My new Podcast: Being Underwater
I am excited to announce the launch of a new project, my own podcast: Being Underwater.
In this series I interview people who have an interest in „inner work“. These are people who have a practice of exploring their interior landscape — physical sensations, emotions, thought patterns — in a deliberate way. Some also actively develop their spiritual connections, their felt sense of being alive and being part of a larger universe.
My interest in inner work has a very personal dimension, which I will talk about briefly in the intro to the podcast. However, it also stems from a much larger societal concern: on the surface, the current transition to a global-digital age seems to be an outer, technologically and economically driven phenomenon. But over the last decade I have become convinced that digitisation is much deeper than that: it represents a new frontier in the consciousness of humanity. It is this change that I want to explore.
In a decentralised, highly fluid, and accelerated world, stable structures, such as markets, workplaces and identities, are dissolving. With this transition, the world enters a new phase of instability and uncertainty. No wonder, I myself and so many people around me are feeling overwhelmed, anxious, disoriented. Our inner structures, largely formed in the national-industrial age, haven’t caught up to this outer complexity.
I believe digitisation and globalisation are exerting a huge evolutionary pressure, partly luring, partly forcing us to grow up and mature psychologically and spiritually. We need to meet the complexity of the outside world with enough interior space so that we are able to host this complexity within us.
What does it feel like to be YOU?
But what does that mean in practice? In these conversations, I ask my quests how they experience the current time and what kind of changes they observe in themselves. What does it feel like to be YOU? We create maps of inner experiences and explore the range of states and stages of our subjectivity. I want to learn what kind of language and concepts are useful, what tools do people use to deepen their experiences and enquiries? And how do they include this inner dimension in their relationships or in their professional life?
The first season will be in English with native English-speakers, as I am collaborating with the US podcast producer Siena Powers. The second season, scheduled for Spring 2020, will be in German.
One last note on the title of the podcast. “Being underwater” refers to the state that the American poet Ben Lerner advises his students to enter during the creative process. He speaks about diving below the surface of everyday consciousness and writing from a fluid space of intuition and emergence. At the same time, in his novel 10:04, “being underwater” also alludes to the approaching ecological catastrophe, and a New York flooded by mega storms. For me, this dual meaning of the very material environmental dangers we are facing, combined with the power of the creative human mind, is a perfect metaphor for my intention with this Podcast.
If you want to keep up to date, follow us on Instagram, or check out the website here. The first episode will be released on the 21st of October.
