Tips and recipes
The collapse of true wisdom in detached action
We are complex problem solvers when in our wildest state.
We awake knowledge of patterns through rhythm and rhymes, for these, are ancient forms of wisdom storage and expression. Today, our verbal culture classifies written recipes and formulas as immovable, closed, and rigid. To apply them well, we must carefully follow all the steps, even if it does not mean anything to us. Actually, tips should not be taken for rigid norms of what to do, right or wrong, quantifying actions. For knowledge is a living entity and ever-shape-shifting. So, tips and recipes may always be instantly outdated at the moment of being written.
Every person who follows a culinary recipe has mixed results (even the same person using the same formula at different times), despite measuring each ingredient with extreme caution. Even controlling all the elements, fire, pots, pans, cutlery, dishes, airflow, and light in the kitchen, emotions, relations, seasons, ingredients, and storage... I’m tired already...
The dangerous dogma of modernity is of the one true knowledge, one single perspective, one ring to conquer them all, one global mind, or “we are one.” That idea set’s a unidirectional pathway paved with absolutism and surrounded with reductionism.
Suddenly, the context of things is not relevant anymore.
It is urgent to acknowledge that to be objective, one must be considered outside the context of things, apart from the vital flow that sustains everything. To be objective, we must stay away from the natural cycle and contextual emergence, even far from the actual need that originated the necessity for intervention or observation. But we do not live in labs. We dwell in life-contaminated environments, spontaneous, chaotic, and active, where cold and distant objectivity is not possible.
I work with places and people. Both tell stories. Singular and unique stories that weave together life itself. It’s an ancient, ever arising dialogue. Nonetheless, people ask me for tips and recipes for simple things they can change in their domestic space to enhance “harmony.” Whatever that means, harmony, is overwhelmingly individual, arising from the context itself. Of course, I make suggestions, symbolic ones mainly.
But there are no recipes, no general recommendations that always fit everyone everywhere.
Each home is a complex and multilayered ecosystem, meaning that suggestions should always be mindful of the real and concrete context, place, built structure, and singularities of each inhabitant in the observation’s specific moment.
We must stay and observe, to feel all the layers of vibration and meaning that flow through the place. If we dogmatize the response and apply general tips, we become deaf to all the living contextual details. We may only touch upon the surface of what is being shown, neglecting the invisible threads of consciousness all around. The restoration rises from the specific needs, and the root challenges faced by the inhabitants.
Usually, clients or students get frustrated when they feel there are no simple tips to bring peace to their lives. There is a subliminal cultural dangerous absolutism in this kind of thinking, filled with expectations for perfection, having rights for a good life, and a blueprint of rigorous right and wrong answers. But there is no right or wrong. There is only energy. Processes, becomings, and flows. And responsibility in action and co-creation with what is.
It is overwhelmingly simplistic to superficialize someone’s whole life, story, memories, emotions, or ideas. It is dangerously unethical to keep neglecting the place’s appropriate agency and power, the landscape, and the broad ecosystem your home is built upon.
It is a massive humbleness challenge transmuting our perspective so that instead of blindly following black-inked written dogmas, we encompass the real contextual energy all around us. May we grasp the energy flow instead of blindly following the rules! Let’s reclaim our true wisdom in intentional and singular actions, for we are complex problem solvers since ancient times.
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