Last Updated on December 30, 2024

Navigating the Unknowable

Last night I successfully met a new goal of mine:

I was in bed by 9:30 PM.

At 2:30 AM, I woke up from a deep slumber.

In my sleepy trance-like haze, I got up to pee.

When I got back into bed, suddenly my chest and belly filled with fear.

My mind raced with “What if…?” questions about the future.

You see, I’m in a transition in my life.

And I don’t know what comes next.

If it’s one thing the brain doesn’t like, it’s mystery.

The liminal space

In high school, I had an English teacher who always talked about “the liminal space.”

I couldn’t understand what he meant by that at first.

That’s because “liminal” refers to the in-betweens, the transitions, the ambiguous times when one thing is changing into another.

Is the liminal even a thing?

It appears to be a non-thing, the space between things.

On the internet, there are pictures of “liminal spaces,” often creepy indoor places like empty hotel hallways or other places you don’t visit intentionally.

 

Airports and train stations are classic liminal spaces.

The airport isn’t your destination, it’s just an in-between place.

Yet it also has a physical location, and events that happen there.

And not to get too philosophical, but isn’t all of life an in-between place?

Is life not just a placeholder between birth and death, constantly in transition from one thing to the next?

Trance too is a liminal space.

It’s neither sleep nor the waking state.

This is probably why trance is a good state for making changes.

For it is already quite mysterious.

This week between Christmas and New Year’s is also a deeply liminal space.

Often people don’t know what to do with themselves this time of year!

And my very existence is liminal, as a non-binary human who lives beyond the categories of “man” and “woman.”

Perhaps the mysterious in-between is where the magic lies.

Entering into the mystery

I lived with non-stop anxiety for 25 years.

At points in my life it was so bad I went mute 99% of the time, totally frozen in fear.

Then I resolved it so deeply I went a good 15 years or so with almost no anxiety at all.

Now I have it again.

But I don’t think I’ve backslid, not at all.

If anything, feeling anxious now is a sign of growth.

I don’t get nervous about public speaking.

I don’t get socially anxious around people.

My fear now is about the new mysterious future I am living into.

I’m feeling the call to play a much, much bigger game.

A change-the-world level game.

And some days it scares the shit out of me!

But luckily, I know exactly how to transform anxiety completely.

I did it once, and I will do it again.

It’s inevitable!

Courageous insomnia

So there I was, lying in bed, full of fear at 2:35 AM.

The first thing I did was get very serious.

Inside my mind, with a confident tone of voice, I said to the fear,

“I’m not afraid of you.”

Bring it on, beaotch! Is that all you got?

I’ve seen much, much worse.

I know no thought or feeling can harm me, no matter how painful or intense.

And it was intense.

The next thing I did was remember something Connirae Andreas teaches people to say when they have insomnia:

“I don’t need sleep, just rest.”

Then I remembered what meditation teacher S.N. Goenka advised for insomnia:

Just do the Vipassana body scan meditation technique, and you’ll be fine.

So I did that for an hour or so before the anxiety moved from my chest into my belly.

And then my belly “digested” all that energy.

Finally, I was at peace.

I declared victory and fell asleep.

Anxiety and the future of humanity

I think I know why I woke up with so much anxiety in the night.

Yesterday I had a powerful vision.

The next 30 years for humanity are a liminal space.

Climate scientists say that if we keep doing what we’re doing, the global climate is heading for disaster by 2050, let alone 2100.

Artificial Intelligence is completely reshaping society at a rapid pace, and we’re only at the beginning stages of it.

Robotics, biotechnology, nanotechnology, quantum computing, nuclear fusion, materials science, and so much more is advancing at what seems like exponential speeds.

Because of all this, younger generations are absolutely wrecked with anxiety.

We don’t know if humanity will make it 30, 50, 100 years from now.

If we do make it, the only thing that is for certain is that things will be radically different.

How can we navigate this extreme level of uncertainty and still focus on practical goals like making money and having a career?

It’s mind-boggling to say the least.

The Fearless Ones

Enter my vision.

It was straight out of a science fiction novel.

I imagined a group of people dedicated to transforming fear, completely.

Like I did in my early 30s, and like I’m going to do again.

A name came to me: The Fearless Ones.

Their role in society is to keep us from going off the rails.

Humans make bad decisions when we’re stressed.

And our power to design the world is becoming infinitely greater with each new technological leap forward.

If we can become fearless, we could apply design principles (like the ones in my forthcoming book) to make the world a paradise.

Or, we could completely fuck it up and destroy everything.

It’s really up to us, The Fearless Ones, to lead the way.

We can design a world based on Love instead of Fear.

In this way, “inner work” is intimately connected with the survival of our species.

It’s more important than ever that we see positive possibilities for the future of humanity and life on Earth.

Because it’s becoming easier and easier to make our visions a reality.

Here’s to fearlessness in 2025!

Take care,

 

 

 

~Duff
(they/them)

P.S. If you want to become one of The Fearless Ones, I recommend getting a free 30-minute consultation so we can discuss what options might be right for you.