This is not a list of beliefs to adopt or rules to obey. These are patterns we’ve traced—truths that keep surfacing when we stop pretending the world makes sense. This framework doesn’t ask you to agree. It asks you to feel what resonates in your bones.

We don’t deny the brutality of the world. We don’t excuse harm, erase power, or sidestep grief. We look at what is—then decide what we want to make from it. These assumptions were born from contact—with suffering, with contradiction, with wonder. They are not here to simplify the world. 

1. You are not broken

We do not aim to fix, optimize, or upgrade you.

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​​2. You matter

Your value is intrinsic. you don’t need to perform mattering or work hard to be special.

​People don’t actually want achievement. They don’t want optimization. They want to matter. To feel like their existence holds shape, texture, connection. Your value is intrinsic. 

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3. You are not a machine

Rest is not laziness, and being is not failure.

In every era, humans imagine the dominant technology as what we are. When we studied alchemy and fluids, our bodies were ruled by the “humors”. When we built factories, we became engines and output systems. Now, in the digital age, we are brains-as-computers, bodies-as-devices, and emotions-as-glitches in the program. You are not any of these. 

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4. Humans are symbolic creatures and meaning makers

Meaning is not a luxury, it is how we survive.

We don’t just experience—we interpret. We don’t just live—we story. We speak in metaphor, image, gesture, and myth—not as abstraction, but as deep pattern. Meaning is not a luxury. It’s how we survive. Everything else is architecture we’ve built to survive its absence. Meaning doesn’t come from earning it. It comes from witnessing what’s already true. 

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5. All Threads Are Sacred

Nothing human is alien. Nothing strange is disposable. No experience is unworthy of reverence.

The threads of your life—your grief, your rage, your anxiety, your freeze, your fragmentation—they are not mistakes. They are signals. We may not be wise enough yet to see how it all weaves together but we trust that it does and make room for the truth. 

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6. Unfinished Knowing

No one knows everything.

No model is complete. No truth lives outside of context. We expect to revise what we know. That is not a failure. That is the work. We practice deep curiosity. We ask better questions. We welcome the unknown—not as a threat, but as a collaborator. Mystery is not a flaw in the system. It is the system. Learning is a form of devotion. We honor the in-between as a fertile ground—not a failure of clarity, but the birthplace of it. Growth doesn’t arrive with certainty. It arrives with movement. With presence. With humility. We turn toward complexity, not away from it. We believe multiple things can be true at once. We believe disagreement can be generative. We believe nuance is sacred.

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7. All that exists is natural

If it exists, it belongs; if it arises, it’s part of the process.

Even the tangled parts. Natural doesn’t mean harmless. It means part of the system. What we do with that truth—that’s where choice lives. There is no part of you that is unnatural. No thought too strange, no impulse too messy, no way of being too far gone. If it exists, it belongs. If it arises, it’s part of the process. We don’t have to know why. You don’t need to purify yourself to be here. Nature creates variety for a reason. Every leaf, river, and human is a variation—on purpose. There is no single blueprint for being. Each person is a pattern. People are peopleing. Every disgusting thing human beings have created or done is people peopleing—we do things—we are nature, it is us. For example, we can say that chemicals "aren’t natural", but they can’t not be. We made them. With what is here. All content and processes created by and on our planet Earth and the universe in which we reside. We are ourselves processes within this world. This is not a place for moral scorekeeping. It’s a place for noticing consequences and choosing what to cultivate.

 

8. No-thing is one-thing

There is no such thing as nothing and there is no such thing as one thing.

Individuation is a beautifully crafted illusion that makes things experiential, but still an illusion. You are everything, everything is you, and everything is alive. Compassion is a requirement. We are made through relationship – You are not a closed system. You are shaped in tension with others, in friction with the world, in contact with time. Every wound and every wonder comes through relationship. Connection is not optional. We are meant to move with and against, to shape and be shaped. 

 

9. We carry death with us

Death is the sacred weight of being alive.

We can perceive this as a brutal natural truth or a gift that allows for meaning. Death is built into the system for continuous life. Human beings may have the seemingly unfortunate circumstance that comes with high-level thinking to be aware of death as we are. How we perceive death shapes our lives. On a collective level, most of the suffering and cruelty that occurs within humanity is rooted in a denial or fear of death. Deeply facing this, though, can lead to more meaning and enhancement of the experience while we are here.

 

10. Always in Motion

Through time and space everything in this world is in constant motion.

Change does not require a plan, life is change. Intentional transformation happens when there is enough pressure, presence, and permission. We do not separate thought from movement, language from form, or emotion from matter. Even if we freeze or try to stand still, it’s impossible. The movement is out of our hands.

 

11. Chaos is not the enemy

Nothing grows without tension.

This is not a feel-good space. It is a held space. Tension, contradiction, silence, chaos—all of it is welcome. Nothing is guaranteed. But nothing is wasted. There are no promises here. But there is space. Space to listen. To move. To bring the problem and see what it becomes when it’s not trying to be solved. Thresholds are sacred. This is not a spiritual bypass or a New Age healing ritual. It is a grounded, embodied, unpolished encounter with the real. We want surprises. If we knew everything that was going to happen and had total control our lives would be so boring. 

 

12. Sacred Structure

Containment can be a cage or a vessel.

The Buddah had one possession and that was a bowl. Structure is what allows us to hold and create the tangible reality and just like anything it can harm us or help us. Structure is sacred when it serves the truth. Strategy is a magic spell. However you spend your time is how you spend your life.

 

13. The Only Way Out is Through

Healing is not a straight line, and it’s never really over.

When you get a bruise or a cut, you don’t assume you’re done healing forever. Healing isn’t always soft or short and it is mostly unconscious. Beyond rest and maybe keeping the wound clean, there’s not much to do. Not all change comes from digging through pain. Sometimes it comes from noticing what’s already alive—and choosing to feed it. We focus on what’s holding, what’s true, what’s quietly working in our favor, and we amplify that. Not to bypass pain, but to anchor resilience. We accept what is, as we perceive it, and make choices. Humor is holy and helpful. As Charlie Chaplin said, “Life is a tragedy when seen in closeup, but a comedy in longshot.”