A scary world
Last week, I wrote about the SVB crash and how most Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors got their money blocked. I discussed how consciousness can help us navigate such challenges. I'm glad this issue is resolved...until the next.
The news is full of bad news: the ongoing Ukraine war, an earthquake devastating Turkey and other countries, France protesting and setting fire to public places as the government forces higher retirement ages, and California dealing with floods.
Bad news isn't new
We've survived two World Wars, and the older generations might argue that our current situation isn't worse than what they experienced. The media has dubbed the SVB incident as the first-ever "Twitter-fueled bank run."
What's new is the unprecedented speed at which our world changes.
Trust in Institutions: Who and What Do We Trust?
How can we trust governments that have $31 trillion national debt (and going up – this clock is entertaining… USA) or France ($2.7 trillion), U.K ($2.2 trillion), Germany (2.1 trillion), etc?
How can we trust our bank when a very “trusted” and established bank can disappear and block your accounts in 24h?
Media? In the U.S., only 29% trust media sources (according to Reuters and other sources).
Education systems? Trust varies across different countries, but only about half of the people trust it in the U.S., according to Edelman.
Business? In comparison to the trust in business as a whole, trust in CEOs decreased by 5 points from 2020 to 44%, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer 2021.
So what do people trust? I asked GPT… of course:
"Overall, while there is variation across different countries and contexts, healthcare professionals, non-profit organizations, local government, the scientific community, and religious institutions are some of the institutions that tend to be more widely trusted by people."
Speaking for myself, I trust my family, my friends, my community (which includes my business community), myself, and…the work I am doing in consciousness, my connection to nature.
I also trust some non-profits such as the Ocean Cleanup Project that spoke at the previous PAUA conference:
Trust. Either you have it in total or you don’t have it in total; either it is nil or it is one hundred percent. You cannot divide it into slices. It is indivisibly one, organically one.” - Osho
Trusting Yourself
I had not thought so much about how trusting myself is so important - before my personal consciousness work. I think it's essential to consider trusting ourselves fully and work for it.
Do you trust yourself? I definitely learned to trust myself through the processes I keep writing about: the vision quest, the Sundance, the Amazon forest…
I trust that if the worst happens, I can work my way to protect my family, the ones I love and myself. I have re-read a fourth time Who am I yesterday, it’s becoming a must for me to kill any negative incoming thought, which is what Sri Ramana Maharshi recommends, keep questioning “Who is this thought for?”, “Who am I?” then come back to silence and “source”.
In the previous newsletter, I wrote about Ram Dass's planes of reality and our way of seeing the world. If we see it only from our humanity, the constant suffering of everyone becomes unbearable.
His words are even more important today as panic happens so fast with social media. People spread their own fears and amplify a whole “flock of birds” or people in panic. We do not need to get into it and let it pass, like everything else.
The "New Normal"
Here are great words by Bill Gurley collected by Emily Chang. We need to get used to the "new normal."
This is about technology startups finding it hard to raise funding these days, but it is the same for the world entirely.
I will not be worried. On the contrary, my message here is that no matter what happens, we must trust that something good is happening.
I don't have the solutions, but one is to trust the universe more.
We still don't understand so much about the universe and nature.
We don't understand well how trees communicate, but they do. We don't understand most of how nature works or how a soul becomes a baby.
We don't understand consciousness itself. We wonder if AIs can be conscious, but we don't even agree on how humans are conscious themselves.
From a scientific perspective, consciousness is a highly debated topic, and its precise nature and origin are still not fully understood. Some researchers view consciousness as a product of brain activity, while others believe that it is a fundamental aspect of the universe, beyond the physical realm.
The great mystery is trusting what we don't understand: nature, the universe. Some people call it the Divine or God. I trust the universe without needing a religion or calling it "God." I prefer not to name it.
Why do I trust the universe?
First, because it's easier to go through life by trusting that "everything is perfect," as Ram Dass's Buddhist teacher taught him.
It's easier to live life by acknowledging that I don't understand and will never understand everything.
It's easier for me to believe that whatever I experience is what I'm meant to experience in this life, so my soul progresses until the next incarnation.
Many people thought the world would end for many generations, and it did not happen.
I think we live in fantastic times to be alive and experience what is happening.
I am not pessimistic at all. We will figure it out and our system will evolve. Everything is perfect.
So what do I do now? The same, keep building.
“Chop wood, carry water”
I just keep working and building consciously. I chose to first work on myself to be more conscious because it all starts by consciousness. It’s fantastic that the Ocean Cleanup Project removes our garbage plastic from the ocean but it would be better if humans were more conscious and not threw it there in the first place.
I don't have the keys nor the power to change everything by myself; I can only do it at my own scale and pace.
I chose to build on what I think I do best, organizing PAUA. It is focused on helping those who participate in the community or join our events to become more conscious.
Upcoming PAUA Event in Paris
If you want to join and learn with us, the next PAUA physical event is in Paris May 12-13. The content and the people we will meet should teach us a lot.
This year we are also launching our PAUA Startup awards, a startup competition in the consciousness, AI, Web3 and green categories. We want many startups and investors to join us along with our consciousness speakers. Here is the application form for startups.
Off to the Amazon forest for 12 days!
I’m writing this note in transit from Brasilia :) I go there to reconnect to nature and to the source. AI is fascinating but I always learn so much there, AI doesn’t even come close.
I am not sure about the Internet connection in the Amazon forest as always (and it’s a good thing) but I will try to journal the trip on my daily journal yawa.news where I haven’t written for a while. It is a good occasion to start writing there again more frequently. I will write a summary here as well but I won’t send more than an email or two a week on this newsletter, you can “trust” me on that.
Who and what do you trust? I'm curious. Do you trust yourself? Do you trust the universe?
The Power of Trust: Finding Stability in an Unstable World (off to the Amazon forest)