I came across this image this week—a spiral, tightening inward—and something in it struck me as profoundly alive.
For years, I've moved through wisdom traditions that speak of the striver. I understood this concept intellectually, but never as a lived experience, never in the body where truth takes root.
This week, upon noticing how much I was striving, something shifted into embodiment.
Follow the coil with your eyes. Deeper and deeper. Notice how your gaze drifts. Notice the distraction, the veering away. In that slight gap between looking and losing focus lies something essential: the difference between authentic action and the striver's performance.
The striver tries, hopes, seeks acceptance. Hopes to leap into what they are not yet, to skip the slow work of becoming. This sleight of hand can sustain itself until it can't. Until the breaking point arrives, as it must, and all that remains is to simply be. From that state of being, and only from there, emerges what the traditions call divine wise action.
The work is noticing.
Catching ourselves mid-stride, mid-reach.
Landing, finally, in the purity of what we already are.
May this be of benefit.
Emergence with Rachel Weissman is a weekly exploration of the interconnections between consciousness, technology, and planetary flourishing.
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