Hi Friends-
I hope you are staying sane amidst these chaotic winds of change. The pace of flux is making me realize just how much the ritual of writing grounds and anchors me.
The energies of late have felt very "two steps forward, one step back" to me. I make a plan, and then it dissolves in my hands. Are you feeling this, too? As Bayo Akomolafe says, "These times are urgent, let us slow down."
I would prefer to have more clarity, more quickly — but circumstances seem dictate otherwise. So I wrote about that urge this week — the urge for more. More clarity, more speed, more healing, more stuff.
Sending love,
Jocelyn
The Trance of More
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Wherein I talk about the insidious little ways greed shows up; the urge for more healing, more depth, more doing; and how we can't savor the future.
At this point, I think most of us have realized that focusing all of our energy on productivity, on doing, may not actually be healthy. We may even realize that we need to heal from this cultural obsession with productivity. If you're subscribed to this newsletter, you probably do, because you've been on this journey with me for awhile.
But the sleight of hand that the wellness industry has — I think fairly successfully — pulled off is to turn that same impulse that we used to apply to doing (or even over-doing) to healing. It has quietly reeled us into the notion that we can be productive with our healing. So that we will crave more and more and more healing — and keep buying more stuff to fix our broke-ass selves.
So I've been meditating on this urge of late — the hunger for more healing. But also the hunger itself, the hunger for more — more of anything — and how it shows up in all of these weird little ways in my thoughts and in my actions.
The other day, I was listening to an interview with an astrologist whose work I am particularly drawn to, and the conversation was sparking lots of insights and threads that I wanted to pull on and deeper questions to pursue. And I thought: Oh, I really want to get a reading with this person, and I started to go down the path of I wonder how you book a session with this person, and what is the cost, etc.
Then I caught myself and noticed how I was propelling myself into the future to get more of this person's insights and wisdom — before I had even finished consuming the interview that was making me want more! And I thought: Why can't this be enough? Why do you need more beyond this podcast interview, which has already given you so much? Why can't you just rest in, delight in, savor, what is happening right now?
Why was I being so greedy?
Greed sailed into my consciousness for some serious consideration a little under a year ago. I have an oracle deck that is all about "the shadow," where you pull cards for guidance about the shadow energies that you are being called to work with. Part of the reason I bought the deck was because I love the artwork so much — it's hauntingly beautiful.
So last Spring, before I was about to sit in a ceremony to do some healing work, I drew the shadow card for Greed. Unlike most of the other cards in this deck, this one is hideous: It's a horrible little toad-gremlin standing on a pedestal with stacks of gold coins behind them; they're wearing a gold crown on their head with smears of color around their mouth and bloodshot eyes — evidence of over-indulgence. They're tensed up as they clutch their possessions to their chest. In the background, scrawled phrases like my gold, my money, my win, and my world hover. My immediate reaction was wanting to push the card away, to reject it.
I'm also embarrassed to admit that I wasn't sure at first how this shadow card pertained to me. (Guess that confirms it's a shadow, eh? 🙃) I didn't feel like I was a person particularly animated by greed. And if I really dig deep, I can remember that I had pulled this same card maybe a year earlier but, at that time, had just fully discounted it and decided to pull one more card instead of really sitting with what I'd been dealt because I didn't "get it."
(As I write this now, it's like: I am a human who exists in the developed world in the 21st century… of course I am animated, to some degree, by greed! But already knowing the thing isn't a very interesting essay, so back to what I was saying…)
So this time when I pulled the Greed card, I stayed with the discomfort and took the guidance onboard as I headed into this ceremony. But, on the way there, I apparently fell right back into my usual "trance of more" and what did I do when I got there? I told the person leading the ceremony that I thought I could handle "more" medicine this time. 🤦♀️
This idea of being able to "handle more" is a fertile concept, methinks. Particularly because it allows us to ennoble the hunger for more by making it seem like a difficult challenge — or an occasion that one could rise to — rather than a needful craving that should, perhaps, be examined in more detail.
One of my cravings that I'm currently sitting with is my constant desire for more depth. Apparently, I have an innate bias towards the idea that going deeper is better than keeping things light. That if I can "handle" going deeper, that I'll find more healing, more clarity, more… something… that way.
But is that true? Is more depth always better? Not necessarily.
Sometimes you just need to take a load off, sometimes you need to crack a joke, sometimes you need to give the situation room to breathe, sometimes you need a light touch. (Who doesn't like a light touch?)
This investigation of greed also has me taking a deeper (⬅️ help!) look at my craving for doing. Culturally, we experience such a strong bias in favor of doing — and of always doing more. Busy is good, right?
But what if we contemplated our hunger for doing as its own form of greed?
Is doing better than resting? Is doing better than being still? Is doing better than pausing to reflect?
Does the hunger for more take us away from the very places where we might find grace?
The grace of stillness.
The grace of lightness.
The grace of undoing.
We think we are gaining something when we reach out to get "more." But the better question might be: What are we missing out on by always wanting more? And what are we depriving ourselves — or someone else — of in the process?
Because "wanting more" necessarily moves you away from whatever is happening right now, whatever is happening right here. And we can only savor in the present moment.
We can only savor when we are here.
—
But seriously: Let's go into that more deeply 🤡 for a moment.
Tune into some of your best memories — of joy, of delight, of wonder, of love, of savoring.
Were you not fully present in those moments? Were you not, in some sense, carefree? As in free from care? Having — if only briefly — released your usual worries and preoccupations?
Trying to savor the future is a fool's errand. And, believe me, I have been that fool. But as enchanting as our fantasies of what we're gonna do, or who we're gonna meet, or how we're gonna change, can be, they can't be savored, they can't be relished, until we get there.
Trying to savor anything beyond the present moment is nothing more than dust in the mouth.
When we give into the impulse of more, more, more, we deprive ourselves of savoring what is available to us right here, right now.
–
p.s. After writing this essay, I returned to the Wisdom of the Shadow deck and looked at the ritual for the Greed card again. These were the questions for contemplation:
- Where do I feel a sense of scarcity and how do I respond to that?
- What is my relationship with giving (lack, excess, balance)?
- Do I consider the deeper cost of my desires?
LINK ABOUT IT
Comedian Samantha Irby on: How to survive this absurd life.
A wild preview of the future? She fell in love with ChatGPT. Like, actual love. With sex.
This description is surprisingly accurate: "A riveting, one hundred and twenty minute conversation with a man who lifts old stones."
Poet Natalie Diaz reads from Dreams to Postpone the End of the World: "Our collective dream of the world will have to be different."
On the power of holding teeny, tiny babies: When your only job is to cuddle.
Helpful recommendations on: How to alter your news diet to stay informed and sane.
My 2025 anthem: Doechii wrote the anti-anxiety song we need (in 2019). And now it's on Spotify.
I like this concept: On "aftervibes."
✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ |
SHOUT-OUTS:
The artwork is from: Rohan Dahotre, who is based in Pune, India.
Link ideas from: Ancestors to Elements, Kottke, and Jennifer Brown.
You can support me & my work by: Sharing this newsletter with someone, or taking my course, RESET.
Website: jkg.co
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