An Unraveling & Weaving in the Dark

In Tantra it is said that if it is not a paradox it is not divine. Social media is a deep unyielding paradox. Connecting while it isolates and divides. Is it divine? Is it a trickster spirit?

Social media enhances our inherent tendency to think in binaries and dualistic terms. We sort and separate and weave a world of duality: happy or sad, good or bad, icky or awesome. The platforms do not and were not designed to illuminate complexity, subtly, or the existence of non-duality. Though maybe it teaches us complexity through absence.

A post on social media is like a snapshot of the cell in an ancient redwood or elder oak. It may be a healthy cell, a cancerous one, or something else entirely. Either way, it is still, separate, isolated in time, space, and relationship. This trait is serving us, but not well.

This frozen image does not include the whole tree nor ki’s* roots, trunk, bark, branches, or leaves. It does not consider the tree’s relationships and connections, or ki’s role in the co-creation in an infinitude of moments and lives, or in ki’s role in the co-creation of the universe in general.

There are some incredible snapshots worth celebrating in these collective digital experiences. So take a time to celebrate the majesty of the snapshot and all the unseen waves, ripples, and relationships that created and will be created by that moment.

Then, maybe, take a nap.

When you rise, rested, rejoin the bonfire of the celebration, make a torch from the flames and wander into the dark. Illuminate the shadows of duality, so we can continue to see the paradox, hold the dominant social system, its leaders, and ourselves accountable.

All the while, we build something quietly in the dark. We yell back what we have seen, extinguish our torches and feel our way with our fingers outstretched into that inky space between the stars.

This is the beautiful and emergent and unknown co-creation that can only be birthed in mystery and shadows. It is that which sparkles unlit in the sacred blackness, unseen--of and beyond our wild and wily imaginations, we bring it forth.

*On the use of “ki” and “kin” as pronouns—excerpt from article by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Read the full article here.

“Inspired by the grammar of animacy and with full recognition of its Anishinaabe roots, might we hear the new pronoun at the end of Bemaadiziiaaki, nestled in the part of the word that means land?

'Ki' to signify a being of the living earth. Not 'he' or 'she,' but 'ki'. So that when we speak of Sugar Maple, we say, "Oh, that beautiful tree, ki is giving us sap again this spring." And we'll need a plural pronoun, too, for those Earth beings. Let's make that new pronoun 'kin'.

So we can now refer to birds and trees not as things, but as our earthly relatives. On a crisp October morning we can look up at the geese and say, "Look, kin are flying south for the winter. Come back soon."