We’re at the end of our maps.

This is liminal territory. New life is emerging. Our old maps don’t work anymore.

Welcome to “confusionism”, as Gabriel Lovemore calls it. He says,

“Confusion is not comfortable. But certainty is the obstacle. When we think we know, we stop receiving. The cup is already full.

‘In deep transformation, in systemic change, dead knowledge gets in the way. What we need is not more information.

“What we need is the capacity to sense what’s actually happening before our mind gets a chance to organize it into something familiar.

“Our confusion is not a symptom of insufficient information or inadequate intelligence. It is an accurate response to a situation that genuinely exceeds our inherited frameworks.

“Confusion, held with honesty, is a form of attention. And attention is what this moment asks of us. Certainty is the trap.”

As I see it, certainty is only one part of the cultural programming trap we’re swimming in. The three parts I see are our beliefs and expectations that we can be, and “should” be:

1)     expert, knowing everything,

2)     “right”, not “wrong”,

3)     certain, with no doubt or curiosity.

Together, those three beliefs/positions create a dead end in which new life can’t show up or flourish. Can you see how this metacrisis gives us a chance at real life, new life?

Michael Meade has some wisdom about this in “The Soul of Change”:

“. . . we are in a collective rite of passage that seeks to awaken the spirit of humanity and stir the creative depths of our souls.  Waking our underlying self and soul gives us purpose and creative agency and can also awaken hidden potentials in the world.  

“. . . Although chaos in the outside world creates stress and anxiety inside us, our souls naturally see periods of upheaval as the exact time for us to grow from within . . .” (Emphasis mine)

This unraveling time is an unparalleled opportunity to grow or make more soul in ourselves and in the world.

Along these lines, Angell Deer says “You Cannot Brainstorm a Soul”:

“. . . the old plan is already dying inside us. We can feel it going. And what’s trying to emerge through us in its place doesn’t have a shape yet, doesn’t have a name yet, doesn’t have a map.

“. . . That’s not us failing. That’s us being asked, by the times themselves, to dream something our minds have no reference for.

“. . . the world we planned for with the mind isn’t the world that’s arriving. And the world that is arriving needs dreams with deeper roots than any five-year plan has ever grown . . . When the map stops working, the territory itself becomes the teacher.” (Emphasis mine)

He offers practices and programs to grow and make more soul in ourselves and in the world.

Suzanne Anderson’s Mysterial Woman 1/15/26 email post gives this view of what growing and making more soul requires:

 “. . . practice in holding a living paradox . . . is the requirement of these threshold times that are so liminal, destabilizing, and formative. Times when old structures loosen faster than new ones can fully take shape. When the ground doesn’t quite hold the way it used to—and yet something new is clearly trying to emerge.

“These moments can . . . become accelerators of transformation—initiatory passages that invite real maturation, coherence, and emergence. . . .

“What makes the difference . . . [is] the inner orientation we bring to them. . . .

“ . . . the genetic blueprint for the next expression of humanity is already present, waiting to be released. . . .

“The work now is not to push harder—but to make space for emergence. . . .”

She also says “What feels like annihilation is often the very fire that releases the seeds of our next becoming."

She also offers practices and programs to grow and make more soul. 

As counter-intuitive as it sounds, “not knowing” is actually a power and a gift in our work now of making space for emergence and growing more soul. When we release the grip of thinking we already have (or “should have”) the answers and we let that “certainty” dissolve, we create space for new expressions of life to emerge.

Just as with a newborn baby, we can’t predict what these new expressions of life will look like or how they’ll develop. Our job is to offer love, nourishment, and the conditions for growth for all the ideas, possibilities, and new ways of relating that are trying to be born right now.

New paradigms and possible maps are emerging. The danger is that because of our discomfort and fears, we’ll try to hurry up and stuff them into our old maps and paradigms, or try to optimize and achieve our way into new life. If we (try to) do that, we’ll just be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Another example of a new paradigm and possible map is this webinar from the Club of Rome based on the article by Jude Currivan.

In Earth to Universe—Sunday Comic Beckett Johnson gives this view of what we’re doing in this process: 

Then in Creating Space For the Unknown: How To Invite Life’s Magic Into Your World, he says:

“Making space for the unknown isn’t about creating a vacuum where nothing happens. It’s about clearing a path so anything can happen, and creating an open invitation for the universe to surprise you. When you make room, you signal to life: “I’m ready for what’s next.”

Through all this, I keep remembering Maya Angelou’s wisdom:

“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”

What an amazing time to be alive, really alive!

If you’d like to have a conversation about any of this, just reply to this post or email me directly at elaine@culturalbutterflyproject.com.