As you can probably tell from many of my recent blogs—artificial intelligence has been occupying a lot of space in my head lately. I think this is mainly because I, intuitively, feel how important this moment is for humanity to get right.
The tsunami of change the AI Era will bring is unlike any other time in recorded history. Nothing even comes close. These next couple of years will be such a fork-in-the-road. A very small percentage of biased humans are working on something that will determine what life will be like for billions of us in the centuries to come. This can make it feel like our future is solely in the hands of a few tech billionaires, and completely beyond our control. As AI capabilities ramp up hyper-exponentially it’s easy to feel like we don't have a say in the kind of world we’re going to be living in.
Every so often I read an article or listen to a podcast that paints a picture of a future so incredibly dark that it shakes me to the core. This most recent JRE episode with Roman Yampolskiy is one such instance.
I do a lot of my best thinking on the treadmill. As I was walking this morning I reflected on how effectively our thoughts and expectations can shape our future reality. With over thirty years of meditation practice, I’ve experienced first-hand how our thoughts become things and have learned our expectations do so as well. Expecting bad outcomes often has a way of manifesting them, while expecting good results can do the exact opposite.
The intersection of technology and spirituality has always been a fascinating space for me to explore. I believe those with a strong spiritual practice, any regular discipline that deepens connection to the sacred, self, or meaning, tend to navigate these societal shifts more resiliently, and might even emerge better off than they were before this coming paradigm shift.
To thrive during this AI Era, we must live with intention and purpose, acting proactively rather than reactively. A clear vision of the kind of future we want is essential to the process of co-creating it. Daily self check-ins to assess and refine our thoughts and expectations can become a habit, turning us into powerful co-creators of our own realities. As they always do, these personal realities ripple outward, subtly (and sometimes not-so-subtly) influencing others, so we must be mindful of the examples and ideas we share.
The media we consume and the company we keep also play a significant role. Imagine the power if billions adopted this co-creator mindset—life doesn’t have to merely happen to us; we can consciously shape it. This is a powerful cheat-code to the universe.
The lens in which we see the world can be the difference between a joyful, productive life and one of intense suffering. This AI Era doesn’t have to be perceived as an existential crisis, we can also view it with an openness to the possibility that it could free us from the evolutionary bottle neck we seem to have found ourselves in—one that for countless previous generations has been fraught with corruption, wars, greed, and suffering.
These decades on my own path of self-discovery have taught me more lessons than I can count. As I look back at my own evolutionary journey, what I see are long periods of struggle, stagnation, and amnesia with a few tiny bursts of rapid growth. It hasn’t always been an easy or comfortable journey. Sometimes the world makes you question your choices, especially when it seems like you’re a lonely outlier. If you do the work you gain some wisdom, more confidence, and a greater resilience. Eventually, it dawns on you that enlightenment isn’t something that's magically bestowed on you one day and afterwards all your problems will vanish. More truthfully, enlightenment reveals itself in little glimpses as you walk along the path in search of it.
I understand why it’s so easy to give up working on ourselves and why so many avoid the task. Change can feel extremely prickly and evolution, at its core, is finding the courage to admit we don’t have all the answers, and opening ourselves up to change.
Meditation has made it clear to me that this world we live in is a schoolhouse but the really fun part is it’s also a playground. Growing can be a lot of fun if we view it from the perspective of something we get the privilege to do instead of something that is being forced upon us. A life lived consciously can truly be the highest expression of art. While we’re here we’re meant to experiment, express ourselves freely, have a variety of experiences, learn, evolve, and play.
We have a storehouse of potential that lays dormant within us. Even when we know this it’s difficult to remember. Amnesia always sets in as we get embroiled in the maelstrom of daily struggles. The spiritual path is just a continual process of re-remembering this, working to become better versions of ourselves, raising the bar of expectations when it comes to our future realities.
This is why it’s vital to nip negative thoughts in the bud as quickly as possible and try to retrain our minds to not only focus on the positive but expect good things to flow into our lives. This can be sometimes misconstrued as viewing the world with rose colored glasses but it’s not quite that. It’s more about envisioning our ideal reality because the future is always born into the world as thought.
The powers that be have understood this for a long time, keeping us in an never-ending cycle of chasing after possessions we don’t need and also using it to control us. Mainstream media and social media bots continuously flood us with negativity—despair, hatred, envy, shame, rage—keeping us in a fragile state in which we can be easily manipulated. Our minds are being subconsciously hijacked to create a less-than-ideal life experience for us, and this is a cycle we must change.
If you don’t currently have a spiritual practice now would be the time to try a few on to see which one fits. To improve our likelihood of success, we should approach the future with hope, not dread. This mindset could antidote many future woes. This is our chance to choose a world for generations to come, so let’s choose wisely. Step into each day with optimism, not fear. Try to keep in mind that our future isn’t fixed and, more than ever, absolutely anything is possible.
(Image created by Grok.)
