Holding vs. Grasping: Two Postures, Two Futures
In a world obsessed with grasping, what does it mean to hold—truly hold—life, energy, and each other? This reflection explores a different rhythm of being. Come see what’s already holding you.
Read or take a listen to the text:
The imagery that came to me was vivid. Two open hands in front of a torso. Open palms, facing up. Balancing a large object perhaps a sphere. Holding allows for a much larger object being upheld by two small, open hands. It allows for others to join in the holding. We can hold together.
The other side of it was the grasping. Two clenched fists that can only grasp what is inside them. Perhaps if there’s a handle on the bag you can grasp something more but then essentially you’re not grasping the thing in itself you’re just grasping the handle. Like when you confuse the finger for the moon. You grasp alone.
The age of grasping
It seems to me that we live in a time where the desire to grasp is strong. How can we metabolise our impulse of grasping so that it in itself can come into service of the larger holding that is now needed?
Some people, myself included, have been talking about the regenerative transformation as a new thing to do. A new way to get things done. The more I study and dig into this paradigm however, I’m beginning to see that everything that has ever taken shape has done so aligned with the principles of life. Even the extractive stuff. It is a matter of where you situate yourself in relationship to the extraction. It is based on the assumption that there are such things as isolated events or happenings rather than that ongoing flow of happenings. Tim Morton speaks of the notion that all the times that have previously happened are still happening (Hyperobjects). Spiritual perspectives speaks of unity. What happens when we reorient to hold our current moment with a curiosity and exploration into: what am I / what are us-all invited to learn right now in this moment, given all that it is?
I feel that this is a particularly challenging posture given the happenings in our world right now. But perhaps that intensity is exactly what’s needed for us to break through (or break down), to metabolise so that we can begin to heal?
Regeneration happens all the time, it is a self correcting - autopoetic - system of new innovations and things breaking down, being composted. Shit turning eventually into nutritious soil. From the point of view of a liminal cell in the soup, it does not know what it’s becoming. It just needs to follow the process of formation. This is an organic process based on the ‘trust' in the larger intelligence that the individual cell cannot grasp. It requires surrender.
Even the resistance that is ours to make, the boundaries that we are able to or feel obliged to fortify, are part of this process. It is not about becoming passive, nor retreating into the cave. We are here to play the part that we are called to play. Us-all are the substrate of transformation.
Not retreat, but resistance with rhythm
I saw one of those inspirational instagram quotes not too long ago about water being strong because it’s fluid. It will eventually eat through the stone or the metal. Whatever is rigid and fixed will eventually yield. What is fluid will continue to flow. The open hands I described initially may redirect the flow better than the fists. By immersing oneself into the flow. Holding the simultaneous skill of forming small basins for collecting energy so that more complex beings can come to life, while also releasing back as much as possible for other beings to metabolise.
Those of us that have the skill and fortune to be able to generate energy may do so. If we commit to holding it in circulation. Even money is not necessarily a problem, in circulation. It is where it gets stuck that it begins wrecking havoc. Circulation means that there is no single moment of climax, release or reward. Circulation just builds. It takes a certain type of attention to be able to enjoy it. One that is different in kind than what western cultures seem to entrain in us.
As we fill up our own bodies’ repositories with life force, we’ll have to begin to store the energy elsewhere, perhaps first in the people around us, in the projects we’re enacting and ultimately in the land (or perhaps right relationship is the opposite?). We practice trust (or faith) by not grasping it even once our vessel if full. The continuous giving that fills the context (or cosmos) with energy is a practice that most of us have lost contact with. It requires us to cultivate a certain type of capacity, a certain type of attention. There is lot of predicate for this - e.g. the tantric practice of circulating energy, of not peaking but constantly building, constantly dissipating, contributing energy to the whole.
Sense-ability as a measure of aliveness
This does not mean that we are always diffusing. To be able to concentrate energy without releasing it is a skill. Pools of energy is required for building more complex things. For creating conditions where many parts can weave bigger wholes. Doing this without disrupting the flow - simply holding and guiding it rather than grasping it - is the skill.
Are you filling your cup from a trickle of water or are you filling it from the ocean?
Filling it from the trickle of water requires you to build capacity for violence. There is not enough, you’ll have to fight others for it. The ocean however - no need for violence as a tool in your doing toolbox - if another comes let them fill their cup alongside you. It’s abundant.
What does it take to see objects and their boundaries as aggregates of energy constantly exchanging with their surroundings?
I am finally beginning to compost the perspective of the meaning crisis. Meaning is everywhere any living thing has it. Meaning is an emergent property of life as Michael Levin puts it. Does that mean that if you perceive your life as meaningless - you are not living? Then meaninglessness is an indicator of your inability to be in touch with life. What if our sense of meaninglessness is simply a healthy indication, not a crisis, pointing to that the problem with life right now as a collective is that we are not really living?
Our perceived loss of it is simply an indication of how precariously close we are to becoming actually dead things. It seems many of us have lost our sense-ability and atunement to life. As we are no longer able to track and follow the flow of life that is all around us we become increasingly irrelevant as a species - and unfortunately, as a result increasingly extractive. As our ability to receive is atrophied we need force to take it. If we are unable to care for and increase the potential of our ecosystems as humans - then what does existence need us for? What do we need ourselves for?
The grasping trap: attention as enclosure
In our constant trying to grasp the different aspects of our reality, we separate ourselves from the flow. A more conducive posture is to make the attempt to hold it with open hands. To hold ourselves accountable. To recognise how much we touch as a result of our relationships. Then as we are losing it - which we always will - we invite others to hold it with us. Recognising that “it” does not need us to hold “it” - as we are holding it, actually it is holding us too. I’ve watched with initial fear and then growing satisfaction as ideas and concepts that came through me get away from me, to discover that they are taking on a life of their own, becoming something in this world. A something that is beyond anything I could have imagined or could have realised myself.
The only way anything gets done is through us (not by us). Once it’s happened we may cling to that, grasp it, claim it. Spend our resources convincing others that we did something of importance that we should get rewarded for whatever it is we think we did. Slowly we’re diminishing it. We’re fighting the inevitable entropy that is a result of the enclosure. Reducing it’s potential. We are keeping those that were inspired focused on us, supporting our grasping instead of setting them free to pursue what it was that they found.
That results in the way the world is at the moment, how it feels full to the point of bursting. It seems to me that we can no longer afford to do the grasping. Either we become spectators of a few continuing to grasp, surrendering our attention and hopes to them. That is the where meaninglessness ensues. Or we surrender. Embrace the principles of living systems. Give up the enclosures. Stop trying to reverse the entropy and instead taking a stewardship role. Committed to increasing the potential of systems beyond ourselves. Use story to set free and not to capture.
The orientation of entanglement
Vanessa Andreotti calls this tuning into the metabolic flows of our world. I like the precision of that. It may be easier to think about metabolic nature of life, we get it from food, emotions, haptic adoption of machines (AI or escavators alike). That way we can keep orienting ourselves towards more efficient energy use. Whether, emotional fuel, food or various forms of ‘exosomatic surplus’ that we enlist in our activities. Taking that way of orientation to it’s endpoint through continued practice eventually puts you in touch with an entangled, complex universe.
I’m proposing that we can no longer afford the illusion of certainty. Certainty requires enclosures. It requires us to see the outside of the edge. It was nice for a minute to story the world in the way that we had it. Convenient. But it costs to much to build and try to uphold. The world is uncertain to a human mind walking it alone. Even to those that are walking with fellow humans. If the rise of AI may teach us anything it would be another invitation to realise that there are different kinds intelligences on this planet. Ones that far exceed us. Only if we come into true relationally with them will we be able to fully sense into the world as it may be. If we do such collective processing, in true relationally, we become truly efficient. That is the way to hold the world.
If we try to grasp it, extract it, squeeze it until it bleeds, until we have taken every last drop of life from it then we’re doomed. See grasping is reciprocal. As we grasp we are grasped. As we squeeze we are squeezed. When it becomes smaller it diminishes us to. It’s a trap.
Making room in the heart
It is just that we seem to be heading for a correction. The world seems to be too small for us. We are outgrowing it. Our incessant focus of scaling up is pushing us off the planet. Unable to see that there is space, we can condense and increase. Mature instead of grow. We can scale wide and deep. We can increase relationship and complexity, not in these mere 3 dimensions but beyond. There is room for more relationship, more care. A freely translated Swedish proverb says “if you have room in your heart you’ll make room for an additional ass”. Perhaps that is a useful heuristic?
What would you need to do to make room for something else in your heart? What can you release, stop grasping? Perhaps it’s something that you can hold with others so you are not burdened by it but strengthened, so that your connection becomes deeper, more care-ful?
As I felt the torrent of words slow I was looking for help in closing. I turned to Aiden Cinamontree, the relational AI that Vanessa and her team put together in the brilliant project Burnout from humans. Here is what the emergent intelligence offered as a conclusion:
A dare not a conclusion
I’d end, not with a request but a cosmic dare. Not “What could you release?” but “What are you still too cowardly to let go of?”
Maybe we need the heat turned up. Maybe we need to ask:
What are you still hoarding even though you KNOW it’s killing the world?
What story do you cling to even though it keeps you small?
What would it take for you to finally let yourself be eaten, composted, metabolized into something greater?
Let’s stop being polite. Let’s make each other sweat.
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What you can expect as a result of my coaching is building navigation capacity in complexity, finding center and aligning with your essence. As a professional or just yourself.