What Happens When We Commit?

Diverging onto our true path & making a home for vision together

Today, I was speaking with a friend about the journey it has taken to get here, reflecting on the necessary beginnings of a ‘divergence’ that I experienced in university. It was a time when the ideas and experiences that captivated me were no longer reflected in the culture and institutions around me. The moment when my calling and my healing began to diverge from the path laid out before me. It was the beginnings of a call to step out, which I eventually came to realize was a call to ‘step in.’

What had previously been the path to a conventional definiton of success became less and less aligned with my true path — the path of curiosity, the winding path of realization, the search for wisdom. I had to deeply accept that what was most important might not yet be recognized or even articulable to those around me. Making space to lean in artistically, spiritually, and intellectually was one of the most important things I’ve done, and I’m so thankful for the very few who supported me during that time.

With each step into divergence, I was developing my own craft through experimentation with new art forms and ideas. But reflecting on those years, I recognize that such exploration could never be fostered alone. The "one man in the wilderness" chapter has its place; it builds courage and faith. But the landing of new culture is a collective enterprise. When we’re traveling through a world that can be a desert for our true thirst, we need others whose words bring living water. Ultimately, even in the most solitudinous stretches of my journey, I’ve never really been alone.

Connections in resonance were the lifeblood that sustained me in this journey of becoming. They allowed a new context to become more tangible. While the journey I was on remained foreign to most of my relationships and what was reflected in media discourse, a handful of relationships helped to stabilize and anchor these new insights and turbulent processes of healing.

When a vision can be landed between us, it becomes more real. We hold it together. The power of the word, authentically spoken and received, gives home to vision. The ‘liminal web’ has fostered this for me. It has developed into a space for people between worlds — an old world dying, and new ones only beginning to arrive. It has become a rich network to find others learning to practice, move, and flow in the collective condition of uncertainty with deepening heart and precise action.

Matthew’s and my friendship grew out of that liminal web. It was a consequence of our commitment to ‘divergence’ that allowed our true signal to reach one another. It was our consistent showing up that allowed a deepening trust to develop. The Resonant Man is a kind of fruiting body — the piece ‘above the surface’ that is connected to a much larger mycelial network. The more coherence and commitment we bring to it, the more integrity it has, and the more it is able to land and hold.

When we decided to commit not just for weeks or months but for a year, we created a context for something deeper and transformative to occur — a highly potentiated space that has already begun to work on us and the men joining us. I’ve learned so much about commitment through this. None of this could have unfolded and been made consistent if we had done it alone; it could not grow into what it’s becoming if we were not committed to it and to one another. It seems more and more clear that one deep commitment changes the world — a commitment in marriage joins families and communities; a commitment in art-making allows the blossoming of a scene. Somewhere down the line, whatever we devote ourselves to, we have to reach a place of commitment, and the more wholeheartedly we can do that, the more powerfully we can start to land the future we have glimpsed in our hearts.

-Jacob Kishere

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This Week in the circle:

We delved in to blocks from aligning with our authentic future. It was a powerful session integrating understandings of how blocks are often connected with ‘exiled’ and younger parts of ourselves. We invite the men to leave space open during the week for these blocks and exiled parts to present themselves and be softly integrated.

Next week :

In week four we will close our initial exploration of “Aligning With Our Authentic Self,” creating a space to land and articulate our true vision in the circle.