1) Wholeness: Dealing with the Unknown
In this series of four articles I am struggling to connect the dots between inner well-being (or lack thereof) and the deeply rooted problems we are wrestling with collectively. Based on a combination of my observations, research I’ve found, and research I’ve done, it is an attempt to bring a sense of order to my own thinking on these issues. I acknowledge its incompleteness, and potential bias and naivete, even as I commit to doing my best to address those issues.
We want to change the world. We have blueprints for external change, but things get stuck in the complexity of just being human. The fundamental issues (climate, racism, inequity...) are not problems to be solved so much as wounds to be healed. We have so much healing to do, as individuals and as a society. None of us escapes trauma. Individuals and groups of people and even societies and nations as a whole harbor inherited trauma, and we add to it everyday.
I think we can look inside ourselves to better understand where we are trying to go and how we might get there. In this series of posts I will explore the central question, “How do we deal with the unknown?” I will treat this as the defining question of our paradigm. How we deal with fear, insecurity, and other emotions determines what we are able to build in life, both individually and collectively.
Coming from an intersection of physical science and ancient and Indigenous sciences, I will consider a fundamental concept called “Wholeness”, which is simply stated as seeing things in their entirety rather than just as a sum of the parts. Can we develop a science of Wholeness? A mindset of Wholeness? A healthcare of Wholeness? An economy of Wholeness? A self-governance in Wholeness?
I’ll focus on what I know: the science, and the mindset. I’ll show evidence that there exists a way of understanding the world through science which emphasizes the connected, the relational, and the whole. I’ll also show that this way of thinking reflects the complexity of who we are as whole human beings.
This is important. When we feel whole, when we embrace all the aspects of ourselves, when we don’t feel defensive or territorial, our manner of being and behavior shifts in an almost imperceptible way toward a self-fulfilling experience of flow. From this stance, applied at the level of mindset which underlies human decision-making, solutions emerge which were inaccessible to us before.
The Path to Wholeness
How do we get to Wholeness?
Uncertainty is an inherent part of being alive, and if we get scared by what we don’t know, it is hard to feel a sense of Wholeness. It can be harder to fight for equity in pay for others if we’re worried about the impact on our own pay. It can be harder to fight for fairer sentencing in criminal justice if we personally feel unsafe when we watch the news.
Through a greater understanding of Wholeness, we can make friends of the unknown and feel less anxiety about the future.
Religions have urged us to turn to divine sources for meaning. Science proposes that there is no inherent meaning to the world, and solves every problem analytically. The word science itself comes from the Latin word scire, “to divide.” Yet my own research indicates that physics displays a fundamental Wholeness, that there are systems that cannot be reduced to a map or to parts, that cannot be divided. This is a key insight that can shift our relationship to the unknown.
Wholeness can be illustrated through the action of digital filters in photography or audio recording. What I am calling Wholeness here is due to the “one-to-all map” known as the Fourier transform. An engineer is able to make precise changes to a part of the frequency spectrum, and generate wide-scale changes “throughout the whole”. This is possible because the engineer understands how to manipulate the holistic, one-to-all nature of this type of data.
We as humans also demonstrate a sense of Wholeness. We cannot know everything there is to know about ourselves directly. Instead, we learn about ourselves through particular experiences. We could say we are whole to the degree that we view ourselves accurately. When hidden biases or beliefs shape our thinking, we become fractured.
The term schema describes our interpretive map of the world. I like to think of schemas as “filters” that we place on top of Wholeness. For instance, sunglasses are filters which show us a dimmed view of the world. We can see only that part of the field of information that our filter allows us to see. Becoming more aware of our filters can fundamentally shift our relationship to uncertainty.
A more speculative notion is that Wholeness leads to a science of meaning. This science of meaning suggests a science of synchronicity, a more subtle understanding of time itself. Many traditions have notions of time that are more nuanced than our Western concept. Rather than treating time as just a number on a clock or a date on a calendar, time is intimately tied with meaning. Meaningful moments—the Greek notion of Kairos—circle back again and again.
If we were to trust that there is meaning to our lives, would we be more able to let new solutions emerge? If we expand our concerns beyond the day to day—feel secure in the moment—would it allow us to think bigger?
Feeling Secure in the Moment
When I was in graduate school, the physics department planned an overnight outing to watch the stars at an observatory. I really wanted to go, but I lived three hours from school and was the parent of a young child, so it just wasn’t going to work. But a couple of days before the excursion, a classmate urged me to consider coming. Only at that moment did I think to actually look at the details. Where was the observatory located? I learned, to my delight, that it was at Sugarloaf State Park, a familiar spot just ten minutes from my house! It was convenient and easy for me.
Then a second obstacle emerged. The following day my daughter was invited to a birthday party early in the morning. But I didn’t panic. Upon investigation, the party was also located at Sugarloaf! It all fell into place.
Our relationship to the unknown can change. When something is unknown, do we shy away or do we persevere? When something unexpected occurs, like an illness or a job loss, the unpredictability of the world doesn’t have to shake our inner well-being. We can retain a sense of Wholeness in the face of challenges. We can feel secure in the moment.
This seems really important to me, because it seems that when we feel whole, we don’t seek to dominate others. When we feel whole, we don’t cause unnecessary pain to others. In a paradigm of Wholeness, differences of opinion or culture do not lead to conflict because we feel secure in the moment. We already see a younger generation of leaders who embrace a greater sense of Wholeness, who are not shaken by the differences between us.
Why is the unknown hard for us? When we lack self-love or self-care, we do not feel secure in the moment. We need things to be predictable in order to feel OK. Maintaining control feels like our very survival, because our inner well-being is threatened. When we have abundant self-love or self-care, we are not attached to things going well. A layer of desperation is removed, and this crucial shift allows us to experience more flow and solve problems in a fundamentally different way.
What is self-love or self-care? Our daily experiences often include internal messages of negative self-image. We might compare ourselves to others who are more beautiful or more successful, for instance, and then feel bad about it. It is hard to feel secure in the moment with this narrative in our head.
By self-care I simply mean the absence of negative messages like this. In the absence of negative identity, a healthy sense of self emerges which is not inflated. This is self-love in a very neutral sense, the foundation of healthy self-confidence and altruism.
Shifting Our Sails
We are sailing a boat. Often we set our sails to catch the winds of self-interest. Our goal is to make sure that we are OK. But a focus on self-interest is really an expression of powerlessness and lack of agency. If we truly feel powerful, what would we be protecting ourselves against?
I think that what we really seek is more agency in our lives, and this can be seen as a quest for Wholeness. Agency helps us feel like our life matters. A quest for Wholeness is a very personal quest. It reflects a desire to embrace all aspects of ourselves, to not feel like part of us is wrong or bad or must be rejected.
I am optimistic that we can chart a new course by letting our sails be pushed by our sense of Wholeness. Even a small shift in the direction of our sails can lead to meaningful change. When we change our momentum, we can let the sails do the work. Every action we take impacts our bearing. Every activity serves either as a retreat toward fracturing or as an advance toward Wholeness. When every action comes from a sense of agency and self-care, we steadily increase the presence of justice, equity, and well-being in our lives.
In the following articles, I will explore the importance of our relationship to the unknown. If we can shift our relationship to the unknown, adjust our grip on life, can we chart a new course? If the current state of things reflects the thinking of the past, what future state is possible if we make the right shift in mindset? This is something each of us can control. Maybe a small shift on the inside can create a significant change in the world around us.