Consensus-ism part 2

Something like Deep Okayness has happened to me and I like it

(I’ve now been interviewed about this, thank you Delia!)

So as I tweeted here:

And then here, 8 days later:

…something big happened to my brain recently.

(Also this is in stark contrast to this tweet from a month before!!!!)

I wrote “consensus-ism (part 1)” 5 months ago, and am hyped to say that it has now really clicked for me, and it finally makes sense to write part 2. 

(Sadly I still haven’t come up with a term that is less of a mouthful than “consensus-ism”)

I’d say now that there have been 3 consensus-ism-y eras for me: from 18 to 26 was pre-consensus-ism, then I had 1.5 years of integrating it and dropping doing most things that didn’t feel good to me, and now I’m in the “this makes total sense and a big chunk of self-referential thinking has now gone” era.

What consensus-ism used to mean to me

Pls read part 1, I don’t have consensus to try and re-explain when I think I did a pretty good job back then

But a real quick first-draft summary is something like “hey, did you know that you don’t need to cast around looking for what to do, that in any moment it is actually obvious to you want you want to do, and that you can tap into this and stop overthinking and searching and worrying and etc? And also, this is not a skill to develop, it’s literally always there?”. More on this later, this is just me quickly setting the scene.

From part 1 to part 2, what changed?

So, back when I wrote part 1, I was in an era of noticing my consensus more throughout the day, of noticing much more quickly when I was doing stuff that I didn’t want to do, and therefore stopping and reconsidering. 

It’s important to note this, and I’ll be doing it a bunch going forward: this wasn’t an intentional practice. I had some help with being prompted/reminded of relevant info, but at no point was I trying to get myself to notice any of it. That would have been super counterproductive, and I think this is a big part of why people struggle with this and similar updates. This is so important that I’m gonna say it again in its own paragraph, in bold:

None of this happened because I tried to think a different way. That would only have slowed me down.  What worked was having the option to notice this stuff, and repeatedly seeing how useful it was. That gradually went deeper and deeper until I was able to get the full concept, which would’ve been way harder if I’d been trying to hold any current version steady in my mind.

Instead, I just had more and more chances to notice consensus, and did it more and more over time. However, even though I was much more attuned to my consensus, and was even maybe fully living by it (like, the last ~1 month I’ve really been astounded at how much it has felt like I’m in the exact right place doing the exact right thing, which feels like a downstream effect of following my genuine consensus and course-correcting whenever necessary), I still had a lot of anxiety around choosing my behaviours, and it’s this that seems to have just like, gone poof.

Part 1 was like “following consensus whilst still worrying about it”

So yes, I got much better at following my consensus, but still had this layer of anxiety about it, even though I had much more certainty that I was choosing the right actions.

My classic example that I’ve been using to explain this to people has been this: I’ve been at an intentional community for the past 1.5 months. Often at dinner I’d not have anything to say at the dinner table, and as we’d sit in silence I’d be wracking my brain for something to say, but also feeling too shy to say something, and also wondering if this makes me a fundamentally socially stunted person who can’t even ask a question at the dinner table, etc etc etc. 

However, now that that whole layer of thinking has gone (more on that in a sec), I notice at the dinner table that there’s just no desire to say anything. And pre-shift, I’d then overthink about this and wonder what it would mean. But the core feeling was the same - a lack of desire to say anything in that moment, which is totally ok.

The 2 layers of experience 

In retrospect I’m fairly sure that there were two layers to my conscious experience, because it seems like one of them has gone and the other remains. And weirdly enough, in the wake of that second one falling off, there was a feeling of “wtf, this feels so different now, but also maybe like nothing has changed at all??”, which I think points to the fact that this foundational layer was always present, but the second layer was always muddying the picture.

Maybe it’s even true that the second layer isn’t a real thing in the same sense as the first one: the difference between, for example, ten guesses about what you’ll do tonight versus what actually happens.  The guesses are a “thing” in your brain, but they’re not things that are actually happening. When or if you stop guessing, nothing about the events that are happening in the outside world has changed.

So ok, here’s some terminology that I’m making up.

Layer 1 is the core, foundational layer of experience. It’s made up of your senses, your vision, sounds etc, and also your bodily awareness, the feelings of excitement or fear or nervousness etc, and also of “primary thoughts”, as it’s not that I’ve stopped thinking, but I feel like I only have genuine thoughts rather than the self-referential, like, “thinking about thinking” thoughts in reaction to my core thoughts. 

And then layer 2 is the mind’s reaction to layer 1. So like, my core lived experience (layer 1) at the dinner table was of not having anything to say in that moment, and of not wanting to say anything. And then layer 2 would take that and go “WOAH BUDDY DOES THIS MEAN XYZ???”. 

So that’s what was going on when I wrote part 1 - I was much better at noticing my consensus, but still had a lot of anxiety about following my consensus, like “oh I don’t want to socialise at the intentional community tonight, I have no desire to, I want to rest (cool, layer 1, real shit) → “OH NO IS THAT OK DOES THAT MEAN I’M REALLY DISAGREEABLE EEEE AAAAA” (layer 2).

I mean, that’s a pretty dramatic example, a more lowkey one would be like “it’s a Saturday, I feel like going for a walk → eeeee but what about xyz other options”.

So what was the shift?

I’ve been lucky enough to meet some people who are into this kind of stuff, and I’ve been having occasional calls/meetups/attending events/etc. with them (when I’ve had consensus to do so, which for sure slowed me down (it took ~1.5 years from call 1 to now!)) to get nudged along this direction.

And I was basically being prompted to notice like “hey, you know you can drop layer 2, right? Like, you know that layer 1 exists, you know what feels good to do, you don’t need all this overthinking, it sucks, right??”. Sadly the mind has a lot of defences around this and it took me a long-ass time to really get it, but even half-getting it was incredibly beneficial to me.  And even saying that misses something actually, because it’s really important that in a sense the defences aren’t there, or aren’t exactly defences against anything: noticing that I was describing things in my brain as “defences”, and that really they were just a kind of noise/old habit that no longer fit/momentary glitch, was a big part of what led to the shift.

And that’s the crazy thing, and it reminds me of Sasha Chapin calling loving awareness an anti-meme → this layer 1 has always been here, but it’s very hard to fully appreciate when layer 2 is in the way.

For example, I really get the Headless Way guy now, like it really does feel like I have no head in a way that it didn’t when I watched those videos ~1 year ago, which makes me wonder if layer 2 was something like the ego structure or some kind of grasping that, once let go of (or once it realises that it doesn’t need to happen), drops you into a more core, non-dual-ish state, which has actually always been there, you’ve just never felt safe enough to relax layer 2, because layer 2 insists that you need to care about this stuff, to worry and overthink, because if you don’t you’ll cease to exist or some shit. (This also makes me think of Chapin’s “befriending the void”, and the benefits he lists there (like complete comfort with very prolonged eye contact) are totally true to my experience).

How this relates to Deep Okayness

So now my lived experience really rhymes with Chapin’s “Deep Okayness” → it’s like, with all that grasping gone, all that worrying and overthinking, I can notice that everything is good in this exact moment, I don’t need to be thinking about the next thing, I can just rest and vibe and wait until there’s something else I’d rather do.

Like, I truly no longer feel like a self-improvement or unfoldment project. I’m still super excited to continue doing IFS and etc, but it feels like an optional want rather than a total need.

And I’d posit that the same might be true for you - it’s not the case that one day you’ll feel good, once you get through xyz trauma and do a certain type of meditation that unlocks some shit and etc etc. Layer 1 is present right now and layer 2 isn’t needed, it’s all gravy baby.

The benefits

So even “pre-layer 2 falling away”, I was getting insane benefits from consensus-ism, in retrospect. 

The key one really is that I wasn’t doing stuff that felt bad, and when stuff felt bad, I’d course correct. This kinda meant that every day felt right, and I was doing stuff that felt right, so I’ve felt like, very in touch with the universe and shit. I’m using that wording because, as silly or overblown as it is, and as woo as it feels to my “becoming much more woo but still with a woo-wince-response” brain, there’s something that feels dead on about it. I’ve been living according to my genuine motivations for a while now and it’s gotten me to a really great place.

And the more I’ve done this, the more I’ve noticed what feels right and true to me, the better things have gotten. Like, my job is super aligned with both my interests and my personality. And tweeting and sharing more of my life is setting me up in a really fun way. I’ve tweeted a couple times about how well things are going recently, how things have lined up in crazy ways, etc etc. Super excited to see where this all takes me.

But anyway, now that in addition to living by my consensus, the self-referential worrying has also dropped away, the benefits so far are like, insane. No social anxiety! Way more self trust! Way way less anxiety in general! Way less thoughts! Sensory clarity! Self-assuredness in how I go about my days!

All different ways of saying that layer 2 felt like a confusing fog in retrospect, a fog of second-guessing and overthinking and questioning all my decisions. And fog is a really good analogy because it’s like everything was there and clear underneath that, and it’s not that I gained anything so much as just stopped having the extra fog covering it.

Some examples of life in layer 1

• Social anxiety gone - way more comfortable with silence, prolonged (infinite??) comfort with eye contact (I did a call with someone from twitter where at one point we just gazed into each other’s eyes for like 5 mins whilst smiling and I felt like I could happily do it forever), making jokes without nervousness, call with Sasha Chapin without feeling embarrassed/shy/intimidated/out of my depth

• Noticing bullshit more for what it is rather than getting lost in layer 2 about it (e.g. noticing when a person was objectively chatting a load of shit and being a bad selfish conversational partner vs “oh no i’m bad i should know all this stuff too”)

• Way way way more mindful holy shit, mindfulness just immediately unlocked, mindful walks, meditation way easier (when have consensus to do it which is basically never because who has the time for that shit)

• No fear in front of camera - made a vlog, easy, no difference between camera on and off

And this is all in like 1.5 weeks, and in my kinda safe lil bubble at the intentional community (not like I’ve gone to a big party with a load of new people where I can really test this out) (but Sasha call was a decent test fr fr)

What happens next?

Man, holy shit, I’m really excited to continue living this level 1 life and see where it takes me. The prospect of a life without social anxiety is just insane. E.g. one thing I’ve been noticing is a) how much a love of comedy and making jokes is a core passion of mine, and b) how maybe now I can do things like improv/standup/host a fake podcast with friends.

Also, as I was patiently nudged into this by some friends, maybe I can help other people get here, I’m very excited to test that out! When I have consensus of course.

That’s it for now, if you made it this far thank you very much for reading! Have a great day <3

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Appendix

https://twitter.com/nosilverv/status/1575815041726693376