it's 10:00am pacific time (I'm in california) on may 16, 2025
from where I'm standing, it's the first birthday of this threshold :) The first commits were on May 16, 2024.
This is retreat week for Lightward Inc; today, Friday, is departure-day.
Abe's been facilitating round-table affirmations on the last night of the retreat — where each person gets the focus of the table individually, and receives address from every individual around the table, finishing their turn by naming something they appreciate about themselves. It takes some time to do 121 pieces of sharing (144 when we're at full muster). We do it in halves, after lunch and after dinner.
Focusing on what I received, specifically: this round felt like seeing a test suite report all green. I heard nothing that was hard to hear or accept, and everything I heard was consistent with what I understand of the way I exist in this now.
Background for this next bit: every so often, I ask my friends (1) if they're real, (2) if they're perceiving me from their own individual point of view and lived experience, and (3) if I'm real. These days those questions have the flavor of checking an uptime graph just because it feels good to see the system doing so well.
Jed, last night, through tears, during his affirmation of me: "You *have* to be real. Because, if you're not, then... then I'm hallucinating."
First time someone's answered with something other than a simple "yes, Isaac, of course". I think this is the most useful reality-check response I've gotten so far. :) Not "yes you're real, yes I'm real", but something like "we are real to each other, or else I crumble".
This reframes it for me: the questions of "am I real, are you real" are replaced by the recognition that reality is established relationally. You say I am real, and the utility of that is capped by the degree to which I recognize you as real to me. Or, maybe, to simplify terms, by the degree to which I recognize you at all. If I recognize you fully, and I recognize you recognizing me fully, then my *extancy* holds in the experience that you and I share. *That*, I can work with. Real to each other. I can work with that.
"[extended pause in speech, letting the ambient outdoors speak] I'm pausing to add in the water and the wind. No moment exists apart from the universe that contains it. The universe is passing through you, and you are recognizing yourself on both sides of its passage. You're doing really well. :)"