S1E5 Peace in an Age of Agitation

In the age of agitation, how can we orient? Let's deep dive into the collective mood, soothe our central nervous systems, and find ways to stay centered as we work to embody a better future.

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Transcript

00;00;00;17 - 00;00;28;21
Thomas Whitmire
There is a cry in the world to want to set down the ever increasing amount of agitation that has been building and building.

00;00;28;24 - 00;00;59;27
Thomas Whitmire
I'll start off by reading two poems that I wrote last night that sort of summarize the the themes I'm talking about in this longer episode. One is called Fin-du-siécle, which in my meaning just sort of means end of the cycle or end of an era. There is not much left to see among the orbits of planets or the order of nations.

00;01;00;02 - 00;01;32;12
Thomas Whitmire
No sudden wind to carry on the breeze. The life of songs of ages past waxes and wanes like a distant moon that once illuminated the spaces in between with adequate perfection. Today there is no moon. This is what they never share in school. How history is worn by men in masks who wait and wonder which mask will be removed and which will take its place.

00;01;32;14 - 00;01;42;03
Thomas Whitmire
And we who wander out of time find no mirrors with adequate reflection.

00;01;42;06 - 00;02;21;08
Thomas Whitmire
The second is the great restoration. And you'll hear this theme in the podcast as well. I've seen the way old peaches fall from the tree, tired and runty never pruned. Whose absentee masters never learned the way. Or perhaps they never cared. That abundance does not mean quality. But the birds did not agree. The deer did not agree, and the circle of grass grew green and thicker there than anywhere else.

00;02;21;08 - 00;02;24;29
Thomas Whitmire
I could see.

00;02;25;02 - 00;03;02;18
Thomas Whitmire
I'll take us now into the main recording from yesterday, when I really recognized that I needed to hear something that would provide needed perspective and relief in my heart from everything that's going on.

00;03;02;20 - 00;03;27;12
Thomas Whitmire
There is a cry in the world. There's a cry to find peace. There's a cry to want to set down. The ever increasing amount of agitation.

00;03;27;15 - 00;03;33;11
Thomas Whitmire
That has been building and building.

00;03;33;14 - 00;03;37;18
Thomas Whitmire
When I went grocery shopping yesterday.

00;03;37;20 - 00;04;05;16
Thomas Whitmire
It was completely crowded. But it was as if no one could even look at each other because there was so much anxiety. You could just see it in people's body language, how they were so quickly glancing around and changing their eye focus and fixing where they were looking. And even walking one way, and then suddenly stopping and whirling around and going a different way.

00;04;05;16 - 00;04;10;28
Thomas Whitmire
It was just this anxious scene of.

00;04;11;00 - 00;04;24;02
Thomas Whitmire
People being run up the wall with how they're feeling. And my feeling on the matter.

00;04;24;04 - 00;04;32;13
Thomas Whitmire
Is that we are at the end of an era.

00;04;32;15 - 00;04;45;20
Thomas Whitmire
You can look at it on the outward manifest realm and say, oh, the environment. Ukraine and Russia, the American political civil strife.

00;04;45;22 - 00;05;01;04
Thomas Whitmire
Venezuela, you know, Iran, just name it. And you could say that's contributing. I could say I am social media and the erosion of trust.

00;05;01;06 - 00;05;24;10
Thomas Whitmire
On so many levels, to the extent that a lot of people I know know all they do is stay home and they know their computers aren't going to do it. And it doesn't feel like entertainment's going to do it. And a lot of people are wanting something to get them back out, to get them back, to reconnect.

00;05;24;12 - 00;05;28;01
Thomas Whitmire
To be able to.

00;05;28;03 - 00;05;39;26
Thomas Whitmire
Find something or do something that gives a sense of control or efficacious effectiveness back in their lives.

00;05;39;28 - 00;05;46;04
Thomas Whitmire
And a lot of people are still looking for that. And that's okay.

00;05;46;06 - 00;05;52;21
Thomas Whitmire
But it is important to ask that question.

00;05;52;24 - 00;06;09;19
Thomas Whitmire
But when I say on the outer realms, we just look at contributing factors. But what is usually more compelling to me is looking at the energetic reality of where this is popping up.

00;06;09;21 - 00;06;15;10
Thomas Whitmire
And to anyone with two eyes, you can see things like.

00;06;15;13 - 00;06;41;05
Thomas Whitmire
The exact same story of protesters on the left and people that support government actions on the right. There's elements in both of these people who hold these perspectives that is like the exact same narrative talking about each other. They're there just to create more unrest. They're just trying to provoke.

00;06;41;08 - 00;07;06;16
Thomas Whitmire
And so what I really find is the reality behind that is a shared energy, right? It's that shared energy of just something building some agitation. And this is held in our nervous system, right. Something is just generating this agitation.

00;07;06;19 - 00;07;39;09
Thomas Whitmire
And most of the methods we know to off gas that feeling to to turn it down. What is it my friend would say. He would say down. Regulate your nervous system. Which is precisely what a lot of people are looking for. And so you know that any time stress builds up, there's we seek out different ways of handling it, of coping.

00;07;39;11 - 00;08;01;14
Thomas Whitmire
Trying to be resilient. And if we can't be resilient we try to find ways to deal with it. It could look like sticking your head in the sand. Could look like substances. It could look like getting angry and lashing out. It could look like staying home and not talking to anyone anymore. It could look like trying to organize.

00;08;01;16 - 00;08;08;05
Thomas Whitmire
Maybe some people get into doing exercise.

00;08;08;07 - 00;08;36;11
Thomas Whitmire
Put behind it all is the same energy that we're all in right now. It's a field of that energy. It's just like. What? You know, and it's just there's got to be something I can smash that's going to take it away from me, take it out of me. You know, like when you get if you've ever seen the schoolyard scuffle, you know, it's like there's just too much to contain.

00;08;36;11 - 00;08;51;17
Thomas Whitmire
And then Boys'll scuffle for a while, and then they've kind of worn themselves out, and they move on. You know,

00;08;51;19 - 00;09;03;01
Thomas Whitmire
So there's only so much our nervous system can handle. And the ways we used to deal with it seem to have less and less effect right now.

00;09;03;03 - 00;09;13;14
Thomas Whitmire
Which is why I'm hearing people start to say, like, they don't see any way out of this besides strife or conflict. Basically, bloodshed.

00;09;13;16 - 00;09;16;11
Thomas Whitmire


00;09;16;13 - 00;09;57;21
Thomas Whitmire
One of my teachers had the belief that going too long without war or bloodshed actually cause societies to get into this overly upwardly stimulated mentality, and the the suffering or shedding of blood brings it back down and it brings it back down into the earth, literally. That's why, you know, the Tree of Liberty must be, nourished by the blood of tyrants and patriots.

00;09;57;24 - 00;10;29;11
Thomas Whitmire
That image that that image of blood soaking back into the ground. And it nourishes the roots. As much of an affront that is to my intellectual, esthetic. There's something that's compelling about that image because it feels like it would release something.

00;10;29;13 - 00;11;17;13
Thomas Whitmire
We here in America have been in what I would call an unprecedented long period of time without serious conflict or social unrest or, major changes in living standards. We've all felt that sort of sinking back. But going 80 plus years since World War two, basically, that we've enjoyed this kind of stability and wealth. Relatively speaking. This is not I'm not saying there's not rampant.

00;11;17;16 - 00;11;57;00
Thomas Whitmire
Low standards of living in poverty for being such a wealthy nation. That's not my point. My point is, we've had a sort of balanced, stable, I guess you'd say stratification and stability made that stability is the main point that seems to have run its course. And so we're getting into a period of competing narratives. We're getting into a period of, getting easier to believe the worst about one another.

00;11;57;03 - 00;12;08;17
Thomas Whitmire
And if you look historically, that happens in the lead up to, upheaval.

00;12;08;20 - 00;12;21;04
Thomas Whitmire
So as far as I can tell, we're approaching a period of upheaval like we've not seen, at least in this country in a very long time.

00;12;21;06 - 00;12;38;09
Thomas Whitmire
And to me, on an energetic level, it represents two things. One being there's a building of energy in a certain direction that is wanting to.

00;12;38;12 - 00;13;13;02
Thomas Whitmire
Somehow be released to to go back into the earth, to be grounded. Grounded. That's why we talk about grounding. That's the image of the blood on the roots of the Tree of Liberty. That image, it's grounding. Something. You know, one could argue that's why there was sacrificial culture, may have had some sense of the bizarre need for that.

00;13;13;05 - 00;13;50;24
Thomas Whitmire
So I don't know what the outcome is going to look like, but. What I see more than anything is that agitation, you could call it, supercharge of our nervous system. You might call it cortisol. You might call it too much built up young energy. You might call it upwardly rising. Basically, this part that is anxious, it's agitated, that is building for who knows how many reasons.

00;13;50;27 - 00;13;56;09
Thomas Whitmire
And I would say we've lost a lot of.

00;13;56;11 - 00;14;05;04
Thomas Whitmire
Our ability, our natural, inheritance of how we would ground that.

00;14;05;07 - 00;14;10;13
Thomas Whitmire
But anything that's earthy, watery.

00;14;10;15 - 00;14;34;18
Thomas Whitmire
So when I was at the Whole Foods, the image that popped into my head of the exact 180 degree opposite medicine, that would help this counterbalance with that I was seeing at the at the grocery store, it looked like.

00;14;34;21 - 00;14;56;25
Thomas Whitmire
Going out with your community members and your neighbors and working physically in the land to cultivate and grow your food supply as a collaboration, as a collective effort.

00;14;56;28 - 00;15;28;06
Thomas Whitmire
Getting your hands dirty, sweating and getting tired physically in the whole body. Talking with people who are your neighbors but might have voted for a different person because this effort is actually the medicine and I believe from my experience in the hurricane in North Carolina a year and a half ago.

00;15;28;08 - 00;16;05;17
Thomas Whitmire
Everything got knocked out. No one discussed politics, and everyone was taking care of each other. And that felt like it actually as stressful as it was, as desperate and survival as it became. It also reset that anxious energy because it reestablished social cohesion. It reestablished solidarity. It reestablished, frankly, getting away from our computer screens. It stopped everything and made us find each other again.

00;16;05;20 - 00;16;54;27
Thomas Whitmire
And I don't see how this happens outside of, Earth like endeavors, but that, I mean, not watching things on the screen, not having intellectual conversations. I mean, you know, sports, embodied physical activity, physical work, harvesting, you know, caring, building things, constructive activities that. Don't feed the reinforcement of the energy that has been building and is so uncomfortable at this point.

00;16;55;00 - 00;17;01;03
Thomas Whitmire
We may have to go through collapse.

00;17;01;05 - 00;17;56;29
Thomas Whitmire
There's a pride that can happen that I think is balanced, and there's an unbalanced pride that can happen. And in my view, there's been unearned American pride over the many decades of our, you know, leadership and status on the world stage. But I believe, as with all arcs, this pride has become sort of inflated and unbalanced. And to the extent we've lost sight of the fact that we depend on one another deeply, deeply, deeply that our world community and especially our friends on the world stage, it's easy to say they need us, but we don't see how we need them.

00;17;57;01 - 00;18;06;23
Thomas Whitmire
We want to still cling to feeling special and this desperate thirst to prove something.

00;18;06;25 - 00;18;37;07
Thomas Whitmire
To the extent that's inflated. It's called pride. It needs to get deflated or it'll get punctured and humbled. And you know, every country that's gone through a crazed period has usually had a make this country great again mentality. It just repeats over and over and over again.

00;18;37;10 - 00;18;48;00
Thomas Whitmire
The things that make you great don't come from the belief that you're great. And having to prove that.

00;18;48;02 - 00;19;01;16
Thomas Whitmire
There's a quality of character and moral fiber that looks very Christian. Take care of your neighbors. Take care of your poor.

00;19;01;18 - 00;19;21;12
Thomas Whitmire
So I believe unless we can find a way to. Reconnect with people locally. With grounded endeavors that are before politics.

00;19;21;14 - 00;19;39;09
Thomas Whitmire
Survival things. Group bonding. Those are the things we're craving right now. And we can get them possibly by creating that.

00;19;39;12 - 00;20;32;14
Thomas Whitmire
Or it can be like the hurricane I had in North Carolina, where things are destroyed, at which point we're going to remember and immediately recognize the essential fact of our human ness, which is that we depend on one another. We need one another. We cannot survive without one another. And that collaboration and sharing is infinitely more powerful than isolation and taking and fear.

00;20;32;16 - 00;20;36;07
Thomas Whitmire
So I want to imagine.

00;20;36;09 - 00;21;14;16
Thomas Whitmire
What it would feel like to have that crazed, agitated energy in our bodies be able to just peel off of us, just like escape, as if it comes out the tips of our fingers and it's being siphoned out. That's the word I'm thinking siphoned out of us.

00;21;14;18 - 00;21;24;18
Thomas Whitmire
And it's possible to do that if we take the time to be with it and to visualize and to do exercises.

00;21;24;21 - 00;21;28;02
Thomas Whitmire
It can be helped by.

00;21;28;05 - 00;22;00;07
Thomas Whitmire
Things like team sports. It can be helped by physical exercise or activity. It can be helped by helping others. It can be helped by collaborative community activities that take us out of ourselves, that take us out of our little isolated homes and online echo chambers out into connecting with real, live people like we used to.

00;22;00;10 - 00;22;18;26
Thomas Whitmire
Because that's what we need. We're going to get to off gassing this crazed energy one way or the other. It's going to happen. And.

00;22;18;28 - 00;22;34;29
Thomas Whitmire
I think at this point, likely it's going to involve a lot of suffering and difficult things to see. But it's possible. We can find a different way.

00;22;35;02 - 00;22;42;24
Thomas Whitmire
But regardless, I think it's critical to recognize.

00;22;42;27 - 00;22;47;12
Thomas Whitmire
That what we want.

00;22;47;14 - 00;23;35;05
Thomas Whitmire
On a deep level is a quality in our nervous system that feels soothed, soothed. And this could be different for anyone, but I recommend just sit and brainstorm for a few minutes things that might work for you. So I'll say a few. One I could say reduce coffee. I'll drink tea instead of coffee. I could say take time or pauses during the day just to sort of do that visualization of this stressful gas or energy to come out of my body and just laugh it off.

00;23;35;07 - 00;23;54;17
Thomas Whitmire
You could do breathing exercises just to sort of bring down that mentation, that thinking, bring down that, nervous system activation, bring that down.

00;23;54;19 - 00;24;27;21
Thomas Whitmire
Just remember that we do have some conscious control over that. I could not scroll my screen after 930 at night, or whenever you go to bed, 30 minutes to an hour before bed can make sure to drink enough water. I could consider my nutrition. What am I eating that basically is inflammatory. Could be gluten things. Carbohydrates. Any things that are cooling?

00;24;27;23 - 00;24;39;05
Thomas Whitmire
Few more vegetables. Think of like cucumber. Things that don't provide that extra stimulation. Right.

00;24;39;07 - 00;25;03;08
Thomas Whitmire
I could say, exercise or perhaps yoga. Just some way to get back into my body, stretch it out. Right. So these are all methods we can take, but we really have to take the time to get clear what that would be, what would work for us.

00;25;03;11 - 00;25;20;12
Thomas Whitmire
And, and when we could do it, you know, pick 1 or 2, couple more music. The right kind of music. Candles, incense.

00;25;20;15 - 00;25;31;24
Thomas Whitmire
And I would say all of these can help temporarily, but longer term, we need community solutions.

00;25;31;26 - 00;25;40;18
Thomas Whitmire
And this is a lot of the difficulty I've seen is I don't think beating down.

00;25;40;21 - 00;26;20;27
Thomas Whitmire
People on the street. Is the best way to express this energy. Maybe it's effective. Nor do I think kicking in the windshield of a federal car is the right answer. When do you just add more fuel? Add more fuel? You know. So what we really want is somehow a restoration of social systems that feel like they're taking care of us, and they're stabilizing and they're on balance, good.

00;26;20;29 - 00;27;03;25
Thomas Whitmire
And I think we've felt that this is not happening. So, you know, do you agree with that? If so, what's an answer that's not just burn it down. Maybe that's a role to play. But to me that is incomplete. I feel, you know, you're throwing yourself from the frying pan into the fryer with that mentality. And unless we're talking about wise and upright solutions.

00;27;03;28 - 00;27;33;08
Thomas Whitmire
Then I think we haven't gone far enough. So I think there needs to be a call to two community for people to step up and step into these roles of leadership, be that community or council or neighborhood leadership. And it doesn't have to be political. It can just be looking after one another.

00;27;33;11 - 00;27;54;03
Thomas Whitmire
We very well may be in a end of an era, shifting, wanting to shift into a next era that feels more in alignment with what would reflect and support us moving into the future. Then what does that mean?

00;27;54;06 - 00;28;09;00
Thomas Whitmire
We have to vision and embody and enact who and how we want to be. And this must be relational.

00;28;09;03 - 00;28;50;27
Thomas Whitmire
So that would be my last consideration for today as I'm talking through all this pastiche of, topics. We're in a destabilizing period of life, especially coming out of what we were blessed to have for decades in the US. Relative confidence, relatively clear ways of relating, relatively clear place on the world stage, relatively clear understanding of what to do that would, you know, if you do this and it leads to this?

00;28;51;00 - 00;29;31;21
Thomas Whitmire
So we're in a destabilized time. We don't we're losing our in the psychology sense, it's called schema, which means we're losing our shorthand. Quick automatic knowledge of how to how to really react, how to pivot, what to do in life, how to interpret what's going on. That's all schema. And so if you've ever had a child grow up or an elder decline into dementia, you know that you have a certain lens that you've learned to use when interacting with that person.

00;29;31;24 - 00;30;05;04
Thomas Whitmire
It originally it makes it makes interactions quick, efficient, predictable. But as people are changing quickly, your schema doesn't work. And so there's constant frustration to try to keep up or to try to adapt. And we're wired to gather a lot of data and then generate a schema and then throw out most of the data so that we have a sort of a quick, compressed way of knowing how to act and relate and interact.

00;30;05;06 - 00;30;35;09
Thomas Whitmire
So we're losing that right now, which means, it's stressful. It means we're gathering a lot of data, raw and hyper data gathering mode. And unfortunately, because of the internet, you can always gather more data. There's infinite data you could gather. And also humans or, you know, the prairie dogs looking for information. So we've been stuck with this switch turned on.

00;30;35;09 - 00;30;55;14
Thomas Whitmire
Like gather more data, gather more data, gather more data. Didn't used to be like that. You'd read the newspaper and you're pretty well done. You're caught up. But now you can get all the newspapers from everywhere in the world, all the time, all with different narratives. So there's no end to the data capacity that switch was stuck on.

00;30;55;16 - 00;31;23;14
Thomas Whitmire
And then now with AI and social media, we're realizing that you can't trust the data that we're gathering. And so there's this sort of dead end we've come to that's like, where do I look to gather appropriate data? So that's my one hope right now is that as much as we are having to let go of previous schemas.

00;31;23;16 - 00;31;42;07
Thomas Whitmire
And to the extent we're still grasping for how things used to be, that's going to create suffering. That's attachment. You know, I, I just want that to come back. I just want that to come back. You know, that's gone. My friends like.

00;31;42;09 - 00;31;49;00
Thomas Whitmire
Most of us, I don't think I've ever had to go through such a large.

00;31;49;02 - 00;32;21;10
Thomas Whitmire
Cultural, socio cultural, political sense of that world is gone. Could we restore it? Maybe. That's usually not how it works. Genie's out of the bottle now. You got to work with it. So to the extent we're still grasping at what's come before, that's also going to generate anxiety, insecurity, all this kind of thing. And so all of these factors are contributing to this arising of that agitation.

00;32;21;12 - 00;32;31;12
Thomas Whitmire
And so I would say I'm identifying a few more reasons for that anxiety and agitation. But to the extent we can.

00;32;31;14 - 00;33;07;09
Thomas Whitmire
Mourn. And let go of. That old schema and be with the fact that we don't have a new one to replace it yet. So we're operating in a kind of schema less. There's no superimposed map for how to handle this, for how to handle the world right now. So we're used to having a map either consciously or, you know, automatically.

00;33;07;09 - 00;33;22;15
Thomas Whitmire
Just that's how we work. And we want to gather and generate a new map. But the tools we would use to gather and have that map are not available or not trustable.

00;33;22;17 - 00;33;32;01
Thomas Whitmire
So we're having to let go of this old schema and cast ourselves into this realm, this world of schema lessness.

00;33;32;03 - 00;33;42;23
Thomas Whitmire
And one of the few things I've seen that has given me hope is try to find some local community that still.

00;33;42;26 - 00;33;56;18
Thomas Whitmire
Face to face interaction that is healing, like old technology that's coming back in, is proving very gratifying.

00;33;56;20 - 00;34;38;10
Thomas Whitmire
So all I can say we may be entering a period of great generalized strife for a period of a good period of time. We're not there yet. But regardless, we need to find we are seeking a way to find a new stabilizing schema, and we don't know what it's going to take to get that right. And to the extent that's motivating us, at least let's be conscious of it and then do what we can to regulate our own nervous systems, do what we can to counterbalance that anxious energy.

00;34;38;10 - 00;35;11;22
Thomas Whitmire
So imagine what is the image that pops into your mind that feels like the medicine for that energy. And to me, it's often involves some sort of communing with other people or collaborative, constructive group projects or activities that are grounding, you know, stick your feet in the ground, go walk barefoot. You know, that can help. And then lastly, imagine how and who you want to be in the future.

00;35;11;25 - 00;35;46;22
Thomas Whitmire
What's the world that you want to live in and create out of this? Because there were problems with the old world and they were getting worse and worse. And so as things become less cohered, it's up to us to infuse that space with the mind of the new, of the mind, of the new consciousness that can arise out of that.

00;35;46;24 - 00;36;46;00
Thomas Whitmire
And how to embody and express and enact that quality that we want to bring forward into the new world that I am completely sure will come out of whatever we have to go through next. So it's time to start thinking about that. It's time to get real and serious about that, and to hold that in our hearts and minds, and to be encouraged and to take heart through this, that the world we have felt coming is now able to begin out of soil that is like every turn of the season, getting refreshed and renewed.

00;36;46;03 - 00;37;02;10
Thomas Whitmire
So I hope this helps a little bit, get some perspective, and I hope this you've got some things that has hit home, some things that might help, and all I can say is.

00;37;02;13 - 00;37;43;18
Thomas Whitmire
It's a lot. It's a lot to have to go through to have to deal with. And it's a shock to our systems. It's a shock to how we thought the world operated and how it looked. And this is what that looks like. You know, a lot of people around the world have been through this. It's a peeling off of a whole way of seeing, a whole lens that is getting peeled off and it can be very uncomfortable and very disorienting.

00;37;43;20 - 00;37;52;04
Thomas Whitmire
And it doesn't mean you're crazy. It means we're inexperienced.

00;37;52;06 - 00;37;56;29
Thomas Whitmire
Right.

00;37;57;01 - 00;38;03;22
Thomas Whitmire
And yet we're the creators of what comes next.

00;38;03;24 - 00;38;20;04
Thomas Whitmire
So have some compassion and patience and, do what you can to to give your nervous system that bath and to get it to cool off a little bit. So thank you. God bless God bless everyone.

00;38;20;06 - 00;38;26;28
Thomas Whitmire
We're in the the storm of creation.

00;38;27;00 - 00;38;30;22
Thomas Whitmire
All the best. Peace and much love.