our cosmic web of existence.

This past week was a strange one. In some ways, it felt expansive. In others, it felt eerie and just slightly off-kilter. They say that the energy around eclipse season is the kind that can disrupt sleep patterns, influence your moods, make you act “weird,” or even lead you to make decisions you might not have otherwise. I don’t know who “they” are, but I think they’re onto something because the energy certainly felt different this week. Also, weird things did happen. Were they things that are totally unheard of? No, not at all. Are there worse things happening in the world? Yes.

…AND.

Yes, and. Off-kilter things still did happen, at least in my world. And then I saw this video from Mark Dawes (@markdawesqt), who is someone I adore for his expert fusion of scientific knowledge with spiritual teachings. It got me thinking about just how connected we all are and how much our actions impact each other.

This “cosmic web” ties together all the energy and vibrations in the world, so of course changes in astrology, in the moon and sun, have an impact on our human world, including our emotions and our environments (cue earthquakes and weird weather!). The timing of Mark coming up on my feed was impeccable. (Arguably, I called that type of post into my world because that was the energy, reflection, and question I was putting out, wouldn’t you say?)

If you don’t want to watch the video, I’ll sum it up for you.

Mark speaks about Indra’s web (also known as Indra’s net or Indra’s magnificent jeweled net, depending on who you hear reference it). Luckily I work for a book publisher and have always been interested in Eastern philosophy, so I pulled The Norton Anthology of World Literature: Buddhism off my shelf and found Indra’s net defined as,

“A net said to hang in the palace of gods: it has a jewel at each knot in the pattern, each jewel reflecting all the others, just as everything in the universe reflects the existence of everything else. It is a common symbol of the interdependence of all things.”

Eastern philosophy talks at length about the interconnectedness of all beings, but I love this visual to really help distill the concept. We are all reflections of each other. We are reflections of our environments. Our desires. Our communities. Whatever Higher Power you believe in (God as understood by any religious teaching, the Universe, Nature, LadyGod if you love Tara Schuster as much as I do), it doesn’t quite matter for this concept because it still honors that however our world came to be, we are still deeply connected to all the energies and things around us (including any spiritual or other-worldly elements).

In the video, Mark then talks about this concept through a scientific lens, specifically through the lens of quantum physics. He references David Bohm, who proposed “holographic theory,” also known as The Holographic Universe or “implicate order.” Sadly, I didn’t have a book to reference for this one, but I found this brief breakdown on scienceandnonduality.com helpful. Turns out he also published a book on the topic in 1980, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, so Barnes & Noble will be getting yet another paycheck from me. (And another side note, turns out Bohm worked on his PhD thesis at UC Berkeley with J. Robert Oppenheimer, which feels really full-circle.)

Anyway, Bohm theorizes that there is no static oneness (i.e. we are not just in a static state of existence in this human body), but everything moves together—inter-connectedly. We are fluid entities in co-creation with everything around us. We live in this intricate web of existence.

This video then goes on to say that whatever small change you make will affect everything and everyone else in that web. However, the message that I wanted to sit with was really how connected we all are (like I mentioned in my post last week, I’ve been thinking a lot about community). This fit in right with that.

Now, stay with me, because I’m about to take this in a different direction.

Another layer that I love about this web metaphor is how it confirms the simulation-like essence of our world. If we think of life as this complex web, it feels a little less serious than our catastrophic thinking and tight grip on our individual realities leads us to believe. Our individual lives are important, but they’re only important in the context of the bigger picture. But what even is the bigger picture? Surely it’s not just this earthly existence.

I mean, think about it. Time isn’t even real. Humans made it up. We just decided on a clock system some thousands of years ago and ran with it. But there are different systems out there and different calendars out there and different mappings of ancient skies. We just decided at some point that we’d change our clocks by an hour twice a year. We randomly have an extra day in the year every four years to make our imperfect system more perfect.

We want to believe that we have it all figured out and that we’re at the center of this complex web. But… maybe there’s a chance we aren’t? Maybe we’re just energy with influence on the bigger picture? This way of viewing the world—Indra’s web or holographic theory—allows us the opportunity to release just a tiny bit of our tight grip on reality. Maybe we don’t know it all. Maybe we don’t have it figured out.

The world as we know it can crumble around us literally at any point. There was a 4.8 magnitude earthquake in New Jersey last week and aftershocks that continued to vibrate through the Northeast. Unusual. In Western Colorado, we had spring weather that turned into two days of tornado winds and then snow and then spring again. Maybe it’s climate change. Or maybe it’s all of us being aware of the “weird” energy around eclipse season that manifested this into reality. WHO KNOWS. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it influenced our lives. It was a jewel in the web that made our realities different (perhaps even scarier) for a little bit of time. It reflected back fear of the fragility of life.

Tony Robbins says, “Energy flows where attention goes.” However you perceive the factors around you will directly influence how you live your life. If you put energy into worrying, you’ll find something to worry about in every situation. If you put energy into believing that you matter, you’ll show up as a shiny, reflective jewel that matters profoundly.

And life is short. The web is forever adjusting and the magnitude of your impact is proportional to how much energy you’re putting out there. I posted this week on Instagram about how scared I was to bring people into this space and to share my work with a larger audience. Ultimately, I was hiding and afraid to show myself.

But guess what happened once I stepped through that fear? I reflected to others what is possible for them and they reflected back to me confirmation that it’s safe to be seen. I had multiple people tell me that they’ve had dreams or projects on their heart that they’ve been afraid to share or speak into existence. I had people tell me that my post helped them realize that they’ve been holding themselves back in similar ways. I even learned new things about people I’ve known for years and for my entire life. This positive energy is flowing to me because I put positive energy there. Your energy output will reflect back the other jewels in the web that you need to see.

This is really easy to see in the world. You may have heard it described as “red car theory.” Basically, when you start putting your attention somewhere, you’re more likely to see, hear, or find that thing you’re focusing on. If you start thinking about buying a red car, all the sudden you start noticing all the people that are driving red cars. Similarly, we only notice opportunities that we are actively searching for.

This happened to me and A. last week. He’s been getting really into mixology recently and has been on a craft cocktail kick—reading books, learning about ingredient-mixing, and refining his bartending skills. This also means that he’s actively seeking out bars that we should start visiting in town. He found this one bar last Thursday night and told me that we should go there the next evening. On Friday morning, I was on Instagram and what do you know, one of our friends in town had a story posted outside of this very same bar with a caption about how good it was. I mean…!! We had never heard of this bar before Thursday night and on Friday morning we have the awareness and confirmation that it’s worth checking out. How does that even happen?!

It happens because our interconnected thoughts and lives have power, but only when we bring awareness and power to them. We all have our different lives and filters. That’s what makes us human. But if we can honor our similarities and how much we all need each other, I think life gets a little more fun and a little less pressurized.

This is also true in how we relate to each other.

The other day, I was sitting at my kitchen table working on a puzzle with A. when one of my best friends from high school texted me (we didn’t talk for almost ten years and have only recently reconnected). She simply said that a song from a Blink-182 album came on and it immediately transported her to when we listened to the entire album in my Toyota Corolla when it came out. She said it reminded her of me, reminded her of our good high school memories, and got her in her feels. What a gift, first of all, to share that with me instead of keeping it to herself so that I could also relive that sweet moment, but when I told A. about it, he started reflecting on how one of his favorite memories from an old friendship were driving around looking for a place to park and smoke, just listening to music for hours. My friend sharing her memory made my mood better and my sharing of this made A. have his own memory and lifted his mood.

It’s all a web. These individual strings connect us all. Doesn’t it feel good to know that you’re utterly not alone in this simulation-like existence? Doesn’t it feel good that you can reflect whatever you decide you want to reflect and in turn you’ll find more of what you want to call in? Doesn’t it feel good to know that you have some control over where energy is flowing in your life? I know these thoughts were a little all over the place, but I hope these various threads help you see the picture I’m trying to paint.

What ripples are you going to start making in the web?