Hey, Reader

How is spring treating you so far? 🌷

I’m still vibing from a new beginning last week. In the northern hemisphere, we celebrated the spring equinox, the end of winter and the arrival of spring, renewal, fertility, and rebirth. It’s a time when night and day are equally long, and we can welcome the new energetic year, a new beginning. It’s also the time to say goodbye to Morana (the Slavic goddess of death and winter) and welcome Vesna (one of the Slavic goddesses of spring) and the old Slovenian name for spring.

Central to Slavic cosmology are these two seemingly opposing forces that coexist in a delicate balance. Light and dark, day and night, summer and winter—they are not viewed as adversaries but rather as complementary aspects of a unified whole.

And - yesterday was my birthday, the 46th year around the sun, so it marked a new cycle of my life, too. 🎉 The intention for my year is ALCHEMY, which I like to understand as the process of transformation inherent in the natural world, where everything in existence is interconnected and part of a unified whole.

The dark and the light are both part of life, in an ever-shifting cycle, and dance with each other. They just are, both with their own magic, their own brilliance, inviting us to embrace the wholeness they offer.

So, I wanted to share my perspective on non-duality, which I’ve been exploring for some years now. It’s currently really being brought forward in my work with my business mentor and also in my client work. This perspective stands on the teachings of my Slavic heritage, Buddhism, and Taoism, as conveyed to me by various mentors and my systems coaching education.

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What does duality look like

In short, duality is seeing everything through the perspective of two opposing forces that are separate from each other. Meanwhile, the non-duality perspective recognises that these two forces are, in fact, not opposing but complementary, unified, integrated parts of a whole.

There’s no better way to illustrate this than through a living example from my work.

As you may know, my leadership program, Creative Catalyst, was supposed to go live last week. It didn’t happen - I postponed the launch. Partly because none of the people signed up could make it to the kick-off session and partly because I would love to get a few more people into the pod and make sure it’s robust enough.

The amount of 💩 that my brain came up with regarding getting more people into the program was just unbelievable. It was all born of this duality that my brain served up and that most of us operate in. (Sharing my notes in the picture).

I told myself: “If I achieve XYZ (insert whatever that is for you - filled program for me), then I am”:

- smart
- successful
- knowing
- open
- impactful
- rich
- fulfilled
- included
- loved
- selfless
- productive
- tolerant
- awesome
- creative

“If I don’t achieve XYZ, then I am”:

- stupid
- a failure
- not knowing
- blocked
- irrelevant
- poor
- empty
- excluded
- unloved
- selfish
- lazy
- judgemental
- boring
- dull

It was a struggle to let go of the attachment to positive outcomes, to be okay with being stupid, a failure, irrelevant, poor, unloved, etc., as they FEEL so real. But it can be done when seen differently.

The cost of this view

If you badly want things (and consequent emotions) on one side of the spectrum and avoid things (and consequent emotions) on the other, you are in trouble. Attaching to either can define who you are as a person. And that is a great way of giving away your power to outside circumstances and people who have no business having that power.

Ultimately, on both sides, there are just stories you tell yourselves about who you are, and they are based on fear of what it will mean about you if you are one or the other. But the thing is, this duality is just an illusion of these aspects being separate because, as noted in the intro, these are just two aspects of the same thing, completing each other - like Morana and Vesna, two aspects of the same cycle of life. In this worldview, as well as many others, there is no inherent separation between the self and the world.

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Another way

In the teachings of Buddhism and Taoism, as soon as you have a preference on either side, you are already attached. If you, like me, are attached to the “success” side, it’s probably not serving you—it rarely does.

So what if we disattached and stopped stirring up so much drama over things?

What if we understood that other people’s judgement of us is their own projection on either side of this dualistic view?

What if we always acted from this crisp clarity of exactly what needs to happen next?
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The third perspective

The way to see that perspective is to stand in the third perspective, opening up into a triangle. That is the meta-perspective. In Buddhism, it’s called emptiness; in systems coaching, it’s the stance of non-attachment. And I like to call it pure presence. It invites us to release our attachment to outcomes and judgments, freeing ourselves from the constraint of the conditional “if this, then that” narratives. Instead, here, you can embrace the flow of life with openness and presence, knowing that both joy and sorrow, success and failure, light and dark are integral parts of the journey. They exist precisely because of the existence of the other.

In this meta-perspective, you have the opportunity to dance with life. Here, you are in service of whatever creative impulse is trying to find its way through you into the world. Your only job is to not stand in its way. And that is where your true power and agency lie—in collaboration with life intelligence and the Universe itself.

For me, it meant pushing the launch and knowing that regardless of the number of people in the program, it will run. And - I will show up to it in the only way I know how - fully and powerfully. The rest is out of my hands.

Ready to dance? Creative Catalyst doors are still open until April 14th, and perspective-taking is a huge part of it.

See you there 🔥

Martina

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Curious poke Which dualistic societal norms do you recognise playing out in your life? What would freedom from them mean to you? How can you show up to your leadership from the non-dualistic perspective? What practice or ritual can help you reconnect with the cyclical nature of life and embrace non-duality?

Some inspiration

The work of Alan Watts | Alan Watts Organization

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu | Goodreads

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I am a fellow creative leader, a certified Co-Active coach and a strategic designer. I bring 20 years of experience and expertise in digital innovation, experience design, leadership and education.

I help stressed creative team leaders reclaim their creative confidence and self-belief to shape cultures and work that matters (and have fun with it again). Together, we create new possible futures. ☀️

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