Author: Yvet Youssef

Constitute Creation

Yvet Youssef

Me thinking about AI and the future of human creativity.

As someone who has always needed creative expression to make sense of my world and to feel connected to myself, the idea of pressing a button to generate a book, a song, or an elaborate work of art makes me shiver in despondency.

At the same time, I have studied history enough to know that every technological advancement was seen at the time of its arrival as the demise of our humanness:
The written word was the end of our human capacity to memorize – and thus – *embody* culturally meaningful texts. The telephone ruined our letter writing skills. Television killed the radiostar. Still, here we are.

For everything that changes, some things are lost. And everything always changes.

A while ago I was amused by Spotify’s AI translation of lyrics to a song by the band Goat. The woman narrating the intro to the song (‘To Travel the Path Unknown’) speaks the words: “constant creation.” But the AI interpretation (because of the echo & reverb) turned it into: “constitute creation.”* And that struck me, – like an instruction.**

It is not the result – the material product of my creative labor that gives me a sense of wellbeing; it is the process of creating itself, – the flow of energy that moves through me in the moment of creative labor. And whatever the piece turns out to become; it is the energy I placed within it that gives me sense of joy or understanding when I later see/read/hear the work I’ve made. I infused it with my own essence, and that’s the true value of it.

The opposite of creation is; destruction, but also, non-existence. So my humanness, my aliveness, is constituted by me BEING creation itself rather than being someone who is creative. The latter is an identity marker I gladly dress myself up in, the first is a fundamental principle of my existence. And I suppose that’s a possible paradigm shift catalyzed by the advent of AI. That we must BE ~ embody ~ merge with ~ our creative capacity, here and now, eye to eye, locally and physically, completely present. Not for profit, not for the sake of sales or competition, or so-called temporary “successes” or “achievements,” no, – for Life.

Could it be that it requires an artificial intelligence take-over to push us completely back into our own creative constitution? So far, the trajectory of these technologies seems to be about disembodiment. Moving from body (physical labor), to mind (mental labor), to machine assisted labor, to, currently, an externally located collective database (posthuman labor). We have nearly cut ourselves out of the equation. If the pendulum swings, do we then ricochet back into our bodies? Where else can we go? The body in the present moment as a ‘last resort’ that turns out to be exactly where we need to be?

It’s a thought I’ve been having. I am pretty sure that such a shift in the way we engage with our human creative potential will allow for a freedom and surge of energy unlike anything we’ve seen before. Because that’s also been a historical pattern. I do generally enjoy reaching for the possible ideal more than I like wallowing in anticipation of every possible dystopia. It is precisely my humanness that enables such a vision and that can proceed to create enthusiastically from that spirit.

* The AI has since (auto?)corrected this typo, making me feel giddy I caught it because it brought me a lot. Typos often bring me a lot. Which is another essay altogether: The fruit of failure and the magic in mistakes.

** By the way: The full intro to the song ‘To Travel the Path Unknown’ by Goat is worth mentioning here. It goes like this: “There is only one true meaning of love, and that is to be a positive force in the constant creation of evolution” – that is also an instruction, no matter how daunting the world around us may feel. Which makes me think of a Massive Attack song that’s been perpetually stuck in my head since 1998: “Love, love is a verb, Love is a doing word, Fearless on my breath.” A solid mantra for that unknown path into the future.

Energetically Speaking

Yvet Youssef

1. (July 2022)

I am unquantifiable life force pulsating through matter in mysterious ways. I don’t want your labels nor hourly wages. I am worth multiplicity and boundlessness. It’s a strange experience to live in a reduced container of possibility as such. I look around in sheer disbelief at the human willingness to live less. Subnatural circumstances, artificial intelligences, systemic imbalances, and constant inflation.

Inflation is worth-less-ness. It is a human invention. Because *nothing* in actuality is ever worth less than the quality it holds. It’s a game, you see, and everyone is losing. It would be funny if it weren’t so painfully unnecessary. The human experience teetering at the edge of a cliff.

If there is a desire to live, and live well, tilt your weight towards the Earth. Hold on to a tree. Collaborate with fungi. Learn from lichen. Get cellular signal from your own body. Call everyone you know from that place, howling loudly, without shame. We do need you on the edge of that cliff, growing roots from the soles of your feet and into the soil, like a tree seemingly defying gravity, but held in place firmly by the grace of equilibrium.

2. (April 2022)

I don’t want to make sense
I want to make waves
I want neon discomfort to shoot from your finger to your toe and I want that discomfort to remind you of something and to recalibrate your next move in alignment with your essence

I want to bewilder and confuse in fluorescent flashes
From your finger to your toe all the way into that wired arpeggio circuit in your skull cave
I want you to be brave
Meaning full of fear in the direction of the thing that frightens you most for the sake of something more free and bright

Remember you’re a descendent of exploding stars
Chief Executive Officer of Starlight Innncorrrrporrrated
Meaning you orate from your body and you tell us what you Know

The Imaginer

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I once heard someone say:
“I am very imaginative, it’s fun,
But in all seriousness,
That isn’t worth very much”

And I thought: How did we get here?

Somewhere, at some point, somebody imagined
That a thought is separate from the imagination
And thus imagined a hierarchy
Where thought became king
And imagination its infantile servant –
Cute, but
Unnecessary

Such rational hubris
Gave rise to a dull factocracy
With dimly lit fact-orat-ories
Grey buildings lined with concrete statues
Of Our Masters of Maturity
Depicted as an adult male in a suit with his eyes gauged out
Our holy man of bureaucratic correctness selling you security in exchange for your essence
You can’t aspire to be like him
You can only achieve his status by reliquishing all creative agency
And undoing yourself from aspiration altogether
By un-spiriting yourself
And dutifully committing your life to the mechanic blandness of intellectual control-rooms

And to every vivid sparkly weirdness that anyone dares to utter in your presence you will speak the mandatory adage:
“That’s not realistic”
“No”
“That’s just not realistic”

All this remains a perpetual plague of confusion
Warped into lifelong inferiority complexes
In every dreamy child there ever was
[Yes, that means every child there ever was]

Oh My God
We managed to create hell in paradise
We have management teams for that
(And they collect our taxes)
An astonishing accomplishment
…when you stop to think about it

What’s the imagination worth
If not our entire sense of past and future
How we conceive our selves, our world
And every relationship

We live in the imagined future of those that came before us
We imagine our selves and each other into evolutionary motion, together
The dream preceding destiny

Notice the implicit responsibility therein
To imagine far and wide and very well
For the sake of everything that’s still possible

EMBODIMENT

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1.

I don’t want to be anywhere other than in this body right now. In every ache and tense muscle. In every uncomfortable step. In every fluid movement guided by a melody somebody was kind enough to create. I want to dance in ever expanding circles. Slow and sensual. Wild animal like. Unrestrained. Unlearning each day these strange restrictions we placed on physical movement. Unlearning inhibitions. Unlearning the last ties to shame for having a body at all.

What an incredible miracle to have this precious flesh to move around in. These beautiful bones linked to one another so precisely and with such care. The tenderness of tendons and ligaments holding everything in place just so. The sweet regeneration of cells. How much this body sustains and facilitates. How much this body loves me.

Thank you feet, thank you knees, thank you thighs and hips and belly, thank you vulva, thank you red organic organs, thank you heart, thank you arms and fingers, thank you spine, thank you neck and skull and brain, thank you skin and hair and nails, thank you nose and ears and eyes and tongue, thank you voice, thank you gravity, thank you space. I am none of these things. I am in lifelong relationship with all of these things. How do I care for this body as much as this body cares for me?

And see, then, how the notion of body expands, in wider and wider circles, to encompass all matter within and all around. I want to embrace embodiment with such enthusiasm I re-member myself as every living thing. And so, to live, completely.

2.

I am a self-facing performance
Looking in on an amalgamation of patterns
Singularity and multitude depending on the way the camera focuses

I want to meet you, but get caught in my own way sometimes
My arms reaching while my eyes look swiftly over your shoulder
I notice how often we hug each other (closeness)
And then upon moving out of the embrace we avoid each other’s gaze (distance)
But I want to look you in the eye as we separate
Maybe something about two bodies disentangling is too painful to acknowledge
The fundamental grief of humanness is that we cannot merge our-selves completely
(Oh, we try, we try, it’s nice, but
You come, and go
And I have to go to the bathroom)
I will never know you wholly
I can just revere your holiness

In solitude I deep-dive easily into metaphysical overview
It’s peaceful there and it’s resolved like God
Cradling the whole thing
Except
That work is already done
It’s already been completed

Now it’s about meeting
And being met
Now it’s how my human heart sets itself ablaze in the profound mystery of the Other
Reconciliation of difference
A balancing between physicality and Spirit
Presence and absence
Love and the false void of human suffering
(Real or not real; it matters very little in the realm of experience)

I am an open book with some pages still stuck together from bad weather over time
(Humid, cold fucking cellars and poor maintenance)
I will tell you my story and you may tell me your story
And I will close my eyes to see your life move like a picture reel in front of me
And this is how we tie our separated threads
Together

I Love You
It’s the bravest thing I have to offer
A steady safe plateau floating in a vast particle sky
A pliable Universe in every possible direction
Raise the sails, unanchor your plans
This – is going to be fun

One Hand Washes The Other

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“One hand washes the other,” someone said to me years ago when I bought an old car from him for less than it was worth but all I could afford. It’s been a phrase I’ve thought about a lot. It’s sometimes distorted in superficiality: Quid pro quo. “We strike a deal that benefits us both”. But it always sounded much more profound to me than a smart arrangement to gain some profit. It sounded to me like a fundamental truth about life itself.

I am not anyone without the other. We witness and help each other grow. A collaborative effort. A co-operation. We are all elements of life unfolding. Of creation itself. And thus, we are interconnected.

In Buddhism this principle is also called “interdependent arising” – everything exists because of everything else. A giant web of InterBeing. Oneness.

I have been supported and guided and encouraged by others. I have teachers and mentors. I am alive and well only because of other people. The internal and external are intertwined like that. They cannot be separated.

“One hand washes the other.” With that phrase in mind I started working on a degree program in Integrative Counseling last year. What can I do to be of service? What is most needed in the world right now that I can offer?

I believe what is most needed in the human experience right now is conscious connection. To ourselves, each other, our planet, our purpose. As an Integrative Coach and Counselor in training, that is a process I can witness and support for other people. I can’t do the work for anyone; the journey towards connection to Self is a deeply personal one, but I can be present for it. As others were present for me when I needed that.

Ram Dass once said: “All you can do for another person is be an environment in which if they wanted to come up for air, they could”.

When I first read those words my heart started glowing; that is what pure love sounds like. It is also the essence of any form of counseling to me. A place to come up for air, to remember yourself, to allow for things to shift if they need to shift.

It is my ongoing responsibility to clear up my environment to be able to welcome others for a cup of oxygen if they so choose. Imagine if everyone would work towards that goal? What would our world look like? I joyfully uphold and unfold that vision into reality.

For more information about my work as an integrative coach check out the page on Clarity Sessions. If you have questions, feel free to reach out through this contact form.

Collective Grief Work

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If we do not grieve, as human beings, our Soul dies.
If we do not express our fury, it metastasizes.
If we do not rage against injustice, injustice will eat us alive, one by one.

There are different types of anger. James Baldwin (one of the most visionary writers in U.S.-American history) distinguished between 2 types of anger: The anger that stems from fear and the anger that rises up from a person in the face of oppression and injustice.

We have to learn to recognize the difference. Within ourselves and in other people. You can feel the difference if you pay attention.

A Black woman yelling that Black Lives Matter holds a different anger than a white man yelling at protesters that they should be arrested. The first is a righteous, justified, holy response to oppression. It is real. The second is an expression of fear: the fear of losing control, or power; the fear of disruption of the status quo. It’s “anger” as a placeholder for something else.

James Baldwin said: “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain”.

That pain – underneath it all. If we do not address that pain, if we repress it in an attempt not to feel it, our Soul dies. Once our Soul is numb and deadened, we are capable of so much violence. As individuals and as a collective.

Look at the state of our Earth, our societies. How much harm we cause each other and our planet. One of the reasons this destruction is possible is because we have – for generations upon generations – refused to deal with pain. It is like we have repressed grieving for so long we barely even know where to begin.

The reluctance or refusal to feel pain means to accept that this pain will be projected onto others instead. This is a natural law. We can’t escape this. Pain travels along in subtle or unsubtle ripples of violence if we do not scoop it up and address it, unfold it, sit with it, feel it. In family systems, social inequality, addiction, oppression, genocide or ecocide: It will boil up somewhere – and it will do harm. Everything is connected like that.

Here, my (only) hope for our world is this: May we grieve. Feel the discomfort. Feel the unbelievable sorrow of all the harm we have done to others and the harm that was done to us. It’s a prerequisite for accessing true joy or peace. We have to go through it.

I am the descendant of oppressors and the oppressed. Both of those lineages carry so much pain. It is messy and complex. May I feel it and move through it to release it. May I live unafraid of discomfort.

This is a matter of accountability. Maturity. Care. And ultimately: A matter of Liberation. For everyone.

Paradise Is Here

Yvet Youssef

I bow down and kiss the ground in gratitude. Searching for something? Look around you. Touch the soil. Gently place your hand on the bark of a tree and close your eyes. Feel the caress of the breeze on your skin. Listen for the melodies rising from the Earth. We get to live here for a while. Does that not blow your mind?

How we have managed to live lifetimes of bondage in rigid social contracts of disconnection remains a mystery to me.

No more. I am done. I am done struggling for a false sense of belonging to a system I distrust. If it makes me recoil there’s something wrong with it. If it makes me expand it’s the right path. That’s my compass. And I will not settle for anything less to make others feel more “comfortable” – undisturbed in normalized states of perpetual covert depression.

Because Paradise is here. It’s all around us. So is hell; it is created in the human mind and projected into material reality under the watchful gaze of human suffering seeking to multiply itself. I have felt myself at times drowning in it. But if the trees can still bear fruit, if the seeds can still grow, if the desert can still produce flowers; so will I.

[This writing first appeared on my Instagram account (@yvet_youssef) in November of 2018. Sometimes I need to remind myself.]

So IL

Yvet Youssef

The open space
The sun-hours
The rock formations
Driving with The War On Drugs blasting from a crappy car stereo on an empty highway
The awe-inspiring storms
The lightning bugs
The jukeboxes in dive bars
The rawness of everything

I lived in the United States for most of my adult life. It feels so far away these days. Dissociative recollection. Like a strange dream. I can’t follow any news about it anymore because it feels so out of my hands. Out of my hands now. I say: “God bless America” out loud and really mean it, because boyohboy could it use some blessings. It’s out of my hands on so many levels.

Still, everyday, a handful of memories place me right back in Shawnee National Forest in golden sunlight, or on the edges of Cedar Lake, Highway 51 to a friend’s house, Longbranch coffeeshop and a quick trip to Goodwill to get some outrageous $2 sweater I might not ever wear, the purple trailer, boys running on the back porch, the corner of that old couch with a cat purring on my legs. Out of my hands but still woven through the pronunciation of every word I speak, the ways in which I see the world, how I smile at strangers.

And it’s funny, for it is such a difficult country to live in. Social conditions are so harsh, cruel sometimes. And yet, I became so much softer there. Every seed of sweetness in me grew sprouts while I lived on that land. Not because of it, maybe, but through it, perhaps, somehow, inextricably together. Those seeds continue to grow; I will make sure they keep on growing.

And I say: “Y’all Folks take real good care of yourselves out there now, ya hear me?” And I hope you hear me. And I hope you do.

A Dark Night, A Dawning

Yvet Youssef

Once, in a tense room, palpable dark energy, gloom and suffering surrounding us. Turmoil like a storm that just refused to pass. A room I had made for rest and sweetness, suddenly so heavy.

And in that unbearable weight I looked around me in disbelief. Looked at a person I loved more than I had ever loved anyone as the whirlwind of chaos seemed to spring from the ground beneath his feet. And the only words that I could speak: “This is not my frequency. This isn’t mine. This is not my frequency.”

He told me to leave. And at a certain point you just have to listen even if it’s not making any sense. At a certain point you just have to believe the frequency.

I took a long path down to the bottom of everything. I took my time. And all the way down there, what had appeared to be a solid impermeable ending turned out to be liquid. I stuck my hand through like they do at strange portals in sci-fi movies, baffled. On the other side was an open space, a receptacle of Everything that’s ever been and ever will be, and it was all Love. Just Love. So I began laughing through the tears. There isn’t anything to fear here.

That relief, like a secret, found in the depths of pain; it has forever changed me. You have to let your heart break first. You have to be willing to lose everything. Surrender to it. As the Sufi mystics say: You have to burn down your house, chop off your head, lose your mind. And then: Freedom. And there: Love. One has to chuckle at the simplicity of it all, and how torturous the path towards it can be.

I create from my experience. I take the tuning forks to my heart until I reach a clarity. This is my work. My only real work: To eradicate all barriers that prevent me from experiencing and expressing Love. It’s an ongoing journey. I don’t delude myself with thoughts about arriving somewhere. That’s not the point right now. My objective is growth. Evolution. That’s the frequency I want to harmonize with. To move. To keep my heart wide open and dance with whatever arises.

There is healing to be found in this world. I just have to release the palms of my hands from the tight grips of control to be able to receive it. There isn’t anything to fear here. Breathe easy for a moment. This moment. Plant a flag here. Mark it with highlighter and neon post-its and fairy lights. Adorn it with flower and song. Remember this.

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Speaking Words of Wisdom Without Having to Die First

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We tend to gobble up wisdom from dead 13th century poets. From deceased men we call philosophers whose work is nestled safely in the stone strata of our human history. We celebrate the wise sages who can no longer speak back. We like our wisdom antiquated, with a layer of dust that we can feel proud to wipe away before somebody else did. “Look what I found; a profound word, it’s so old!”

But wisdom, spoken from living mouths, feminine, passionate, creative, poetic, loud and confident, sensual and vital, alive – iiieeekkkkk oooh nononono… suddenly wise words evoke staggering, heals in sand, stubborn arms crossed, scorn, ridicule and judgement.

“Don’t you think you are a little arrogant for saying that?”
“You sound so sure of yourself, you think you’re all that?”
“I don’t like it when people speak like they know some sort of truth.”
“It’s not that you are wrong, it’s just that you think you are right that’s problematic.”
“Ugh, you sound so teacherly, it’s really annoying.”
“I am just so allergic to those vague spiritual terms.”

And so we float around in pools of ad hominem fallacies. The grand orchestra of silencing the living, so that they refrain from shining too brightly, too confidently, too much empowered. “Nobody shall at any point here think they have something of real value to add to the conversation,” as we raise our hands and take an oath of mediocre superficiality for the sake of all things mundane and undisturbed.

I suppose a dead poet’s words of wisdom have transcended the chains of personality, of character flaw; their words now live on their own in a timeless vacuum of abstracted knowledge. But, they arose in a living human, a real person just like you and me. Not a saint, not an exclusive-collector’s-item-edition of the human form, not a special rarity: A real person. A poet is a living being. A mystic is a living being. A philosopher is a living being. They are not separate from us.

Wisdom is not something anyone can own. It is something we can choose to tap into, to cultivate a relationship with, to grow towards. What name do you want to give it? Awareness, Consciousness, Presence, Loving-Kindness, Divinity, Spirit, Unconditional Love? Whatever word you want to use, it is never dispensed for the sake of personal gain… not if it’s true wisdom (because, again, nobody owns it!) That is not to say that people cannot earn a living from sharing wisdom, or that all philosophers, witches, sages, truth-tellers and mystics should live in destitute poverty in order to be taken seriously. Nah, that’s an old-school myth rooted in a paradigm of scarcity and lack. It’s time to move on.

The intention of sharing wisdom is always loving. Have teachers and gurus abused their power? Yes. Remove them from their pedestals. Obliterate hierarchies with a spirit of Radical Equality. That means you do not place anyone above or below you; it means you do not place yourself above or below anyone. That’s not to say we cannot point out when shit is messed up. Compassion is not coddling or infantilizing. It just means we recognize and respect the inherent worth of life in all its forms. Learn what you can from those who offer their teachings to you. Don’t dwell for too long in resentment around the wrongdoings perpetrated by human suffering. Inquire into the nature of that suffering, look it in the eye, see where it is coming from. Recognize that same pain within you so that you can make the choice not to pass it unwittingly along to others. The most honorable job in the world and, I believe, our greatest responsibility.

Understand that the age of esoteric exclusivity is over. You don’t need some sort of membership to an elusive secret society shrouded in mysterious shadows to know a thing or two about the grand scheme of things. No. The field of mystic knowledge is wide and open, and anyone can at all times choose to walk around there to touch its vibrant dancing grasses. We all have access to wisdom. It’s the very same source those deceased mystics and poets tapped from: A collective consciousness, a Universal Truth, simple, clear, all-encompassing: Love. That’s it. Do blockages to this Love exist within us? Yes. Do we sometimes stubbornly refuse to feel it? Oh, hell yes. Do we still have access to it if we are willing to open the window a little bit? Absolutely.

The reason why these living mouths, these luscious humans, these blood-pumping-sweet-hearts would even dare to speak words of wisdom, is to further the human cause. It’s for the sake of Evolution. It’s for the sake of Everything and Everyone. We need each other to grow and heal and evolve. That’s what I know I came here to do. And I want your heart-glowing-sparkling-wisdom, sweet one. You show me yours and I’ll show you mine. Let us infuse each other’s wise words, weave ourselves into the fabric of our shared existence. So we can Love each other and ourselves as fully and deeply as we can muster in courageous tenderness. I am not asking for much; just everything you are, just your soul-fire, just your reasons for Being. Thank you very much.