NOTE: I wrote part of this text as small posts that I shared in FOTT community, but I thought that it’s a universal thought process that I want to share with you as outer and inner conflict are one and the same. These days, I don’t feel like sharing that much. I’ve been in very slow-internal processes of decoding a bunch of projections that I didn’t know were my shadows hence decoupling from them has been extremely liberating. So when I saw the light, it was poof, like the brain emoji exploding 🤯 in slow-motion.
It could be something as visceral as the terrible, impregnating smell coming out of my windows that mixes stench with vices and that I can’t control, or any other outside triggers that turn me off my line of equilibrium. Smell, like noise, has no boundaries. It is my biggest challenge, as I am learning to integrate this through somatic awareness to stop blaming myself and carrying the weight for the ways I previously failed to notice red flags or care for my own needs first. Thus, the article that I wanted to put out about digital privacy is still in the draft box and will be posted in due time. Instead I decided to share the text below.
Conflict as Mutation
I’ve written about conflict (read hexagram 6 below) before from a Taoist cosmology slash Human Design perspective.
Here I’m bringing a different angle.
Heraclitus, who was a pre-Socratic philosopher, understood reality as constant flux. And Borges, the great Argentinian writer, used the metaphor of this flux in the river and time, where everything exists through continuous change. Heraclitus saw tension, or Polemos (πόλεμος), as the force that keeps the whole thing from falling apart, generating some sense of order, because the bow and the lyre depend on opposing forces held together.
I’m also bringing forward Gurdjieff, whose ideas I have made more operational and applied when I read financial charts, and, funny enough, I can reflect my nervous system through them. He speaks about intervals or shocks inside any process. He describes how any flat line that doesn’t have tension tends to lead to entropy.
When a movement begins, it follows the line and then it deviates. Without an additional impulse at that point, the process weakens or changes direction. With the right shock, it continues and transforms. That’s why we have transits in astrology with hard angles, like squares and oppositions, which are great opportunities to evolve.
A wave carries a frequency, yet it only becomes readable to variation, through points where the movement hits a wall, shaping the pattern and allowing the flow.
Conflict is that point of tension. It is the place where continuity alone turns into a flat line.
Through resistance and tension, the new can emerge. When I read financial charts, I’m always looking for those points of resistance, either where the price reaches a top or where it reaches a bottom or support. These are points of resonance, this is how I have learned to read anything that has a wavelength, whether financial charts, astrological charts, or my emotional body through my nervous system.
So I bring on the conflict for the sake of evolution, for the sake of mutation. The flow leads to deviation, to tension, to intervention, and to the emergence of a new alignment. That alignment will meet a different frequency and will resonate as something new.
Connecting back to Borges and Ars Poetica that I used in one of my artwork site-interventions back in the year 2000 and it’s here below. He writes in it that the river flows, yet it forms, and it is never uniform.
The identity of this river emerges through these variations, and it is the observer who meets these points as they read them and tries to find their own projection.
Conflict in a sense is when the pattern of tension triggers the opportunity to resurface, giving the human a place to evolve.
Hexagram 6: disengage
Things that I have learned in life:
Engage when it matters, disengage when it doesn’t. That’s the wisest thing I once learned.
Disengage from conflict as a device to protect your energy.
What I’m talking about is hexagram number 6, or in Human Design, gate number 6 that sits in the solar plexus. So therefore, time is part of the process.
Conflict doesn’t need you to rush into it. You feel it out, you give it a moment so you can actually see what’s going on instead of reacting on the spot.
Gate 6 is also creating a channel to gate 59 that sits in the sacral, which is what gives energy to things. It’s the house of the generator and it’s also talking about chemistry.
The question will be, should I engage, but also, is this the right energy to engage here?
Is there something real that can come out of this interaction? Something that can be generated, constructive, creatively contributing to the tribe?
What I’ve learned is that conflict, it’s about friction that can either produce something meaningful or just burn energy for no reason.
There’s a tension. What’s the tension for?
Is there something here that can lead to a connection, that can lead to clarity, to creativity, or is it just pure noise?
The right to choose if the conflict deserves energy, because not every emotional reaction requires you to step in.
I also make a difference between avoidance and disengagement.
Avoidance is when you back away because it feels like too much or because there is fear.
Disengagement is, it’s very logical, it’s clean. You see it for what it is, and you decide it’s not worth your input.
What I also learned through practice is simple. If my life is not in danger, then I disengage from conflict. I step out of it. I let it pass.
If there is real danger, then I meet it fully. And how I was taught in martial arts, I take out the sword and then I behead the opponent.
But if my life is not in danger, I just disengage.
Disengagement can be met in redirecting the conversation. It can be set up as a boundary. It can be chosen as not to escalate. It can be taking time instead of knee-jerk reactions.
Disengagement cannot be confused with withdrawal. It’s just a real understanding of the emotional wave.
The body and time
So thinking about discipline, career, long-term conquests, and giving value to bring the space needed to embrace this new identity, what is it I ask myself.
But the answer shall arise in time.
No pressure now to define the whole process, as it takes time to experiment and test new tools.
Yes, AI more specific ClaudeCode has been my focus on many levels.
The time studying in a group is over; now comes the time to jump and practice and find how I can innovate.
It feels so 1996, with the advent of the internet, how I jumped to the new tech and created websites out of the need to communicate. Then I found out what I could actually do with these tools, and it brought so much innovation to my artwork.
From black and white photography to color darkroom to moving images edited inside a computer, oh boy, the early to mid 90s were dope. I was in my very early 30s, and here I am in my very early 60s and feel good as fuck, because the energy is inviting me to reconsider the orientation (nodes) and the structure of my value in how I would like to communicate and express from here onwards.
I can sense the innovation mixed with curiosity and thrill.
I am very grateful to all of my bodies, or how we are “bodied.”
I recently listened to this awesome podcast with Will Rezin and my homies Joel and Yerasimos from Here for the Truth. The way Will eloquently describes body work is purely felt as he utters word by word.
Grateful for trusting my inner self up in the cloud. Link below.
⛅️
The weight + the impatient speed to build
The Sun in Aries conjuncts the newly entered Saturn in Aries; these two are still in a new phase, with Neptune in Aries, and Venus approaching Chiron in Aries towards the end of the sign too. We still have Mars, the North Node, and Mercury in Pisces. The energy is slightly different from the energy of the other planets in Aries. In Aries, there is impatience and a desire to start something, but with Saturn there, patience becomes a ritual of discipline and foundation. With Mars, Mercury, and the North Node still in Pisces, the energy is denser. It feels like wearing jeans in a pool and trying to get out, even a jeans jacket. Imagine that weight dragging you down until you give in. It’s so difficult.
To have the courage and trust the truth that emanates and reshape with discipline. I shall take up the physical space I need to sense my value as I become more aware of who I am becoming as an individual, falling in my second house, it is all about what I value and how I sustain myself, while Venus and Chiron in the third bring attention to how I communicate and express, since the Sun and Saturn are making a hard square to my nodal axis from the 11th, Capricorn, towards Cancer, fifth house. The second house brings the focus to value, to what is being built in a tangible way, to how self-worth is formed through action and consistency. Saturn here asks for commitment to what I value, and the Sun brings awareness to it, making it visible through experience. Neptune adds a layer of sensitivity, where what I value is still refining, still being felt out.
Venus and Chiron in the third bring this into communication, into expression, into how I share and relate through words. There is an opening here to speak from a place that is more honest, more direct, and connected to what is actually being experienced, in other words Raw as Fuck.
This square to my nodes is basically a tug-of-war. It is the old habit of trying to fit in or look for external validation vs. the real push to just say my truth and be emotionally honest. This friction is actually helpful. It makes it crystal clear where I should put my energy, how I need to respond, and what is actually worth my time.
Have a beautiful week. I hope we all get a little more honest about our own projections and the internal biases that keep us on edge.
