Following a very old path to self-actualization

Right now, I've got three main ideas/paradigms I'm playing with, and am so excited to have you along with me for the ride.

Below is a quick summary of those paradigms, and some rough thoughts on what they look like, to me:

Envolution

Kabbalah would say that the core "experience" of "human-ness" is "self-actualization" (self-sovereignty).
It would define "self-sovereignty" as the process of aligning divine experience (rather than divine will, which is too fatalistic for us Jews), our feelings (both emotional and somatic), our thoughts/beliefs, and our creation.
Critically, Kabbalah teaches that creation, into the space of community, is our deepest purpose. It is not enough to align our thoughts and feelings with divine inspiration. You must channel those three into some form of creation that is authentically yours, and then allow that creation to be received by others.
The Kabbalistic Tree of Life is a blueprint for that creative process.
The "blueprint" can be read from the bottom up (as it often is in eastern practices, most commonly captured by the Kundalini energetic process, but also captured by the Hebrew "Livnot", which translates as "to build" (as in to build a building) or the English "evolution". Other synonyms are "transcendence" and "enlightenment".). The bottom up process is typified by the movement toward the divine by transcending (leaving behind of the ego, personal desires, and the material world) this world, and moving toward a "higher consciousness".
The blueprint can also be read from the top down (called "bhukti" in eastern practices or "Laldet" in Hebrew. The English word for this is "envolution".) The top down process is typified by the opening up of self, to allow divine energy to flow in and become real in this world.
Put perhaps differently: Imagine your mind/body/heart (you) are a room. Across the room is a door. In a guided meditation, you are asked to go across the room and open the door. The Livnot/Kundalini/Evolution path would tell you to step across the door and discover what is there. Maybe divine and oneness!
The Laldet/Bhukti/Envolution process would ask you to step back from the threshold and see what comes inside. Allow the divine in!
While this creative process can be brought to life in both directions, Kabbalah traditionally teaches it from the top down, Laldet.
For our purposes, we're going to call this by the English "Envolution"

Nature Paradigm and the Chain of Custody

Speaking in broad terms, society currently values the Enlightenment Paradigm:

Order
Structure
Understanding
Scientific Inquiry
"I only believe what I can prove"
"The goal is to remove uncertainty"
Efficiency
"Optimize your day/week/life"
Biohacking
Stem-based Education
The Abandonment of the Liberal Arts
Machine Learning
Algorithm
Prediction

This isn't a bad thing, per se. Lots of amazing things have come from the human exploration of knowledge through the scientific/rational.
At the other pole sits what I'm going to call the Nature Paradigm:

Randomness
Unpredictability
Birth and Death
The Lunar Calendar
Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer
Aging
Poetry and Jackson Pollock Paintings

To understand the Nature Paradigm most clearly, I offer this:

There is no difference between having coffee with a friend in person vs over Zoom, except everything.
There is no difference between sending a sick relative a get-well email vs a hand-written get-well card, except everything.
There is no difference between door-dashing Lamb Korma vs making it yourself, except everything.
Zoom, email, and door-dash live in the Enlightenment Paradigm, and would scold us for the inefficiency of in-person meetings, hand-written cards, and cooking a meal.
Even if we're not able to explain it rationally, the Nature Paradigm knows - we know, we feel - that something critical, something that sits at the very core of what it means to be human, is lost when we lose that in-person je-ne-sais-quoi. And yet we lose more of it every day.

So, as a second (exploration? value?), we ask "What would it be to live in unbroken, tangible, electromagnetic connection with each other (and ourselves! and G-d!)?" What does it look like to, at a minimum, live from the Nature Paradigm, only occasionally dipping our toes into the Enlightenment Paradigm?
Because the goal is to remain an unbroken chain of energy, I call this framework "The Chain of Custody".

Abstraction and The Great Unburdening

Similar to (but not identical to) the Enlightenment Paradigm is the Objective Paradigm.

Where the Enlightenment Paradigm is concerned with knowledge/understanding, the Objective Paradigm is concerned with perceptible truth.
Objective Paradigm might ask "What happens if", but is only concerned with what can be seen/measured, rather than any effects on outside observers. Think, perhaps, of a detective who asks "Well, what happened here?" When the reply comes "Well, this happened, this happened, and this happened, and then I felt scared...", the detective might reply "Just stick to the facts...". The Objective Paradigm has no concern for the felt or emotional experience of a thing, only the objective "visible" reality.

At the opposite pole, we the Abstract Paradigm, the felt, connective experience not based in Objective Reality.

Here, think of an abstract painting, maybe a Jackson Pollock or Clyfford Still that moves you deeply, reveals something about who you are, but it totally divorced from some representation of "objective reality".

In this exploration, we recognize that machine, algorithmic, and artificial thinking is quickly overtaking the human capacity to hold "objective reality". Our minds, as we well know, are not particularly adept at holding "objective truth".
So as machines surpass us in this capacity, we must ask ourselves "If we are not our ability to understand the world objectively, what does it mean for us to understand the world - ourselves, our lives, our relationships - through the lens of abstraction?
Put differently, if AI unburdens us from needing to hold the truth in an objective way, what does it look like for us to lean into an abstract/modernist approach to life and creation?
Right now, the best structure I have for articulating what might be included here are (classically) liberal values, although that structure might change as we dive in deeper.

Summary

We are exploring an envolutive Model of Creation
Within the container of the Minyan (community): Co-creation
Where what is created is the fullest, integrated manifestation of each individual member
Where we lean into the Paradigm of Nature
Through the Framework of The Chain of Custody
And we grow through the Abstract Paradigm
Through the expression of Liberal Values

For shorthand, let's wrap the whole thing (above) into a (process? way of being? life-path?) called nVolution™.

Don't worry if none of the above makes sense (yet). 1) I have spent the past year teaching a lot of this, and 2) I've only begun to scratch the surface myself.

There's so much to explore here, and I'm excited!

Want to learn more?

Following an Ancient Path to Self-Actualization