I can't take credit for this post.

Today’s post came out of a short talk I gave over the weekend. That is available to paid subscribers here. If you can’t afford a paid subscription and want one, send me a message and I’ll give you one, no questions asked.Above is a guided meditation. Below is me reading the essay that follows:I was sitting with a group of friends at a retreat I was teaching this week and one of them was an incredible musician. She’s really, really talented and I adore her music. Someone else in the group began to showcase some songs he had created using an AI music generator. The songs were good… annoyingly good. And my musician friend was very upset about this.That’s right, AI is coming for your job. Not just your job, but your ideas, your unique contribution to the world, maybe even your purpose in life. At least, this is what we fear.All this AI generated content has really gotten me reflecting on creativity and where it comes from. When we have creative inspiration, are we really the ones generating it? There’s strong evidence that new ideas belong to no one: we’ve seen it again and again throughout history. Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn independently worked toward the discovery of nuclear fission at the same time as Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie in France. Darwin and Wallace were developing the same theory of natural selection simultaneously. Bell and Gray both filed telephone patents on the same day in 1876. There are countless examples of the same idea arriving in different places at the same time.Which raises a real question: who came up with them?If you look at how thoughts actually work — how inspiration actually works — you can see pretty quickly that you’re not doing it. It’s just happening. Spend thirty seconds watching your mind and you’ll see that you are not in charge of your thoughts. Thoughts come and go whether we want them to or not, much the way sounds arrive in our ear. And even when it feels like we’re the ones doing the thinking, if we look for the one who is doing the thinking, she can’t be found.So are you really the one who came up with that creative idea, or any idea for that matter? What if ideas don’t come from us, but through us? What if we’re just vessels, and when we open wide, universal creativity pours through?Your support helps tremendously. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.In order to open like this, we have to trust. We have to shift from a scarcity mentality to an abundance mentality. We have to stop competing with each other and start working together. We stop needing to be the one who had that idea, and merge with collective consciousness.Do you feel threatened by the thought of not taking credit for your creative ideas, or for anything that you accomplished? Is your livelihood, your purpose, or your identity challenged?Three years ago after my son was born, my friend Ofosu Jones-Quartey (Born I) and I were teaching a mindful parenting class, and he said something I’ll never forget. He said “Parenting is the ultimate renunciation. My life is for you now.” As I gave birth to my daughter a few months ago, I felt my entire body, heart, and mind; lurching with pain-pleasure ecstasy, back into that wondrous fertile void. The place where all creation comes from. My practice has become one of giving myself over, more and more, in service to others (especially my kids).Letting go of our sense of self into collective consciousness, reentering that stream, is not a loss. It’s what tears down the barriers of separation and competition that keep us from loving each other and working together towards creative solutions for the big problems of the world.When we release the need to protect our sense of self, it’s not that we stop having a purpose — it’s that all the painful parts of needing to have a purpose fall away. We’re left with an open heart which is no longer lonely. We’re ready to help, because all the energy that was going into fear and contraction is now available to love.I’m not saying everything about AI is good. AI has tremendous power, much like nuclear power. Nuclear power had the potential to give us an abundant, low-carbon source of energy for centuries, but its development was shaped from the start by fear and geopolitical competition rather than a shared commitment to human welfare — and we're still living with the consequences. So I can’t say whether AI is inherently good or bad, but what I do know is that if we approach all this change with deep fear and mistrust, and then double down into our sense of competition, we’ll never have the openness of heart needed to use it as a tool for good.I’ll circle back to something I said in my last post: what if this is exactly what should be happening? What if we meet the enormity of change that this technology is bringing with open hearts, and use it for good? What if AI is the instrument through which humanity finally thinks as one — pooling centuries of insight and compassion into something powerful enough to meet the world's deepest wounds?Again, I don’t know. What comes next is beyond anyone's knowing. But the quality of attention we bring to this moment shapes everything that follows. Trust creates conditions that fear never could.This gateway to the Vessel for the Universe— Open and stand back --- Who is writing this? It comes from the Fertile Void We all want creditMany thanks to Robert Kovar (and the universe) for these haikus which, he/the universe wrote. The first was in response to the talk that I gave on this subject over the weekend, the second came to him while he was on retreat, before that talk was even written. Mic drop.Upcoming Retreat at Omega Institute with Ofosu Jones-QuarteySpeaking of creativity, I’ll be teaching a retreat May 31st - June 5th with one of my favorite artists, who was mentioned in this post. Ofosu Jones-Quartey (Born I) and I will be teaching a retreat on radial self-compassion, and Ofosu will be offering sound baths. When Ofosu and I get together it gets weird pretty fast, so we’re excited for this one. Here’s the voice note Ofosu just texted me about it:Parenting as the Path meets todaySpeaking of Ofosu, we’ll be teaching our Mindfulness/Parenting class together online this afternoon, Tuesday March 17th from 4-5:30pm ET. We’ll be talking about anger, irritation, and impatience (yes, we have lots to talk about with this one). Whether you’re a parent, a caregiver, you’re parenting curious, or you just figuring out how to re-parent yourself, please join us. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caralai.substack.com/subscribe