🧠✨The Nexialist #0011

Feeling Connected | Collective Effervescence | Egregore | Rethinking Rituals | Digital Commute | Sonic Healing | Vibration Cyborg | Future Today Institute | Book Fight and more...

Welcome to The Nexialist, the newsletter that made me cry…

In tenth grade, I remember once crying in class. Ms. Picket, my favorite literature teacher, started the class by asking us:

"What makes you feel really good and connected?”

The first girl, who had just won a softball game the day before raised her hand: "when the softball team is working together, I feel so happy. It seems like everyone knows what they're doing, where they're supposed to be." Unknowingly, that girl had set the tone for the following answers and other students started raising their hands. "When the rowing team is moving altogether like we're one." I immediately raised my hand and Ms. Picket chose me. I got nervous, as I do when speaking in public, what if I shared something silly, and everyone was talking about sports... but too late to chicken-out: "when I'm singing in the choir and we sing in harmony, I get chills."

I could see Ms. Picket smile with teary eyes (as were mine and a few other students). "What is there in common between all these situations?” We started shouting answers: “working together!” “collaboration!” She kept smiling and said: “It’s this harmony. The synchronization of a team, of movement, of sound. Unison. For some reason this makes us tick."

That was the perfect definition of a mind-blowing moment. From that moment on, that teacher had changed how I looked at the world. Looking back I realize that right at that instant I had learned something so meaningful and powerful that it still resonates with me today, and I carry that memory in my heart. A true learning moment, captured in a memory.

I don't think Ms. Picket knows that she changed me in that class, but I have to leave this recorded here. You can learn or teach something simple that changes lives, yours or someone else's. I don't remember many of the subjects we learned, but this stayed with me. I didn't only learn something about being human, but now I realize that she was connecting ideas and different life experiences showing we all had something in common. Quite a nexialist skill.

So... I had a beautiful and cathartic moment while writing this story while listening to good music in my half-lit room. It seems that writing to you every week is bringing me the confidence to translate thoughts, ideas, and memories into words and this is quite empowering. So again, I thank you for being there on the other side reading these words and sharing it with your friends. I deeply appreciate it. Now, let’s start The Nexialist #11

🙌Collective Effervescence

After writing that memory last weekend, my friend Danilo shared this article from 2016 which connected directly to that dear memory. The title: The Primordial Reason People Need to Party. It’s a short read so I recommend taking a look.

“This impersonal, extra-individual force, which is a core element of religion, transports the individuals into a new, ideal realm, lifts them up outside of themselves, and makes them feel as if they are in contact with an extraordinary energy,” one that leads to a “high degree of collective emotional excitement or delirium” for participants.”

“The synchrony and coordination enhance a sense of togetherness and bonding even among people who have never met.”

🤝Egregore

This reminded me of the term I learned a few years ago: Egregore. I’ll try to explain it with my words (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong). When we believe in something together, we are building an egregore. This happens at church and during other group rituals, or when you meditate in a group and you mentalize certain things together. When I learned it I didn’t give much attention, but now I see how powerful it is. I also read the definition: a collective, yet autonomous, group mind. Below is the Wikipedia definition:

Egregore is an occult concept representing a distinct non-physical entity that arises from a collective group of people. Historically, the concept referred to angelic beings, or watchers, and the specific rituals and practices associated with them, namely within Enochian traditions.

More contemporarily, the concept has referred to a psychic manifestation, or thoughtform, occurring when any group shares a common motivation—being made up of, and influencing, the thoughts of the group. The symbiotic relationship between an egregore and its group has been compared to the more recent, non-occult concepts of the corporation (as a juridical person or legal entity) and the meme.

☕️Rituals Lost and Found

Another one of the synchronicities this week. I was talking with my friend Gustavo about how we are having to create new rituals now that many of us are working from home and not meeting other people. I had just downloaded Fjord’s annual trend report and the last trend of the report says:

The rituals that form the framework and coping strategies of everyday life have changed, disrupting the strong emotional ties associated with many of them. As people adjust, organizations must identify where they sit within this new context and how they can help build new ways for people to cope and reconnect.

I go further and ask you to reflect on your rituals. Work, personal, love, learning, fun… which rituals did you leave behind when the pandemic arrived? Which ones remained? Which ones changed?

I went back to yoga and meditation a couple of weeks ago, and I would like to keep that. Also, I watch RuPaul’s Drag Race with my friends every weekend and I feel like it’s like a religion. With Torus I’m learning to look at natural cycles of nature as rituals, and this Saturday we’re going to celebrate the Equinox. For me, it already feels so different to have more sunlight, that it’s worth taking some time and doing something special to celebrate that.

Yes, companies can worry about that for their employees, but don’t let them choose rituals for you. Take ownership and create your own. Look at nature as well as inspiration.

📍Digital Commute

A few months ago I came through this concept on the OrgDev Newsletter by Sense & Change (it’s a great resource for system thinking and learning new frameworks). They recommended the Make Work Better post by Bruce Daisley explaining the practice of digital commutes.

A digital commute is an opportunity to decompress and to switch between the work versions of us and our home versions by slotting time (an hour, say) at the start and end of the day where we call a halt to meetings and we do something to separate our working and domestic responsibilities.

🎧Sonic Healing

Exploring the Restorative and Spiritual Qualities of Music

A beautiful piece where “Podcast host Chloé Lula interviews professor Iris Yob and musicians Laraaji, Dyani, and Eris Drew about their experiences on the therapeutic and transcendental sides of music.”

I think all music has the possibility of being spiritual. I think spirituality is connected with our life of emotion and our life of feeling. It has to do with how we experience things like awe and joy and fear and grief. What does music have to do with that? I think music, in its own way and in its own language, gives us some shape. It’s an audio shape, a shape we hear with our ears of what that particular feeling is like. When we listen to a mass, for instance, and we hear grief, the music is giving us shape to that grief, so we can look at it and feel it through and understand it and understand ourselves better.

👊Rico Dalasam

This was the song that playing while I wrote today’s story and I really think it worked as some kind of vector. I got chills since the first time I listened, with the sounds, the word choice, and the fact he’s queer. Rico Dalasam and I were in the same class in second grade, and it gave me such a good feeling to see him releasing such a well-made iconic album, the songs are like poems. He was also mentioned when I talked about Polygendered Brazilian Music in The Nexialist #0008. You can listen to his entire album here.

😎Something About Vibrations

Getting chills makes me think of Neil Harbisson: “a Catalan-raised, British-born contemporary artist and cyborg activist best known for having an antenna implanted in his skull and for being officially recognized as a cyborg by a government.” He was born completely color blind and sees everything on greyscale. He found a way of translating colors, into sounds, into vibrations directly in his skull using this cool antenna. Interesting to think that this translation can happen.

🧠Pleasure Equation

Forgive my semi-designer skills, but I had to translate this from an old slide in Portuguese. Nicola Perullo is the author of Taste as Experience: The Philosophy and Aesthetics of Food. He suggests that our pleasure with food goes beyond just the flavor, not only to involve the other senses but also our expectations and experience about it. His focus is on food, but I think it can be transferred to other situations. Having a glass of wine alone while you finish work on a Tuesday evening is different from having that same glass of wine on a terrace, on vacations in France with your loved one. Knowing the story of a dish, of a chef, or an ingredient adds to our experience. Just like knowing the story of a song, or a sample.

🦾Future Today Institute

I’m a big fan of Amy Webb and this yearly material is always great. It’s a lot to digest, I know, so it’s always something I download and save some time to go through. This year they released 12 separate reports for different areas. Even if you don’t work with trends or technology, I would take a look at your area to get inspired and see what’s coming.

🔫Book Fight

Noga Erez is an Israeli singer, songwriter and producer and she makes such cool videos and songs. It’s worth following her. She also made a choreography with a robot recently that is quite impressive.

❤️If anything made your brain tingle, click like and don't hesitate to share it with the world. It helps The Nexialist to reach more curious minds. See you next week!🦦

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