Seeing Beyond the Illusion of Separation – Diving into Quantum Complexity, by Giles Hutchins

As a modern humanity, we often pride ourselves on being cutting-edge across business, civil society, science and civilization. Though, truth be told, we’re engulfed in a 400-year-old operating system and worldview of Mechanistic Materialism (MM) that’s woefully outdated and totally inadequate for dealing with the level of complexity now upon us.

As we explored in Part One of this article, arising out of 17^th century Europe, and due to myriad contributing factors, the still dominant, yet dying, worldview of Mechanistic Materialism (MM) became prevalent with its built-in desire to assert control over life. It demands control because it fears change and unpredictability – the very qualities that make life what it is: ever-changing.  MM promulgates fear, projection, blame, polarization and war-mentality – a philosophy of hell that stunts us. It keeps us imbalanced and immature. 

In this Part Two article, we shall explore the newly emerging worldview of Quantum Complexity (QC) that supersedes the dominant, yet dying, worldview of Mechanistic Materialism (MM).

Diving Deeper into Quantum Complexity (QC)

Quantum physics has smashed open the clear-cut foundations of MM’s reductive rationalistic science, and there is now a significant groundswell of robust scientific thinking that acknowledges consciousness as imbued in all things. Nothing, it would seem, is separate from anything else. Nature (including human nature) is a diversity-within-unity. The transcendent unmanifest energetic ‘inner’ field of consciousness (mind) and the manifest immanent ‘outer’ physical forms (matter) are two sides of the same coin. 

The ‘outer’ immanence is the diverse multiplicity we can experience either as separateness through an overly rational-analytic ego-consciousness or as participatory through a receptive presencing experience of soul-consciousness.

Nature is not an ensemble of separate things. It is animated by a primordial energetic field that in-forms all energy forms, including non-matter energy forms, such as sound and electromagnetism (which includes the light spectrum). This emanation of energy from inner into outer works through harmonics and we have the ability to attune with this animating principle – this life-force – that is beyond the world of form and matter. (For more on the inner-outer harmonic and holographic nature of life see a previous book of mine Nature Works). This inner-outer way of perceiving the world is inherent in our indigeneity and is an important part of what makes us human, yet its been suppressed by MM.

The splitting of the immanent dimension (our normal five-sense space-time experience of modern life) from the transcendent dimension (the inner mind/energy/spirit underpinning and infusing the immanent realm of everyday experience detectable with extra-sensory perception and advanced equipment) is a hallmark of MM’s materialism. 

The suppression and dismissal of the inner transcendent dimension of reality (or the confining of it into a transcendent white-male ‘God’ separate from nature i.e. the fallacy of Heaven as separate from Earth) allows for the machine-mind to exploit the world around it without having to worry about sentience and a sense of the sacred.

By draining life of any interconnectedness, we create the lens of separateness, and desacralize life. This illusion we create with the fear-based ego and dominant left-hemisphere of MM, pulls us out of the philosophy of life and into the philosophy of hell, and enables consumer-capitalism’s technospheric hedonism to reign supreme. It permits all sorts of violations against life in the name of ‘progress’ – from plastics chocking our oceans, to millions upon millions of animals chained in factory-farm hell-holes, to child labor sweat-shops, to clear-cut chaining of pristine rainforests, to mind-numbing tick-toc titillations. We’re so inured, we even justify it as progress. 

The illusion of separation lies at the heart of our current crises, and provides the very pivot we need to right ourselves. There’s no other way through the carnage we’ve caused other than to wake up from the greatest of illusions.

This up-stretch beyond the illusion of separation is a transformative embodied shift into Future-Fitness that involves a reorientation in our being-and-knowing which I refer to as becoming intimate with the immanent and transparent to the transcendent. Its a profoundly liberating yet existential life-changing shift from Achiever to Regenerator which I coach and guide adults through.

‘Giles has been accompanying me on my regenerative leadership journey for over two years now, and through working with him, I have gained depth and substance. Giles is a blend of yin and yang energies: yang to wake me up when I resurface doubts, fears or limiting beliefs, and yin to listen, encourage and reassure me. Through him, I’ve learned the vital dance of feminine and masculine energies. Now I find myself moving forward with greater lightness and conviction in not just my work, but life in general. I definitely recommend working with Giles as a coach, as well as attending the immersive experiences he facilitates at Springwood: a must to live.’ Isabelle Jenny, Founder, Sulseïa

‘Giles is a unique being. He is far more than a regenerative leadership coach, and has been walking with me on my multidimensional journey to full expression in this lifetime. For the past three years, he has lovingly and patiently stayed steady whilst I found my non-linear soul-path. He has a vast toolbox of techniques to enhance navigation towards embodied transformation personally and professionally. He is sharp, funny, light and wise and exudes passion, enthusiasm and vitality. He is willing to adapt to the person in front of him and has the ability to shapeshift from the linear explanation of the earthly human experience to a much broader experience of the unseen and mystical realms that become possible when leading from inner-outer nature. I thoroughly recommend working with Giles (remotely, as I have done) and also experiencing the unique woodland immersions at Springwood that integrate his teachings at a cellular and soul level.’    Carolyn Eddleston, Founder, Cycles of Change

We experience the immanence of life through an embodied, visceral experience when we presence life, in the here-and-now. Rather than an objectified snapshot, a decontextualized categorization of life from left hemispheric ego-consciousness, presencing opens us to the relational energies of life. This is the beginning of the breakthrough to the transcendent, unlimited, spiritual depth to life beyond our immediate space-time experience. With practice anyone can become receptive to this simultaneous intimacy and transparency.

Let’s spend a few moments exploring intimacy with the immanent before exploring transparency to the transcendent.

Intimacy with the Immanent

With various practices, we learn to open our receptivity, by presencing life, and reignite (remember) a perception of nature whereupon we perceive the vivid aliveness of this world. We open-up and tune-in. The ‘I’ ego permeates and becomes receptive to such a degree that it no longer feels like it’s ‘me’ perceiving the ‘world’ out there, but rather we are in flow, a mutual embrace. We are in the flow of perceiving, as if the world is perceiving through us. We become a conduit for perception. This is a full-bodied presencing process that takes us out of our heads into our hearts/guts/souls, and I provide specific practices to aid this process in my latest book Keys for Future-Fit Leadership.

With these presencing practices, the superficial separateness created by MM’s left hemispheric ego-consciousness eases, and we become immersed within a vibrant awareness – intimacy with the immanent. This is what the philosopher Martin Heidegger called a ‘worlding’, an embodied, heartfelt commingling of felt presences. ‘I’ and ‘world’ are not two things standing part. Our experience is a reciprocal interplay of perceiver and perceived in cocreation with each in the other’s aliveness. This intimacy aids our right-relation of self-other-world.

Phenomenologist David Abram notes that many indigenous peoples know their surroundings so intensely that they are sensitive to its private presence, taking care not to offend it. This relation with nature is embedded into their culture and psyche. From this understanding, a kinship of reciprocal respect develops. Rather than life being seen as something to be controlled, it’s understood as something to be communed with. We learn to be in conversation with life.

The ability we have as humans to step back, rationalize, and re-present makes it all the more necessary for us to sustain a healthy, permeable human-nature relation through intimacy with the immanent. To do otherwise, we succumb to the illusion of separation, and soon enough slip into the philosophy of hell.

Transparency to the Transcendent

With certain practices (as described in Keys for Future-Fit Leadership ) we can open further into the inner realms (imaginal archetypal realms) that interpenetrate the outer world, which I refer to as ‘inner-nature’. In cultivating extra-sensory faculties, we learn to tap into and work with this inner-nature dimension. This ability to tap into inner-nature helps our soul (our essence) to work with Nature’s Wisdom, and welcomes-in a more holistic intuitive-emotional-rational-somatic-imaginal awareness which aids our ability to dance amid complexity.

‘The true ground of all being is the infinite, intangible, spirit that infuses all living beings.’  David Bohm, physicist

The ancient caduceus symbol of the twisting pairs represents the immanent-transcendent experiences that activate subtle entwining energies in the bodymind to open our minds-hearts-wills for soul-consciousness. This allows us to sense the numinosity, beauty and mystery of inner-outer nature.  The caduceus symbolizes not just an alchemy of subtle life-forces energies within us, but also an alchemy of feminine-masculine psychological qualities residing in both the ego-surface and soul-depth of our psyche, and also an alchemy of yin-yang physiological aspects throughout the bodymind, such as ventral-dorsal attention networks, right-left brain hemispheres, parasympathetic-sympathetic autonomic nervous system networks.

With techniques and practices (like presencing, active seeing, bodymind coherence, meditation, advanced breathwork, Tantra, yoga nidra, welcoming in the twilight zone, mantras, creative imagination, dream-work, shadow-work, heart coherence, and others explored in Keys for Future-Fit Leadership) we embrace the alchemic journey of attuning our physiology and psychology for a sensory and super-sensory awakening that regenerates ourselves, and those we work with.

From stressed out reactive/defensive Achiever inured in MM’s lens of separateness we find ourselves in the flex-flow of the Regenerator that works the way nature works. I call this embodied up-stretch activating our super-nature. It’s totally natural and upgrades our physiology and psychology so that we can move through the metacrisis and make meaning in far deeper ways with ego permeated-and-maturated, and our soul-consciousness on-stream.

The very thirst and hunger of our humanity morphs from an egoic need for certainty and control that drives an incessant fixing, solving, stressing, consuming, over-achieving quest ‘out there’, in to a deep yearning (a deep love) for participating within the inner-outer mystery, grace and wisdom of life.  We become at-one with the philosophy of life.

This philosophy of life is not a whole set of new academia to read books about, it’s a full-bodied felt-sense of right relation with, and reverence for, life. We don’t lose our capacity to achieve, fix and get-shit-done, quite the contrary, this ego-energy is now more purposefully energized and enthused yet grounded in soul, nature and spirit rather than uprooted in egoic self-as-separate anxiety. We right ourselves back into the rapture of reality for regeneration that starts inside our own hearts and minds, and then emanates through our ways of attending and relating with the world.

With this deeper ego-soul dynamic inside us, we find our center more readily amid fast paced change, and move out of an asserting/defending/struggling life-stance in to an active-relaxed flex-flow life-stance – what I call the Aikido stance – receptively and creatively participating within life. 

This embodied shift enables Future-Fitness amid rising complexity, as we can dance with change, hold tensions, seek opportunity and spark creativity. Our leadership dynamic is sense-respond rather than control-manage, and we have greater self-and-systemic awareness available to us to make informed decisions quickly amid volatility and complexity.

Through this embodied shift, we perceive a deeper beauty, wisdom and truth within and all around us, and are no longer driven by egoic fears, desires and reactivity. We’re more centered, purposeful, present, authentic and respectful. Our sense of being-in-the-world (our ‘ontology’) subtly shifts from ego-as-dominant to ego-as-servant to soul. We become more human.

Also, our sense of knowing (our ‘epistemology’) widens and deepens. We can still call upon our rational-analytic logicalizing yet we are not dominated by its narrowing lens.  We can focus-in and step back to gain relational context. We can measure the transactional quantity and the relational quality of things. We can work with material outer-forms and tune-in to the inner realms informing these forms.

Over time, and with practice, our whole way of being-and-knowing becomes more intimate with the immanent and transparent to the transcendent. This is an emancipation of ourselves from our own imprisoning machinations into a wiser receptive-creative version of ourselves that draws upon an activated super-nature.

‘The seat of the soul is there where the inner and the outer worlds meet’ Novalis, poet

Above all, the MM to QC shift is an embodied experiential shift of learning to let-go and flow with life, what I call Embodying Future-Fitness (EFF) which is a learning journey, a fitness-routine that requires continual practice that keeps us healthy and thriving.

This EFF is what learning to work the way nature works actually entails: a process of becoming our own authentic selves while learning to sense-in to the authenticity of the systems and organizations we work in. We’re always ‘becoming future-fit’ just like we’re always living and learning. We are simply making this life-learning process more conscious and embodied.

Future-Fit Leadership is not a ‘thing’ to achieve or a set of techniques to master and then wield. Instead, it’s a yielding, a surrendering into the flow of life that involves an EFF learning dynamic.  Our way of leading becomes a learning process – a vulnerable, peeling-back, revealing experience amid each and every day, with practices and rhythms that deepen our listening, sensing and attuning with life. 

With all this in mind, we can define Future-Fit Leadership as:

A process of learning to listen-in and sense-respond to life’s ever-changing inner-outer nature by cultivating self-awareness and systemic-awareness.

In realizing the importance of self-awareness and systemic-awareness for Embodying Future-Fitness (EFF), we also realize that the most powerful instrument we have is our own selves: self-as-instrument. Cultivating self-as-instrument lies at the heart of this ‘way of life’ that’s attuned with inner-outer nature. It’s this Future-Fit Aikido ‘way of life’ that’s open to Nature’s Wisdom because of an ego permeation-and-maturation that enables us to thrive amid complexity and dance with change.  This up-stretches our meaning making and morphs the ego-soul dynamic within our psyche so that the soul – our essential true nature – comes on-stream to guide our Regenerator action-logic that serves life.

With all this in mind, we can define Embodying Future-Fitness (EFF) as:

An attentive quality to a way of living and learning that enriches our Future-Fit Leadership enabling us to thrive amid complexity, tap into Nature’s Wisdom and realize our deeper potential as a Regenerator.

As mentioned earlier with the caduceus symbol, by alchemizing different aspects of our physiology and psychology we aid our cultivation of the Aikido life-stance amid challenging situations. A key aspect of this alchemized flow-state is what I call bodymind coherence.

Cultivating Bodymind Coherence

Our physiology and psychology are inextricably linked. Just as inner-nature (mind) and outer-nature (matter) interpenetrate at the most fundamental level, every cell and sinew of our physiology form part of an energetic bodymind. While every part of the human body exhibits mind, there are three major neurological centers – the head, heart, and gut. Each of these centers have a neurological brain in their own right yet are wired as one system. When in coherence, these three centers work together. The coherence of these centers encourages coherence across other networks in our body, such as the nervous, lymphatic, and hormonal systems.

Bodymind coherence occurs when the brainwaves of these three brains are synchronized together. This brain-heart-gut coherence encourages the head-brain to be available to a wider range of brainwave frequencies (alpha, beta, delta, theta, gamma). Studies show how this bodymind coherence leads to quite dramatic improvements in health, wellbeing, resilience, empathy, creativity, insight, and intuition – activating our super-nature.

We more readily experience what psychologists have called ‘flow-state’ where we feel in flow, simultaneously focused on the task yet open to thinking laterally and sensing systemically. Studies show that when in a flow-state we problem solve far quicker, have enhanced pattern recognition, form connections and trust with others, engender a sense of purpose in teams, and perform up to 500% better in complex, fast-changing environments. Novelty, creativity, heightened perception, amplified connection, and systemic meaning-making all come on stream. Not only are we better at regulating our own nervous systems and overall bio-circuitry, priming us for agility and purposefulness, but studies show that in this flow-state we help other people regulate themselves better.

It seems that merely through the presence of our bodymind coherence we can positively effect those around us to aid their flow. Imagine all the benefits this provides the team and organization in terms of performance, systemic agility, creativity, purposefulness, and innovation.  Hence, cultivating bodymind coherence is a vital key for Embodying Future-Fitness (EFF).

With our bodymind coherence and intentional-attentiveness we’re mindful of the intention we impress on any meeting, conversation or experience we enter in to. Quantum-complexity science shows that our intentions create thought-fields that effect inner-outer nature. Forming intentions out of the machine-mentality’s self-as-separate egoic expectations and what’s-in-it-for-me needs, has different effects than the intentionality emanating from QC’s Aikido flow-state oriented in self-as-participatory. The former biases toward an acquisitive and transactional nature (MM). The latter biases toward co-creativity and emergence (QC) i.e. Future-Fitness.

‘The quality of our attention changes the nature of the world.’ Iain McGilchrist, neuroscientist

This receptivity is neither an extending nor a losing of one’s self, but a deepening. It’s simply having the intention to pay attention, and to be ok with not knowing, not expecting, not doing, not controlling. Much like the poet John Keat’s ‘negative capability’ and the ancient Japanese term ‘AWAI’ conveying a liminal ‘inbetweeness’, an active-relaxed presencing where we are very much present yet receptive and open to depth beyond the ego’s need to control, know, define.  Through this relinquishing of the ego’s need to know, we enter into a different order of knowing: gnosis – direct awareness arising from a different relationship with life, one that attunes with life and opens into right relation of self-other-world. Then, our intentional-attentiveness and bodymind coherence becomes a radical act of regeneration; an experiential in-the-moment action-logic that enables our ability to thrive amid complexity and move through the metacrisis. The more we practice this the more we are Embodying Future-Fitness.

Qualities Attaining by Embodying Future-Fitness (EFF):

• Greater receptivity-creativity to tune-in beyond surface appearances and sense patterns
• A flex-flow relational interconnectedness – an active-relaxed flow-state of ‘interbeing’
• Dancing with change rather than reacting against change
• Sense tensions as crucibles for creativity to hold-open and not prematurely collapse
• Discernment of imagination, intuition and clairsentience for applied wisdom
• Sensory and super-sensory – attuned five-senses & sixth sense knowingness
• Intensified intimacy/transparency for a deeper soul-sense of meaning and purpose
• Transcend-and-include MM’s sequential causality with QC’s synchronistic causality
• Great self-and-systemic awareness to sense systemically amid complex systems-change
• Appreciate local/nonlocal Chonos/Kairos depths to space-time
• Trust in life – courageous embracement of complexity, tension and change beyond fear
• Sense-respond adult-adult dynamic rather than a control-manage parent-child dynamic
• Somatic sensitivity, vibrancy and energetic enthusiasm that is grounded and coherent
• Purposefulness that attends to life as a meaningful learning journey
• Sense of sacredness pervading our life-experiences that informs right relation & reverence
• Access to deep wisdom (Nature’s Wisdom) for aiding our soul-craft in service of life
• Living Systems Awareness for living and leading in-tune with inner-outer nature

The lived practice of EFF is predicated on a being-and-knowing up-stretch out of MM into QC which we shall now explore in more detail as a three-stage process of 1) transcending-and-including machine-thinking with systems-thinking 2) transcending-and-including systems-thinking with ecological-thinking 3) transcending-and-including ecological-thinking with holistic-awareness. This three-stage process moves our being-and-knowing from Mechanistic Materialism (MM) to Materialistic Complexity (MC) to Quantum Complexity (QC).

Before we dive into this MM to MC to QC movement, first let’s spend a moment on what we mean by a shift in our way of being-and-knowing. 

Our way of being (our ‘ontology’) morphs as we move from MM’s egoic achiever self-as-separate with consciousness perceived as a biproduct of brain activity. In MM, our life-stance is either assertive or defensive, a pushing/reacting against life, and change is something to be managed and controlled through a heightened ego-consciousness and imbalanced bodymind. Our being-in-the-world is hallmarked by separateness – ego separate from soul, self separate from other, human separate from nature, Heaven separate from Earth.

When in QC our sense of being-in-the-world is relational and interconnected. The self-as-participatory Aikido life-stance has an integral ego-soul consciousness that dances with change and sense-responds with life.

Our way of knowing (our ‘epistemology’) morphs as we move from MM’s overly rational-analytic left-hemispheric reductive way of knowing to QC’s holistic intuitive-rational-emotional-somatic-imaginal knowing with an activated super-nature that is open to a depth of space-time, nonlinear causality, inner-outer nature and Nature’s Wisdom. How we make meaning expands.

While a binary shift from an MM state of being-and-knowing to a QC state of being-and-knowing is neat and tidy for us to make sense of, in reality the up-stretch is a spiraling metamorphic labyrinthine unfolding. To help explain this death-rebirth journey, we can draw upon adult developmental leadership action-logics research in labelling the up-stretch as a three-stage movement of Orange-Achiever (MM) moving into Green-Pluralist (MC) moving into Teal-Strategist (QC). Let’s spend a moment exploring this further (for a deeper exploration on these leadership action-logics see Keys for Future-Fit Leadership).

Orange Expert to Orange Achiever: At Orange Expert the mechanistic materialistic logic is near totalizing. It’s rare to find an Orange Expert leader seeing beyond MM’s lens of separateness except in brief one-off epiphanies. If the leader is open to expanding their meaning-making then they may, with practice, embrace a vertical development shift into Orange Achiever. In doing so, the way they see the world and their sense of being-and-knowing shifts. While the Expert is totally inured in a machine view of the world, the Achiever is open to a deeper understanding of the relational nature of systems-change and organizational development. The totalization of machine-thinking starts to embrace an increasing comfortableness with systems-thinking. The first M of MM relating to ‘mechanistic’ is eased and a move out of Mechanistic Materialism into Materialistic Complexity starts to spawn. Though a more comprehensive embodiment of Materialistic Complexity only occurs with the vertical development shift out of Orange Achiever into Green Pluralist.

Orange Achiever to Green Pluralist: Here we undergo a more significant shift out of the dominance of machine-thinking in to a more prevalent systems-thinking along with a spawning of ecological-thinking.  This ecological-thinking resides at Level 1 Living Systems Awareness – learning from nature e.g. biomimicry, circular economics, industrial ecology, permaculture, etc. This application of learning from nature blends with responsible/sustainable/ethical business, wellbeing-at-work, JEDI initiatives, and such like. In terms of systems-change and organizational development, there’s a recognition that a wider stakeholder ecosystem approach is called for.  Green has a habit of being quite judgemental, often blaming Orange for all the ills in the world. This reactionary/revolutionary tendency can become anti-machine and anti-hierarchy leading to a zealous desire to flatten and democratize decision making structures in ways that can lead to consensus stifling creativity. This Green understanding of relational complexity is still by-and-large materialistic. There is a ‘gathering at the threshold’ of the illusion of separation but not a ‘crossing of the threshold’ beyond separateness. ‘Outer-nature’, ‘ego-identity’ and ‘quantized metrics’ are primarily focused on and mapped out. MC’s materialistic ecological-thinking tends toward linear cause-effect relationality with limited recognition of inner-nature infusing outer-nature. MC’s Materialistic Complexity perceives space as an empty void and time as linear Chronos. Consciousness is perceived as a product of the separate ego. While emotional intelligence comes to the fore at Green, and there’s a rising interest in somatic and intuitive awareness, an understanding of soul, spirit and clairsentience is yet to be fully integrated. 

Green Pluralist to Teal Strategist: This is where a significant death-rebirth shift in being-and-knowing occurs, the seeds of which were sown earlier by the Orange to Green transition. Here, it’s not just the first M (mechanistic) of MM that’s overcome, but the more life-changing second M (materialism). This challenges our ego-sense of self, status, progress, agency, purpose and place in the world.  Mind and consciousness are no longer seen as an emergent property of matter but pervading throughout space, energy and matter in varying degrees of emergent evolutionary complexity. Space is a Field full of potential energy and creativity. Each life-experience is meaningful and sacred. The bodymind, the relational organization, the human neighbourhood, the more-than-human world, the Earth, the Cosmos, are pervaded by consciousness all-the-way-down from the stars to the biome in our gut.  This radically reorients our being-and-knowing in the world from separateness to connectedness and transforms how we make meaning, and our capacity to bring forth wisdom in service of life.

‘The divine ground is within and all around us. We need to create a sanctuary within ourselves to listen to its guidance.’  Anne Baring, psychologist

It’s in this shift from Materialistic Complexity (MC) to Quantum Complexity (QC) that the lived learning practice of Embodying Future-Fitness (EFF) allows us to thrive amid complexity. We move through the metacrisis with a holistic-awareness that embraces former dualisms as tensions to alchemize: self/other, human/nature, Earth/Heaven, immanent/transcendent, masculine/feminine, mind/matter, inner/outer, local/nonlocal, Chronos/Kairos, sequential/synchronistic causality, modern/premodern, humanist/animist, science/spirituality, rational/intuitive, head/heart, corporeal/archetypal. 

This holistic-awareness of Teal Strategist and Turquoise Alchemist transcends-and-includes the machine-thinking of Orange Expert, the systems-thinking of Orange Achiever, and the ecological-thinking of Green Pluralist. Our being-in-the-world reorients from separateness to participatory connectedness, and the psyche’s center-of-gravity reorients from ego-as-dominant to ego-as-servant to soul.  Our Living Systems Awareness is not limited to Level 1 learning from nature but extends deeper into Level 2 & 3 Living Systems Awareness – an embodied psychospiritual participation and attunement of inner-outer nature. We see with new eyes, emancipated from the illusion of separation. While we maintain modernity’s ego self-agency, we also embrace ancient wisdom and indigeneity coupled with cutting-edge science for next-stage Future-Fit Leadership.  We find our way home and become Regenerators.

‘When we tie in with the life force it rights us from our distractions and reconnects us to the rapture of life.’ Richard Strozzi-Heckler, psychologist

‘A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the ‘Universe’ — a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.’  Albert Einstein, physicist

This shift from MM to MC to QC is not the end of the matter but the beginning; the beginning of our EFF leaning into life as an ever-evolving learning journey. With this shift in mindset, business as we know it morphs. We are moving from the mechanist and behaviouralist L&OD (Orange) of the 20^th Century, through the systems-thinking, ecologically aware, networked, humanist and corporate responsibility L&OD (Green) of the last few decades, now on to the living-systems holistic-awareness of Future-fit L&OD (Teal) that’s been emerging these last few years.

The Age of Wisdom in the Face of AI

The increasing adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) fuelled by exponential Quantum Computing is reshaping economies, transforming business models and impacting labor market dynamics. Its estimated there’s about 1+ billion knowledge workers globally. Studies predict millions of these people will be displaced within just a handful of years if they fail to up-stretch from transactional and propositional/procedural forms of knowledge into wisdom. This up-stretch into wisdom is based on the very same up-stretch in being-and-knowing we’ve been exploring here as MM to MC to QC.

Leaders and entrepreneurs able to up-stretch from MM’s narrowed left-hemispheric rational-analytic egoic-awareness into a holistic, creative, intuitive, embodied and participatory knowing will become Future-fit Leaders. They will better navigate complexity, and hold-space for the ongoing transformations needed amid hyper-volatility. 

Leaders that fail to expand their being-and-knowing will struggle to cope amid rising digitization and complexity, and their organizations will fast become yesterday’s news.  Ditto for the leaders of our institutions, governments, think-tanks, investment houses, family offices, charities and philanthropic ventures. Ditto for any adult seeking meaning in an age of anxious distraction. In crossing the threshold into QC, we don’t just become better leaders, we become more in touch with who we truly are, which impacts everything we think, do, design and implement. We live up to our name of Homo sapiens, ‘beings who work with wisdom’.

‘What is essential…is not embedded in buildings, is not embedded in clothing, is not necessarily embedded even in rule. It is somewhere along the line of something deeper that a rule. It is concerned with this business of inner transformation.’ Thomas Merton, philosopher

If we fail to up-stretch our being-and-knowing we become easy pickings for AI’s cannibalization. Also, our whole life-experience gets stuck in arrested-development, leading to rising frustration, dissonance, drudgery and neurosis. We find ourselves blaming the world ‘out there’ for all our problems, and increasingly fear the unconscious that lies within. We become beset by illusions (fake news, conspiracies, gossip, office politics, hyperbole, propaganda, etc.), caught in consumeristic mores, easily lead by groupthink echo-chambers and community-tribalism, unwittingly projecting our unresolved complexes onto the ‘other’ creating rising polarization, division and extremism. Enter today’s malaise.

‘Why, when we are so desperate for change, do we become even more desperate when transformation begins? Why do we cling to old attachments instead of submitting ourselves to new possibilities?’  Marion Woodman, psychologist

The good news is that many of us – more and more by the day – intuit life’s intrinsic interdependence. We have a sixth-sense hunch that a form of ‘field’ pervades life. More mini epiphanies, déjà vus, synchronicities, premonitions, and other non-local phenomena take place the more we notice them. Young children feel this interconnected mystery all-too-keenly, and now many adults (and leaders) are re-awakening this sense in themselves today. Another bit of good news is more and more scientists are standing-up against the status quo of separateness, some even putting their professional careers on the line to show, through scientific studies, what they intuit.

Recall C.S Lewis’s philosophy of hell (from Part 1 of this article) which we’re complicit in when we turn a blind eye to what we know in our hearts is not only an intuitive sense, but a bud waiting to blossom – if we dare cross the threshold of our own fearful egoic separateness.  Remaining tight in a bud for fear of dying is not living. It’s a retardation rather than a (r)evolution. Living is realizing our innate potential and allowing our soul to sing.

‘And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.’ Anais Nin, novelist

In Summary

With an embodied shift into QC, we become more attentive to observing how we make-meaning, relate with and move through everyday leadership and systems-change challenges. We can allow for the chaotic complexity of the polycrisis to not simply trigger our reactivity but catalyse our receptivity and creativity for moving through the metacrisis. Life is the learning-zone for expanding our self-and-systemic awareness, subtly shifting our way of being-and-knowing with EFF.

The indigeneity that spawns from this activation of our soul-consciousness is not a regression to some bygone era but a metamorphic death-rebirth up-stretch into the coming Age of Wisdom, where technology and digitization is not rebelled against with a Luddite ‘rage against the machine’ but is transcended-and-included with a philosophy of life which draws upon ancient wisdom and cutting-edge science.

While there’s a multitude of biohacking mind-melding nootropic technologies and psychedelic experiences amid a massive $trillion altered state economy, what is actually needed now more than ever is for us to become more intimate with the immanent and transparent to the transcendent by engaging in healthy easy-to-do no-credit-card-required bodymind coherence practices that form an EFF way of living and leading that realigns our ego back in tune with soul and places us back in right relation with life. This is what I explore in detail in my latest book Keys for Future-fit Leadership, and also through my coaching journeys and group immersions in nature.

Latest book:Keys for Future-fit Leadership

‘Keys for Future-fit Leadership is nothing short of revolutionary—a compass for our times, providing the formula humanity urgently needs to navigate the seismic shifts we face.’   Marc Buckley, Founder ALOHAS Regenerative Foundation

Watch a short video on Keys for Future-fit Leadership here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjQ6s80ewNU&list=PL4fiSooXivB7D83ut1Igssgg0xZcf-mGN&index=33

‘Working with Giles over the past three years has been a deeply transformative journey. In his presence – whether walking through the ancient woods in Springwood, sitting by the fire, or in quiet conversation online – I found a safe space to grieve, unlearn, reconnect with what matters most, and integrate new ways of being. Giles gently holds space for paradox and for my own deeper truths to surface. The path is never straight, and what I value most is having someone who’s walked it before – holding space with wisdom and experience across business, spiritual, energetic, and the natural world. This is very unique in Giles and shapes not only my work with clients, but also the way I live, lead, and see myself as part of the living world. I can wholeheartedly recommend working with him if you are embarking on your soul journey.’ Christina Peters, Founder, Art of Self

To explore 121 Coaching or Immersions with Giles contact him via his website https://gileshutchins.com/

‘Last year, I chose Giles Hutchins as my coach, and I continue this year. I chose him because I had read all his books slowly and found them to be brilliant. I wanted to work with the leading regenerative leadership coach in the world, and I think it’s Giles. Working with Giles provides great support, expansion and DEEP WISDOM during a challenging period for me, and now supporting me into my next chapter. He creates an incredibly safe space, so I share anything. Giles’ energy is so powerful that I leave each session feeling completely recharged and inspired. Thank you, Giles, for the guiding light in my work and life.’  Jenna Robertson, Founder of Gaia’s Wisdom & Regenerative Leadership Coach

There’s a special 2 dayer/overnighter immersion with Giles Hutchins on 30th April/1st May 2026, for more details see: https://thenatureofbusiness.org/2025/09/09/deep-dive-nature-immersion-30th-april-2026/