This article invites readers to explore the profound interplay between personal inner work and the collective challenges of our times. Grounded in the paradoxes of life—accepting mortality while choosing to live fully, surrendering control while embracing creative agency—it looks at how these tensions shape our experiences of the world. Reflecting on the metacrisis of climate change, societal polarization, and personal struggles, Jennifer Harvey Sallin weaves insights from meditation, transpersonal awareness, and quantum metaphors to encourage a deeper understanding of how our inner and outer worlds inform each other. This thought-provoking piece challenges us to reflect on our creative role in an interconnected universe while offering inspiration for navigating complexity and crisis with grace and wisdom.
Living with paradox
Wisdom is the art of learning to live with paradox. We all know we’ll die, yet it is wise to choose to enjoy living. We all know there are a million things which are not under our control, and to which we must surrender (our own death included), yet it is wise to practice and find joy in our creative agency, even in the most restricted and dire of circumstances. We all wish at times we could have more and better than we have, yet it is wise to appreciate what we already have without regret about what we miss.
With the metacrisis all around us – wars and geopolitical crises, the climate and ecological crises, and all kinds of external polarizations and paradoxes – how do we choose to live with wisdom? Some of us live with these paradoxes by denial, domination and furthering the cycle of trauma and chaos in the outer world. Some of us live with these paradoxes by seeking harmony, solutions, and repair in the outer world. Some of us use the tension of these paradoxes to dig deeper into our inner world, to take a journey toward the inner reflection and inner sources and reflections of these polarizations. Many of us use a combination of all of these, in different ways at different times and in varying situations.
‘Out there’ to ‘in here’
I’ve spent well over 10,000 hours in meditation over the last 20 years, and complex outer crisis was certainly a catalyst for me to begin meditating. I arrived at early adulthood with longstanding external conflicts that had no easy, immediate solution (I’ve written and spoken about this in various places, including in other articles on the Rediscovering Yourself blog and the InterGifted blog, as well as on my and other podcasts). My tendency, as is the case with many of us, was to first hope the outer crises would get fixed by others. Eventually, when I realized that often, others weren’t eager, and were sometimes was fully unwilling, to fix the problems they were causing, I changed tactics and tried to fix the outer world myself. It’s even part of why I became a psychologist! But I came to realize pretty quickly that, even as a psychologist, my scope was far more limited in “fixing” the outer world than I had hoped – especially the globalized world that had become a quickly moving force beyond just personal, local issues. I dealt with a lot of disappointment, anger, frustration and burnout in my early adulthood as a result of these two strategies for handling crises.
Finally, the reality set in that I had accept that things were the way they were, at least for the time being. That was not an easy task, and that’s where meditation came in. Making the space to not have to solve anything for the moment, to be with what is however it is, without judgment or fixing, allowed me to go deep within to see how the way it is informs me, and to see how the way I am informs the way it is. While I wanted the problem to be “out there”, it was also “in here”, and how I handled the “in here” part had an important influence on the way I experienced the “out there” part (I’ve written about this in my article, Psychology of Activism: A Mirrored Path of Changemaking).
On a quantum level, it was as though I continued bouncing from particle (“it’s out there and it’s their problem”) to particle (“it’s out there and it’s my job to fix it”), and ultimately was able to ride the quantum wave more sustainably (“how are ‘out there’ and ‘in here’ informing each other, and how am I relating to all of it?”). I had to come to terms with the fact that wisdom isn’t a binary position, or an “everything solved out there” resolution of things: it is the capacity to live consciously and open-heartedly with the ongoing paradoxes of the complexity of life and its dilemmas. It’s not a resignation, but a shift of perspective and a restructuring of engagement: from a predominance of fear, judgment and compulsive fixing to a predisposition toward acceptance, humility and creative empowerment. While the outside details may remain the same, the internal experience of them, and the potential action that arises from that internal experience, show a very different picture.
Privilege & personal breakthroughs
As it relates to the question of the current metacrisis, I’m personally in a fairly privileged position for the moment. I’m in a house that has not yet been affected by climate disruption, in a relatively stable country (Switzerland), with plenty of food on the table and ample access to resources. Were I in a position of immediate personal crisis, I naturally wouldn’t be writing an essay on wisdom, but rather tending to the practical issues of survival.
But as many near death experiences and times of “rock bottom” and other extreme suffering show, and as I have witnessed in my own life, crises can become a moment of profound personal breakthrough toward wisdom. These experiences can bring us past the precipice of denial and the range of things we think we can control, and so give rise to the questions I mentioned at the start of this article about life and death, surrender and creative agency, and desire and appreciation:
The worst just happened: how do I chose life in the face of death? What choices do I make knowing I must surrender control over so much? How do I appreciate what I have when I have lost so much?
And something that can haunt those of us currently in a position of privilege:
How can I surrender control and appreciate what I have, when other people and beings and the earth itself are suffering all around me?
Relative timing
It’s impossible to say when the exact right moment is to explore questions of wisdom in crisis. It would be cruel to give our friends – or ourselves – some kind of oversimplified “wisdom formula” as a solution when they or we are in crisis and struggling: to “just appreciate what you have” or to “just accept things the way they are”. But we can in any moment hold the possibility open that wisdom and transformation may start to shine themselves through the cracks created by the crises we find ourselves in. It’s more of a question of when we, or our higher self, feel able or ready to dive deeper into the quantum wave possibilities, and feel somehow able to soften or even let go of fixed and polarized positions: I don’t want to die; the world should be different than it is; I want to have control; I need more. In other words, quantum wisdom has its own relative timing, and it’s more about remaining open its possibility, rather than trying to force its breakthroughs.
Quantum consciousness wave possibilities act less like teachers who know all the answers and more like good therapists who know how to ask meaningful and sincere questions in complex situations:
Knowing and accepting you’ll die, how do you want to live? Knowing you don’t have control over everything, how do you want to use your creative agency? Knowing you desire more, how do you want to feel and express appreciation for what you already have?
Collective polarizations
As it relates to the climate and ecological crisis, amongst other world issues, all this has been particularly helpful to me in dealing with my own inner polarizations and tensions related to my own “collapsed” ideas about justice and fairness, desire and helplessness. Being a contemplative climate and ecological activist in these arenas over the past five+ years has helped me to see the limits of my control, accept my mortality on a more fundamental level, grieve dreams that didn’t come true, and accept the interplay of my inner world with the outer world. This has shifted my attention away from rage and fear toward appreciation and agency, along with a healthy dose of acceptance.
In particular, the metacrisis has required me to face intergenerational and collective legacies within me: the “presets” of my worldview and view of self-in-world, as it relates to the human species, the earth as a being, and the history of life as we know it. This work has taken me back to the transpersonal space, which if you’re not familiar with this term, describes states or areas of consciousness beyond the limits of personal identity. Transpersonally, how I approach my connection to the world shifts how I answer the questions of my own “inner quantum therapist”. In a sense, I’m cultivating wisdom that responds not only to my own life/death, surrender/creative agency, desire/appreciation polarizations, but also to the collective life/death, surrender/creative agency and desire/appreciation polarizations.
Quantum spirals
On the collective level, my own “inner quantum therapist” has asked me:
Knowing and accepting you and everyone around you will die, how do you want to live as a interconnected being in the present?
Knowing you don’t have control over everything and neither does anyone else, how do you want to use your creative agency and influence/inspire others in their use of their own creative agency?
Knowing you desire more for yourself and for other people, beings and the earth, how do you want to feel and express appreciation for what you have and who and what you all are today?
As we know, though it can feel so impossible in a huge world of 8 billion people and countless other creatures and lifeforms, every part of the field of being affects the whole field of being. So, as discussed above, while it can’t be my intention to change the field single-handedly – not a wise position, because it’s not realistic – I cannot not change the field somehow, since I am part of it. So my wisdom lies in the responsibility I have toward the degree of field influence I hold by how I am being.
I’m speaking in circles here, of course. All this is spiral work, quantum work. None of it can be pinned down to one thing, one answer – not for now, not for later, and not for everyone. However we look at these fundamental questions of participation in life, whatever angle or degree we view them from, they change form and shape and color and dimension. Our life, like the universe, is alive in the quantum sense. There’s no amount of polarization that will actually pin down one answer for all time. That’s the paradox we live with every day, in ourselves, in the metacrisis of the world, and in the relationship between the two.
Ask yourself
So, I’m curious, if you’re at a place in your life where you or your higher self are in the mood or the position to play inner quantum therapist, how are you answering these quantum wisdom questions:
Knowing and accepting you’ll die, how do you want to live?
Knowing you don’t have control over everything, how do you want to use your creative agency?
Knowing you desire more, how do you want to feel and express appreciation for what you already have?
And how does that shift your sense of personal and transpersonal participation in our collective moment?
Keep Exploring
Many times our answers point us to the need for here-and-now physical support that helps us to ask these questions and access their answers in a more empowered and grounded way. As I mentioned above, in my own case, I have needed to face intergenerational and collective legacies in order to be able to ask and answer these questions without being triggered into polarization. I’ve needed a significant amount of support for this, which I have found in therapy, reading, peer connection and mentoring.
Here are some resources that have helped and inspired me along the way, and may inspire you too:
The work of David R. Hawkins (i.e. Power vs. Force: Then Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior)
The work of Paul Levy, especially The Quantum Revelation: A Radical Synthesis of Science and Spirituality
The Work of Karen O’Brien, especially You Matter More Than You Think: Quantum Social Change for a Thriving World (check out her Quantum Social Change Substack too)
The work of Amrit Goswami (i.e. Quantum Creativity: Think Quantum, Be Creative)
The work of Dan Siegel, especially Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human
The work of Thomas Hübl, especially Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds
The work of Stuart A. Kauffman, especially Humanity in a Creative Universe
The work of Christopher M. Bache, especially Dark Night, Early Dawn: Steps to a Deep Ecology of Mind
cover photo thanks to PatoLenin via Pixabay
