The Great Breaking Open
Learning to Navigate in Unsettled Times
If I ask you to describe the times in which we are living, what words come to mind? My current descriptors are unsettling, rapidly changing, complex, sometimes scary, sometimes hopeful—yet even all those words together don’t fully capture it. Many people feel like everything is falling apart, breaking down, or coming to pieces. And they aren’t necessarily wrong. Yet what if we choose a different perspective? What if instead of “breaking down,” we look at what is happening as “breaking open?”
When a situation, structure, or system breaks down, we look for how to fix it, and then continue our same path. Yet when it breaks open, we can see and feel deep into its many layers, sometimes even all the way to the core. Much more is revealed. If we take a step back, we can begin to see a bigger picture. And if we trust that there are deeper messages and perhaps even hidden wisdom within what is happening, and we pay attention to those messages, we are likely to begin sensing a new direction. We let the situation talk to us before we start talking to it.
Most of us have not been taught this kind of approach, yet it is more critical now than perhaps ever before. A few days ago, I wrote about Transformational Presence as a compass for our times. It can be our guide. It doesn’t tell us what to do, yet it points us in a direction. Transformational Presence offers tools and skills to navigate the challenges and opportunities of these unsettled times and create a world that works for all.
A Wake-up Call and Invitation
I first coined the term “Great Breaking Open” back in 2016 and devoted an entire chapter to it in my most recent book. As challenging, uncomfortable, and often inconvenient as the “Great Breaking Open” might be, it’s both a wake-up call and an existential invitation.
The wake-up call is to pay attention to the messages that are coming fast and furious. The existential invitation is to work with what is happening instead of fight against it. Making the simple yet powerful choice to work with is a first step towards new, more constructive, and more productive possibilities. We may not have a clue how to get there—no sense of strategy or plan of action. Yet if we get quiet, listen, and observe with our outer and inner senses, and trust in a wisdom bigger than ourselves, we can begin to sense a next step. And that’s enough for the moment. As we take that next step, the one after will begin to show itself. And on it goes.
The Great Breaking Open is not a passing phase. It’s not going to be over soon. If anything, it’s deepening and intensifying. It’s re-calibrating every aspect of society and culture. If we choose, we can intentionally shape that re-calibration. We can consciously choose a course correction. We can choose how we show up to all that is unfolding, who we wish to become, and what kind of world we wish to create.
From problem solving to navigating
More than 20 years ago in a conference in New York City, I heard Indian scholar and environmental activist Vandana Shiva say two sentences that have stayed with me ever since: “There is nothing to fix. We are far beyond fixing.” I understood her words then only as a concept. Now I understand them in practice—in how I live my life.
When we focus primarily on “fixing” what isn’t working, we simply return to the status quo. We miss the opportunity that was available to us in that moment to create something new.
However, the existential invitation of the Great Breaking Open is to step beyond the widely accepted mindset for problem-solving and fixing. It’s to step into approaches that are, in fact, new to many of us—approaches that use our inner as well as outer senses—approaches that cause us to listen and observe with our hearts as well as our intellects.
Ancient wisdom traditions taught that the human energy system includes multiple intelligences. Today, neuroscience tells us that neurons and neurotransmitters are not only found in the brain—they are also located around the heart and in the gut. (Watch for an article about these three intelligences coming soon.) Research at the HeartMath Institute shows that the electromagnetic field of the heart is 60 times greater than the electromagnetic field of the brain or the intellect. This means that the heart intelligence has access to a field of information 60 times greater than the field accessible by the intellect alone. The heart intelligence is the center of the intuitive mind.
Observing first through the heart intelligence opens the door to much more powerful information-gathering, insight, awareness, perception, and understanding. As the heart gathers information and insight, the intellect can then organize and catalogue that information so that it is accessible to us whenever we need it. This is, in fact, the superpower of the heart-brain or intuitive-intellectual partnership!
Conscious living and leading is rooted in this powerful heart-intellect partnership. Living and leading from that inner partnership opens the door to more effective, all-inclusive, creative, collaborative, and innovative ways of being and doing.
Which takes us back to the existential invitation of our times. Surviving, and ultimately thriving through these challenging times requires a much bigger vision than problem-solving and fixing. It requires a sense of calling from the future. Conscious living and leading means opening our vision to the field of possibilities and potential that is trying to get our attention—the new world we are being invited to create.
The Sufi poet Rumi wrote of “a field out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing”—a field of possibilities beyond the obstacles and challenges that appear to stand in our way. We get to that field of possibilities by using our inner compass—our intuitive heart intelligence and our intellect in partnership. Together they help us learn to navigate through difficult and sometimes dangerous terrains to the field of possibilities that lies beyond.
Will this happen in my lifetime or yours? Maybe, maybe not. There is the old saying, “Rome wasn’t built in a day!” Some shifts may take many years—even many generations—to be accomplished. Consider the beautiful cathedrals of Europe or ancient temples and sanctuaries of the world. Some of them took more than a hundred years to build. Many of the architects, builders, artisans, and craftspeople who worked on those sacred structures had no expectation that they would be completed in their lifetimes. They just focused on doing their part. And so can we.
What I know for sure, and what I don’t
I can’t give you a step-by-step plan for how we get from here to the new realities that are waiting. I don’t know how that will happen. However, what I do know is that working with whatever is in front of us instead of fighting against it is the first step in moving forward.
This is Transformational Presence. This is what this newsletter/blog is about. The time to step forward in who you are called to be and whatever is yours to do for this world is now. The courage to take those steps emerges when you choose to stand tall in the fullness of who you are, to be love in action, and to let your light shine to the world around you.
Please join me by subscribing below and let’s continue this journey together.