First of all, thank you to you all for sticking up with me this year despite my sporadic posting. It seems this year has been for me a year of integration and dealing with a house move in May-June, work trips and a well anticipated vacation in August to ground myself and contemplate.
While I have considered posting something, or anything at all, I also felt that doing so out of obligation to please the algorithm instead of something that came from the bottom of my heart would be proving myself guilty of vanity and desperation rather than honoring the slow brew that is to work with my intuition and mystery. I also anticipated that silence is perhaps better in a spirit of humility and respecting everyone’s time. A craft has its natural ups and downs, curves. This should not be a race. And for me, now it feels right to write again.
The irony is such that this is now the second attempt at this essay as somehow the posting options have changed since last time I wrote and it seems that while attempting to perform some further edits I managed to delete the whole essay… Therefore after some frustration and anger, I am now showing up again trying to reconstruct what I thought was a fine essay. The ideas are the same, just the sentences differ.
Stay tuned in the coming weeks for a multi part storytelling series of posts inspired by Martin Shaw. More people deserve to hear this one and heal from it.
Also, in order to not completely fall out of a good habit, I have joined this in September a workshop in London called TreeVerse, where you get to explore movements in, near and away from trees. Inspired by dance, climbing and parkour and led in a majestic fashion by Ben Medder, Charlie and Opal from Roots of Play. I now feel recharged and got lots of insights out of it that I am planing to share with you in an upcoming post.
Without further ado, let’s see and hear what has been brewing for me recently.
Everything in moderation!
Or so they say.
Often when we hear that phrase, it is often implied that it’s OK to not follow strict conventions too closely. Or perhaps it may also be a call to slow down. They might have pointed out that what they are witnessing seems out of character or not coherent with what is considered healthy or normal in the culture we are currently living in. It may convey a tint of compassion or on the contrary an urge to restrain from an activity that has chances of leading us to a slippery slope to nowhere good.
The root of the word moderation comes from proto-indo-european “med”; which is also the root for other wise words such as measure, meditation, medicine and many more. It’s fairly true to its roots because it still honors the fact that some degree of skill is required to be precise for a given person or situation. It thrives for finding the right dosage or balance and we can understand that it is a slow process. Getting the right balance takes time. It should never be rushed. In a sense, it’s a Yin type of skill, and for sure an art.
Sometimes that expression is not charged with much wisdom nor compassion, but perhaps may be tainted by a certain righteousness. You probably don’t want someone calling you out with a sense of moral superiority on what you should or should not be doing. Maybe there is some guilt being cast upon you, that might even turn into shame within you. A call for conformism is being made or even some authoritarian ideology could be heard in between the lines. And who knows, maybe their shadow is secretly envious of your actions and shows up this way. In this case, not really helpful to be called to moderation.
Maybe what is being invoked is a call to discipline. In which case, a long term aspiration is under threat and a reminder of what is the greater good gets invoked. In roman times, a discipuli was a student. But rather than being punished for not following every instructions given by an authority, you would hope that the student would get obsessed and absorbed of their own will to follow the master. And become a true … disciple!
Moderation is also a companion from temperance. While the latter seems to fully welcome challenges, explorations, the unconventional in the right doses and context to stay in balance, the former feels to me more open and unstructured. The challenge, or exploration was not necessarily planed but it’s tolerated so long we do not indulge in it at full speed and for too long.
Being moderate can also have a weak connotation. A moderate political party is often presented as a counter point to a radical one. At the risk of not questioning much the status quo and numbing a debate.
The virtuous individual who claims to be coming from a place of knowing and experience, will on the other hand state that one needs contrast and a dialectic in order to live a good life. They are aware that adhering too closely to a strict routine may brings forth a relentless demon lurking in the shadows. In the best case, you are seen as a Saint from which people will have high difficulties following your examples because Saints are not only rare, but also not fun to be around because it seems that navigating temptations for them appears easy. As Carl Jung said :
“I’d would rather be whole than holy”.
While the vast majority of us would be chewed up by the excesses, and had our adventures turned into dramas, we should be grateful for a strong community or/and an ecology of virtuous practices… or a top notch guardian angel…
The wise preaching for moderation is trusting that elders will be around to be there for you and that the protocol or setting is safe enough for you to challenge or indulge in a a safe space and reap all the benefits. A trivial example that illustrate this view would be Carnival. A celebration of all excess and controlled chaos for everyone in for a limited time in order to allow all demons and shadows to be brought forward. It allows the long benefits of conformity and compliance during the coming fasting period until Easter and even beyond. A way to cope better with the dark and cold times of winter so the last streak of discipline til spring can be honored. A way to blow off steam. Another example, would be good shaman or a trip-sitter helping your during a psychedelic trip. As the experience can be so intense that our emotional state make us vulnerable and required a good landing and integration counseling from someone trustworthy and competent in that matter. Which arguably is perhaps way more important than the type of medicine one is taking. And that’s why urging all of us to try mushrooms or ayuahasca and co is likely foolish if people are left to integrate the insights alone.
But is it possible to exemplify moderation without failing first? Do we have to risk our health semi-regularly as a young adult to be finally knowing our healthy limits when we become a mature adult? Is this all what being young and free is all about? Being foolish enough now to enjoy taking risks while the body can recover faster?
I feel a pinch in my heart on how much precious life of a young soul is. And I cannot understand why abandoning kids to their own fate should be considered normal. According to Cognitive Scientist John Vervaeke, teenagers are often in search or testing their limits in order to summon their courage and learning how to be the highest version of themselves in this world1. A rite of passage is often set in place in many indigenous cultures where the innocence has to die and bring forth the warrior. A challenge has to be presented to be in touch with grief. The stakes have to be serious enough to bring a focus flow state unto the individual and help them rise above themselves. Removing risks, and being too comfortable on the other hand summons demons in all of us making us feel anxious and unable to be courageous when the situation calls for it. Therefore the rite of passage, or ritual in general should be brought back, because leaving teenagers to other irresponsible teenagers will not likely help our kids to find themselves. And we need elders that initiate us, who mean the best for us and help us embody wisdom. An elder, may not be necessary old, but should be someone who holds wisdom as a core value and is highly attuned to what needs to happen without Ego.
Is following a strict and trustworthy protocol the same thing as being simply led by an elder? This question feels like when the protocol or ritual is not clear, honest, open to the adventurer it could easily be weaponized the way early fascists have hi-jacked valid rite of passages and moments of joy and ecstasy into an implicit contract to serve an obey a (cult) leader.
How do we navigate being at the edge of the Mystery calling us or the Trickster challenging us? Is it possible to embody healthy moderation on a brand new challenging experience?
The setting, the ritual or sticking to a protocol should be the frame that helps us explore, enjoy, get insights, learn and grow. An option to walk away should be available until the last moment. Support instead of peer pressure. A guide or a true friend instead of a authoritarian entity. And elder rather than a cult leader. This is what would allow an innocent soul to embody moderation when confronted with a brand new challenge. Making sure the latter remains an adventure, a rite of passage, and does not turn into a drama.
I now imagine how I would have loved to have during my young adult years all of the above when I got introduced to alcohol or party drugs. I am mostly grateful to my guardian angel that nothing too bad happened to me and was able to integrate those lessons without getting lost into addictions.
In retrospective I wish I had seen at least once an elder, or someone I would look up to, being able to explore what is to be human outside of the 9-to-5 daily grind and be a true friend setting up some healthy boundaries to have fun and not get smashed. I wished my older wiser self would have whispered something like: “staying up late beyond one or two am rarely leads to anything good.”
Or maybe it has been there all along, I am currently revisiting my understanding of how I time and space operate…
But if there was ever a time where the mystery was calling to stay up that late, they would have been around making sure I remained safe or helped me making sense of my needs and what is happening to me. A friend that would have helped me treat new experiences like a passionate sommelier tastes wine. Or the way I now dig into a song that moves me deeply. Being able to sense what I feel, and think. Summoning what those sensations remind me of and how they are similar and yet different. To be able to put words into what hits my consciousness and help me go deep. Linger on how confusing I might be about something that I pick up. Later to find how the confusion may fade as an intuition comes up and helps me make sense of it some time after and feel gratitude for the experience and fills me up with wonder. To treat confusion as something healthy for growth instead of something to be afraid of.
I am advocating for moderation as a toolkit for a thoughtful and sensuous exploration of being human. Not as a tool for feeling superior, or to relay the conformism we have been under. A tool to explore anything the Mystery has to offer and to help us be in touch with our bodies and our intuition to navigate it all. A tool to reconnect with our authenticity.
If the Mystery wishes us to step into something so foreign and risky, then it should never be at the expense of our sovereignty. And therefore it should never be pressure to go all-in on the first time. If time is in a sense ‘infinite’ from a divine perspective, there should be no rush for us to have that experience early or late in our life… or at all.2
If we believe on the power of the Pareto principle, and understand the nature of combinatorial explosion of reality, one can have enough useful insights that one can dig deep for a life time out of the first exposure to that adventure. Where 80% of the benefits come from the 20% of the effort in. Yet everything around us, insists on high dosage, at high speeds, with more people to be on the edge. A virtuous version of moderation for conscious exploration of life resembles more like Tantra, to advance deep and slow and with compassion. Moderation should be a plea for growth, neither for escapism, nor foolishness.
Now what if moderation was used outside exceptional challenges, rituals, rites or passages or adventures? What if we used the moderation tool kit to navigate the mundane of being alive and rediscover how the ordinary can also be extraordinary? Or moderation as a tool for deep and slow exploration over a really long life span. Or as my friend Nathan puts it:
Moderation is the forceful meeting of oneself with triviality.
To go further I recommend the following two resources that explore the topic in very concrete ways and clear suggestions.
First is Ari in the air talking at the Stoa on his how he designs the sweet spot for exploring his edge as a professional extreme sports athlete.
The second is Jamie Wheal’s book Recapture the Rapture where he explains how after studying good activities that afford us healthy flow states (i.e psychedelics, breath work, extreme sports, BDSM, yoga, etc.) his team came to the conclusion that using a hedonistic calendar is likely the way to go. Which means you can pick any of those activities and have a very mild version of them on a daily basis, and have a higher dose of on a weekly or monthly basis and a significant an powerful one once a year. Mix and match as you see fit. The idea is that we build the safety net and most of the work during the mild daily practice which in turn prepares us for the stronger versions of them later in the year.
Both Stephen Jenkinson in his book Die Wise and Gabor Mate and Gordon Neufeld in Hold on to your kids also state the tragedy of loosing elders in our communities and the longing for teenagers to test themselves to be ready for life. When those rite of passages fail to present themselves, boys will likely form gangs in extreme cases. Or may grow up as an insecure adult, stuck in a Peter Pan syndrome.
The image of Prometheus comes to mind where despite being officially a titan, he saw that Saturn was taking himself far too seriously and the time of the Gods was imminent, and therefore joined forces with Zeus. But even then, many years later when Zeus was behaving also in tyrant like, was totally willing to re-balance the power between men and the gods by stealing the fire for them. He valued the capacity for growth of humans, over the blind reverence to imperfect gods. His punishment for that was to get tied up to a rock and get his liver eaten every day , all day long by an eagle. Many years later, during the epoch of heroes, Hercules came to set him free. So kind of a happy ending for honoring his authenticity and be willing to challenge the gods.
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