We have little choice but to go in and through the Big Crisis. That means diving deeper into the messy, chaotic swell of modern culture. We have to understand how culture moves and breathes, how it adapts and changes, and how to dance with it in just the right way if we want to change the tune.
And we need to drop the question of ‘What should we do?’ If we knew that, we would have done it. Instead, we can ask, ‘What kind of people do we need to become?’ That means doing the one thing that seems mad when we’re surrounded by chaos.
We have to close our eyes; to listen to the sounds around us; to make ourselves achingly vulnerable to uncertainty; to let go, for a moment, of everything we think we know and everything that has made us feel safe. When we let go of our maps, we are forced to come to our senses, to focus on our direct experience as a human being breathing in the world around us.
This is an excerpt from my book The Bigger Picture, and after a week of extraordinary conversations, it’s a sentiment I keep coming back to. The response to the launch of Kainos has exceeded what I imagined, and I’d like to extend a huge thanks to the hundreds of people who watched and participated in our first live sessions with Jamie Wheal, Nora Bateson, and Daniel Pinchbeck on Zoom, YouTube, Substack and Instagram.
I’ve been asking our guests the same question, ‘Where do we go from here?’, based on the premise that we’re living through a significant and unprecedented moment of cultural, political and spiritual upheaval.
What’s clear is that none of us know exactly where to go next, and the first step may be letting go of the pressure of needing to know. It isn’t the last step, and the focus of Kainos is to spark hope, imagination and action so that we can move into new territory.
We may have to orient ourselves before we move, but we won’t be standing still for ever.
I’m looking forward to continuing the inquiry in our live sessions with Trish Blain and Schuyler Brown next week, and in case you missed it you can find the full list of upcoming talks in our launch piece.
Members can find the registration links to those, as well as the recording of our brilliant session with
in the chat, which everyone else will get access to next week on our YouTube channel - follow us there to receive a notification when it comes out. I also had a lively conversation with last night which spanned Trump, UFO’s, the media ecosystem and Idealism - we’re editing that now and will release it next week.Coming up next week for Kainos Members
Trish Blain
Monday, 3 February at 8pm UK time / 3pm New York / 7am Melbourne
Trish Blain is a pioneer, a philosopher and a brilliant facilitator who helps people create and collaborate from new and expanded states of consciousness. In this session, she’ll share the practical skills we need to step into new territory in our own lives and the new reality we’re living in collectively. Drawing on her concept of ‘Consciousness Agility’, she’ll introduce six core practices that we can draw on to create new patterns while we’re still connected to the old. This includes practices like States Agility, the skill of being able to navigate between different states of consciousness that can radically change our sensemaking.
Schuyler Brown
Wednesday, 3 February at 7pm UK time / 2pm New York / 6am Melbourne
I first came across Schuyler through her brilliant ‘Cultural Embodiment’ process in which she invites people to watch a controversial piece of media and make sense of it only through what they’re feeling in their bodies. She teaches the skills necessary to cultivate emergence within individuals and teams, helping them solve complex problems and navigate conflict and turbulence within the system. Her work lives at the intersection of leadership development, organizational design, and esoteric spirituality. In the spirit of emergence, she’s going to orient her session around what’s arising in the moment, helping us navigate the density of these subjects and move toward deeper insight.
Share this post