How do we get something out of nothing?

This is a question many people ask. Seems like an obvious question, right? Religion and science both assume this is a question worth addressing.

But is that the only possible question we could ask? It’s a mindset that assumes we start with nothing and have to struggle for everything we gain. It leads to a consumer culture, where we feel less lack the more we buy.

What if there was another question?

Here’s the question I wonder about: How do we get something out of everything?

In other words, how do we end up with one particular life or one particular set of circumstances when there are so many choices we could make? How do we choose what we feel is best? How do we make value-based decisions, and do those choices end up actually reflecting our values?

What is Wholeness?

Long ago I first discovered holograms in my undergraduate work in physics at UC Berkeley. We actually got to create a hologram, and I was mesmerized. A hologram captures not just one perspective of a visual scene, but every possible perspective. It captures the wholeness of the world.

You can see this property of wholeness in photoediting software too—when you apply a filter to a photo you create changes everywhere in the photo, all at once. You make the whole photo blurry, or pixelated, or sharpened, with a single change in what’s called the “frequency domain.” There’s a wholeness to the image, and a change to one little part affects the whole thing.

It makes me think about how we choose what we see and hear, how we filter out some information in favor of other information, how we carry models which interpret the world for us, and how the meaning of something can change dramatically when we just get one more piece of information. Have you ever been angry at someone for something they did, only to learn a little more about the situation and realize you have respect for their choices? A tiny change in data, a big change in meaning.

Questioning our own framework

The new book, Leap to Wholeness, is an invitation, and sometimes instruction manual, for questioning the question, questioning the framework we live by.

Sometimes the frameworks we carry in our heads impact our ability to have deeper connection. I think many people are re-evaluating the choices they have made and where they are, whether these choices best serve their ultimate interests. I think synchronicity is a very important part of the process of change, a “human technology,” a tool for choosing between paths available to you. I am really curious how the choices we make affect the chances we’re given to grow. “Why am I having this experience, right now?”

I think we’re being called into a quest, one in which we are each leaders, where we express ourselves more vulnerably, where we seek help from each other, where we each see the value in questioning and dismantling our own filters, where we actively move away from fear-based, self-protective decision making and toward liberatory choices.

Leaping to wholeness is about embracing all of who we are, learning to “see the lens” we are seeing through, and seizing the chance we have to build new patterns and help ancient wounds to heal.