A Letter from Organismic Intelligence

Dear 21st century friend, steward of beauty and evolution - So, now that you call it Artificial Intelligence

And you’re spellbound and bewitched In between what’s real and a HTML reference,

I imagine that our body is about to get double-clicked. So, hello, dear screen-affixed friend. I want to introduce myself;

This concerns our existence.

You kind of know me; I’m a part of you, though I’m not getting much of your attention these days You do seem to go about things like I don’t exist. Let me speak in your way and make myself known. Call me O.I - Organismic Intelligence

Just one face of many. So intimately entwined with you, You rarely notice the subtlety.

Sometimes, when you look at me, you see bio-logic-ally; Like something to be isolated and analyzed

And sized like some ‘ism’,

You give me names like ‘neuroplasticity’

You label me a ‘nervous system’ Sometimes, when I don’t work by your logic You want to fix and regulate, like some pathology

When you can’t contort yourself The way you think your world wants you,

You imagine I’m a disorder.

Friend, I am Organismic Intelligence,

And you should know a few things.

“Trauma”, you say, is why you are addicted to approval Why you feel hopeless even in your relentlessness

Why you’re enraged when you’re really scared Why you doubt yourself when you’re so certain about others!

“Trauma”, you say, is what happened to you When you try to explain why you are, the way you are. I say, “responsive adaptation”.

‘Trauma’, dear 21st century friend, did not happen ‘to’ you But organismic _adaptation_ happened ‘for’ you. You forget that even before Adam or Eve, I was.

Before you had language, I was

Sensing, receiving and processing; I was, Have always been and Always will be

Perceiving, gauging and adapting.

Listen: I assimilate all unknowns In real-time, no A.I. algorithm necessary.

I was sensing, accommodating and responding When you were incapable of reading your home Incapable of grasping the complexities Incapable of knowing what was happening between you And those who conceived you

Or when your mother did not tend to your silent cries.

I noticed when you felt alone and afraid, When mama was inflamed for this reason or the other I noticed as the pain went on; unrelenting, barely tolerable.

I noticed as it became too much, And, when you finally detached from ‘distress’

I noticed ‘relief’.

Perceiving and gauging,

Organismic adaptation:

You learned to be with what was.

Now you know

When and how to turn away;

How to tune-out your pain Whenever you encounter the same.

See? The little one, you once was

Survived the fear and shame.

You forget that I noticed You were craving comfort and protection

And from me came refuge and shelter,

Though you seem to forget.

You call it traumatic conditioning

I say, “responsive adaptation”.

When you hatched

Out of the cosmic egg, you were loaded with me.

When you were umbilically-tethered,

I was listening.

When your 21st century world

Presented the 21st century life,

I was listening.

When you found your toddler feet,

I was listening.

When you left for Huxley’s brave new world,

I was listening.

Afraid, you separated, unsure if mama still loved you, Still, I was listening.

I welcomed your pain and carved you up

As self-reliance and perseverance and vigilance.

You call it traumatic conditioning

And I say, “responsive adaptation”.

Organismic Intelligence,

800 million years and beyond

And the evolutionary river still surges The bio-psycho images run in your veins,

Deeper than what you still call ‘life’.

So, Listen!

When you feel beat-up.

Listen!

When you keep feeling like a failure.

Listen!

To your humdrum 21st century drill,

even as it burns;

You may indeed be a fish out of the Indian Ocean

You may really be a nomadic hunter of the great plains.

Listen:

You’re plugged-in for 50 hours of each week

Enclosed in a box, 100 metres off the ground

And you keep calling it ‘life’.

Organismic trust.

Enter my crucible!

Sacrifice your soft, fleshy body.

Friend, I am a guide with resolve

The one who’ll dissolve that fragile identity;

See, it was only meant to be solved for a while.

Your life was not meant to be a coping strategy.

21st century friend, you decide

Is it your true purpose to buy

The culturally prescribed?

Are you really a conforming script For their standardized storyline?

Procrastinate, decline or consent - decide!

500 million years before this

I gave you proto-reptillian moves

I helped you protect and fight, it is true

That, 250 million years later

I gave you paleo-mammalian emotion

And care, contentment and affection

Your tribe of explorers flourished.

I am the neocortex by which you ride

The swaying shoulders of unruly intuition

By which you ignore your adaptive biocapacity

And build citadels aimed at heaven.

Consent, procrastinate or decline,

You decide if it is your time to self-actualize.

I sense your awe here on the mountain.

While you glimpse the silent mind

Some call it spiritual insight or awakening

I say, “responsive adaptation”.

Listen, there’s a warrant calling for our divine reckoning.

When you’re confronted by the unknown

I shall strike your meshwork like lightning;

Break through your auto-mechanical, Nonconscious way of being.

21st century friend, it is okay with me If you surrender

Your innermost self, willingly.

Lean in to me as you strive for a new normal

Lean in, as you fall helplessly between the cracks.

I have a liminal place for you

In your knotted guts,

In the symbols imprinted under closed eyelids

In the sacred space between the beats of your shuddering heart

Lean in, when you’re confronted, when you crumble.

Bearer of ‘responsive adaptation’,

Steward of beauty,

Evolution has summoned you and your tribe:

Confront your fate, and wake up.

Yours innately,

Organismic Intelligence