It’s uncanny to me how this 12-week AI Accelerator is oddly reminiscent of my experience during a 6-week silent retreat. I’ve found myself reflecting on that. I’m still chewing on it, but I have some thoughts I’d like to share here.
Absence of stimulation and extreme levels of stimulation have a strange mirroring effect. They both reflect fundamental aspects of myself back to me, but what's even wilder is how much these opposite experiences actually resemble each other. It's wild to think about, as if standing on either edge of the intensity spectrum brings you right back to the same place. A place that's confronting, revealing and transformative.
Yet they’re also radically different. Which is what makes them feel extremely valuable for me to experience.
Deep silence, renunciation and stillness essentially simplify your experience. Internal resources are no longer hogged by having to process external stimuli left and right. My mind and heart settled, unwound, digested… and opened up. And when something is open, calm and uncluttered… you can see it clearly for what it is. It’s not a linear process, it’s actually pretty messy and intense in its own ways. But that’s what made it possible to take a good look at my own inner-workings. Patterns, pre-dispositions, tendencies… I got to see things that normally fly under the radar.
This software engineering bootcamp offers its own vantage point into my mind’s inner-workings. It is an entirely different paradigm that has me face somewhat unique challenges and situations. I get to see my mind at work in ways that I normally wouldn’t. I get to grapple and examine my relationship with work, productivity, problem-solving and technology to name only a few. I task my mind to solve problems, come up with solutions and be creative. I get to see it feeling stuck, intellectually incompetent, overwhelmed. This is rich. I wouldn’t get to examine much of that in the context of a silent retreat.
Knowing how to be at peace, to move fluidly, in both of these radically different environments, feels like the work of integrating aspects of the psyche that seem inherently at odds. And yet it does seem possible. I enjoy being driven, intellectually challenged, faced with problems to solve. I also like the quiet and vast expanse of nature, the simplicity of a pond, and the patience of a tree. These experiences are teaching me not to get stuck in false dichotomies - slow vs fast, natural vs artificial. I don’t need to choose, I can move between the two. Perhaps transformation isn't about finding the right way to be, but about expanding my capacity to thrive wherever I find myself.