intelligence, a knowing through feelings.
I laughed and re-membered again that there is a vast web of intelligence and other knowledge that is also available to us to access from a wider community of life if we are prepared to open ourselves up to the invitation and practice, practice, practice…
hEdge Media and wild intelligence
Which brought me back to my recent post on hEdge Media.
So I’m calling this exchange with the oaks - wild intelligence.
Wild intelligence and hEdge Media I’m framing as an emergent combining of :
Living knowledge from the Edges of our mainstream reality - the creative possibilities and fertility of edges, often believed to be the most interesting, diverse and valuable places in any living system.
+
The vast web of intelligences and other knowledge that is also available to us from a wider community of life if we are prepared to open ourselves up to the invitation and practice. Crawling into hedges metaphorically speaking.
Edge + Hedge = hEdge Media
alive, emerging
Co-created between living things.
A wild intelligence
Where can we find Wild Intelligence ?
Wild intelligence is found at the edges and the inbetweens, sometimes deep in our bodies, or by learning to tune into other ways of sensing the world.
It’s there in the spaces between us
When we sit together in circle
And create space for silence.
It’s wild intelligence that can be found out on the lands, with our more than human family, if we can allow ourselves to trust the mystery of aliveness, entanglement and the sentience of all beings.
If we dare to ask the Earth - ‘what do you want from me?’
It’s intelligence swirling in the deep pools of grief that we all carry, that we witness when we honour each others pain and suffering.
If only we could create more containers and spaces for holding each other and letting go.
What knowing might emerge ?
There is regenerative possibility and renewal in surfacing our grief and sorrows and letting them flow through us in community.
There is a wilder intelligence that emerges from paying attention to our most alive questions we are carrying, not from the answers we’re trying to find.
This living intelligence can also be found from consulting the true AI - Ancestral Intelligence - if we are prepared to experiment with the stranger practice of calling on our ancestors for guidance.
"We need new stories but new stories are not left entirely to us. If we open ourselves to strange encounters, maybe then the terms and the words for new stories will happen to us."
Bayo Akomolafe
Wild Intelligence requires commitment to practice and active participation
It is not scrollable.
It’s not delivered to your inbox.
You can’t watch it on Youtube or Netflix
Or follow it on Linkedin
You can’t LIKE it with a click
It requires open-ness, experimentation and active participation
It requires cultivating practices of the unfamiliar.
Setting intentions for stranger encounters.
And making weirder moves.
It means communing more often with unusual suspects,
Human and more than human.
Paying attention to heart and gut.
It requires commitment to practice.
Practice- driven change as we call it around here.
But here’s the really interesting thing...
This wild intelligence is uniquely yours, when you receive it, you can feel it in your body.
You can trust it.
You carry it with you.
And that’s what I think is the most extraordinary possibility - intelligence and knowledge that you can trust in a world full of noise and hubris which you increasingly can’t.
So today those Oaks reminded me to pay attention to my recent barn owl encounter, to keep my focus on these lands I live in, to practice intuition as trusted guide and to keep speaking out to that cloaked ancestor in a sea of acorns.
That might make no sense to you, but I know the path I need to keep on walking.
So here’s a reminder to myself:
What seeds in my mind am I feeding and what feeds am I sourcing intelligence from?
Am I sitting in circle often, listening to my fellow humans?
Am I communing with the oaks?
Am I moving with the breeze?
Am I paying attention to the cycle of the moon?
Am I voicing gratitudes to my more than human family?
Am I seeking guidance from my ancestors ?
More engagement with hEdge Media, means more trusted wild intelligence to navigate bewildering times.
Where are you finding trusted intelligence ?
A big practice focus in the Action Learning Collective of Becoming Crew is Connection practice - to open up to other forms of intelligence and ways of knowing through centering relationships with the Earth.
We are especially interested in the possibilities of non ordinary experiences in nature, through rituals and rites of passage.
We have 5 places available to join us for a weekend on-land April 11th-13th near Bath including a guided overnight nature solo.
We have now decided to offer these places on a PAY WHAT YOU CAN basis.
We believe in the deep potential of these experiences to support people in navigating these uncertain times and do not want money to be a barrier if your heart feels the calling.
Follow the registration details here and drop us a message
Cracking post, Dan!