CE Insight: It's All Happening By Design

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When we see rising mental health problems in adults and youth, rising suicides and a general decline in wellness and life expectancy, what do we make of that?

For me, there are a multitude of factors at play but I do believe one of the largest is our societal design. It's producing the state of human beings you'd expect given its design.

I'm writing this today to help us imagine a framework for how global change might unfold.

Back in 2010 I started a project called The SHIFT Project. The mission was to explore the idea that our current societal design does not support the wellness and thrivability of human beings.

Offering a solution, the project would collaborate with others on new design ideas, parallel systems, and transition steps to move from our current system to one that helps us thrive.

The documentary I was going to make to go along with this project was going to show that if we HAVE to do so many meditation, yoga, or wellness practices constantly to feel good, it is likely because our collective environment is not set up to support our own wellbeing.

Don't get me wrong, all of these practices can be done and are fine, but to need them constantly suggests something is off in the core of our collective nervous system.

That collective nervous system is often defined and reinforced by our existing environment.

Said another way, we can tend to our own nervous systems, and this is necessary, but if we are constantly in a soup of dysregulation we will always be battling our environment.

The philosophy that has guided CE and all we've created these past 14 years has involved a number of key concepts. These concepts can unfold along one's personal journey but don't necessarily happen in a linear order.

1. We wake up from the illusions we believe about our world and how it functions, a deep and honest inquiry is necessary. We desire to come to a reasonable consensus collectively on what's happening and cease to fight through bias and ideology.

2. We adopt a sense of neutrality about "who's to blame." Can we see how actions and behaviors mostly come from trauma, patterning, and bad societal design? In essence, we can ask: is our society largely disembodied? is it ill? If so, should we expect a well world if this inherent disconnection exists within us?

3. We adopt a willingness and curiosity to grow and evolve beyond the stories, beliefs, limitations, and trauma the illusion (existing world) patterned into our nervous system and minds. All of this leads towards an expanded state of consciousness and embodiment. There's a greater tuning into our heart.

4. From a place more attuned to our nature, we explore transition steps in creating a world where we can truly thrive. One birthed from a different state of consciousness. This world can be hard to imagine if we are still disembodied and stuck in the limitations of the old world, thus this concept truly requires inner transformation first.

From these ideas grew our company motto: Change Starts Within.

In order for us to truly solve the problems we face as a society, we must work to transform ourselves so we have the resilience and capacity to transform our world.

We are the containers to hold the possibility of a thriving world, and the creativity to materially create that world lies within our DNA and being.

In order to hear it, sense it, feel it, and act from it, we must get back to our natural state, beyond the pain, trauma and dysregulation we individually and collectively carry.

The first step? How can you be more present and in your body today? Here is a guided practice I recorded that you can try.

Finally, yesterday I wrote an expanded piece on the nature of our current moment and the ways in which we can respond. You can read it here.