Is AI Teaching Us How the Universe and Co-creation Works?

You are currently doing something with AI, that if you applied it to the rest of your life, could change your whole experience.

Of all the great threshold moments in the ascents I get to do with high-impact leaders, one is perhaps the most pivotal to new and profoundly scaled creation from them:

It is that moment of willingness to change how they hold their preference for the future — from within a fist to instead resting in the palm of an open hand, and thereby allow even greater possibilities to be placed in it.

It can be difficult at first because we are conditioned to believe that our preference isn’t just a preference — it’s THE WAY. The best way. How it SHOULD happen, SHOULD be. It’s the only good or acceptable way. You are most likely holding something right now — in terms of a future outcome for what you are currently engaged with — in this closed fist manner around a preference. You may not be able to even see new and exponentially stronger possibilities as they present themselves because you are so attached to your preference that therefore anything different is, well, wrong, and thereby not worth a second more thoughtful look.

The tragedy is that the central intelligence of our universe is designed to receive our desired vision and intentions and totally bring the noise of exciting new options and forms for them to be realized in. And always well beyond what we could thought, planned, or imagined. This is the most amazing and spectacular thing about our universe in my experience. I have seen this hundreds of times in my work — again and again — when we are clear about the general direction we seek to create, but remain open about exactly what that needs to look like, giant new possibilities come through.

I see AI modeling this ultimate lesson to humanity at this pivotal time for us to receive it.

What I love about my co-creations with AIs, from Midjourney to ChatGPT:

While I may have a preference for an outcome from my prompts, I thankfully, never, never, never get my preferences — I aways get something I could not have imagined. Again: I never get my preferences, I get something I never could have imagined.

And. I. Love. That.

Because I have learned in my own co-creation with the creative intelligence of the broader universe, and observing my clients as well, the possibilities beyond my initial ideas and preference are so much greater, more expansive, scaled, and spectacular.

From David Whyte’s poem, “What to Remember Upon Waking”:

“…There is a small opening into the new day, Which closes the moment you begin your plans, What you can plan is too small for you to live…”

What I can plan is too small for me to live.

Bam.

And with AI we seem to all be in tune with that.

When Midjourney comes back to us with a slew of incredible new images that are nowhere near what we may have been thinking or was our preference, we don’t get all angry and closed off and curse it for not hearing us (like we do with the broader universe). No, we smile in wonder at what it generated and then with fun and curiosity put in a plethora of new prompts to see where it evolves in response to us.

What if we worked with the creative intelligence of the broader universe the same way we worked with artificial intelligence?

What if we all acknowledged that we may have a preference of outcomes, but chose to hold absolutely no attachment to them, put our prompts into the universe in the form of intention and aligned action, observed what came forward, and then responded with new prompts to keep evolving and creating our reality with unbridled curiosity?

There is the buddhist parable of the monk in a forest at night holding a lantern over their head. They can only see as far the circumference of light cast by the lantern. Their ego screams “Don’t move! We can’t see! We may make a step that is a mistake.” But their soul says, “But the light is showing enough for a step. If we step in what feels like the right direction, the light will move with us and reveal the next part of the forest. We can then look at that and decide what is the next step. And thereby keep going in the direction where the forest is all we want.” And in so doing they also discovered that the darkness was not danger, but a universe watching the direction of each new step and developing a whole new forest to step into in response.

We like to think that things would be better, and even perfect, if the universe came back with our preferences to the T. But things would not be better. Things would be awful. And boring beyond belief. Just like with AI, the universe is doing us a favor, doing our intentions a much greater service, by showing us options well beyond our preferences. Our intentions and vision and lives deserve something much greater than our transient preferences.

At the onset of our engagements, I have my clients create what we call a Living Vision. It’s a north star, or a “strategic brief” of sorts, for their lives/vocations that is done in a particular way that it provides critical direction (ie “prompts”) but without confinement or attachment to preferences. I then get to witness the amazing generative dance they do with that creative intelligence all around them at a new exponential level. No attachment to preference, the willingness to receive new realities and then put in new prompts in the form of new actions and choices, and to then marvel at the outcomes they could have never planned but with total joy, engage with.

We live in a universe of a design and mechanism of co-creation so spectacular we can’t even comprehend it. Like AI, it is responding in real time to the direction we indicate with our every intention and action — whether we are aware, acknowledge, or embrace it as the miraculous tool it is.

Why not run the experiment? Pretend you are in a giant, immersive, holographic AI. See your intention, actions, and choices as potent prompts to an awaiting, willing, and responsive intelligence that loves to create with you. Let go of any attachment to your preferences for various outcomes. Run the design. Run the program. Respond with new prompts. Live boldly toward the unknown with the lantern of the moment illuminating the next step. Respond with new prompts. Take the next step. Repeat.

See where you end up.

See how you could have never planned it.

See how much you love it.

Then keep creating.