Riding The Storm: September

What are you letting go of this fall? September is a time of new beginnings - a fresh school year that for many grown-ups still feels like a new year.

Letting go creates space. In grieving the changes in my long-term relationship, I’m making room for who I can become.

I’ll soon start a part-time job as a school counsellor in a local high school. I’m excited for the new challenge and expect it will be a really meaningful complement to my existing work - quite the contrast to hosting weekend psychedelic retreats in my newly renovated attic.

In this issue, I write about experiencing the world through digital abstractions and the need for maturing our relationship with technology. I hope it provokes something in you,

Tom 💚

After months of renovation, we're opening our trippy attic very soon! 🥳

I'm facilitating truffle ceremonies at my home the first Saturday of every month from November onwards ✨

I want to make these transformational experiences accessible for a small group each month - reducing the barriers by having day retreats in Rotterdam at an affordable price point. Links in the dates below 👇

🍂 November 1st
❄️ December 6th
🎆 Special New Years Edition, January 3rd

What’s behind the erosion of social trust—and how might we rebuild it? That’s the central question of Leviathan. Blending insights from sociology, mythology, psychology, economics, and systems theory, this documentary explores the hidden operating system of culture to help us make sense of our era. I thought it was so impactful that I’m organising a screening with Spark Improv school.

💌 Hit “reply” to this email if you’d like the details!

I’m organising a retreat that combines the power of Active Hope rituals from Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects with Psilocybin Truffles.

The focus is on reconnecting with ourselves and the natural world with a cosy group of like-minded changemakers. 2025 was a year of unprecedented unravelling. How do we feel about that? How can we move forward with resilience? This is a space to reflect, be held and gain clarity for the year ahead.

💌 Hit “reply” to this email to learn more.

🔒 Protecting your privacy with Chat GPT, Duck.AI

Already shared far too much personal info with Chat GPT? Me too. Fortunately, Duck Duck Go are now offering a privacy-focused way of accessing Chat GPT. Better late than never.

🌈 Psychedelics & Climate grief, Article, Mushroom Tao

My life’s work is to support changemakers to nurture their resilience while navigating our unravelling world. This article lays out how psychedelics can support with processing climate grief, covering a variety of cutting-edge scientific studies.

💭 The Shaman and the Chief, Article, Alexander Beiner

“In an age of social media, AI slop and endless political bullshit, reality can feel hard to reach because it has been replaced by its own representations.” Another incredibly well-nuanced philosophical article where Beiner explores the idea of hyper reality; a key concept of his Leviathan documentary that we’re screening next month.

I'm bored of abstracted reality. Zoom community calls, my Guardian feed and superficial exchanges with friends via pixels on a screen.

Communicating via technology is presented as inevitable.

It’s a necessary evil to navigate our ever-more complex civilisation, maintain long-distance friendships and “grow an audience" for your freelance business. It's easier to pretend you have no choice when smartphones carry software as addictive as crystal meth in a casino.

We’re like children in a candy shop. We need to grow up.

Maturing our relationship with technology requires understanding what’s at stake.

Who and what are we becoming? Technology is not merely a tool. It’s the filter through how we interact with the world, form beliefs about other beings and make conclusions based on narratives that are positioned as “the truth.”

"I only exist as part of the whole" - a cliché trippy Tom thought. My felt experience of consciousness during immersive 10-day meditation retreats is that the self manifests only in relationship with our environment. It's impossible to isolate a being and describe its personality independent of context. Embedding technology this intimately in our reality is fundamentally altering what it means to be human.

A Substack newsletter criticising digital communication… isn’t it ironic; don’t you think?

Yes, I've exchanged profound healing processes through online therapy. I've met folks online who became long-term heart-warming friends. And without video calls, I probably wouldn't have left my family in the UK aged 18 or maintained a long-distance relationship that ultimately became a decade-long partnership.

But communicating via technology is an aid, not a substitute.

I meet my "internet friends" in person, invite my family over for week-long visits and closed the long-distance gap. But for many aspects of our lives, technology has been directly substituted for real-world experience.

Watching the livestreamed horrors of our unravelling world is both a blessing and a curse. We are abstractly aware, but feel powerless to act. If you see someone littering in your neighbourhood, you can confront the person. If you see pictures of a plastic-infested beach on a faraway land, what can you do? Start a petition? Join a social movement? You’re so distanced from the impact of your actions that it can feel like nothing you do matters.

Our polluted information ecology is crumbling the pillars of our civilisation.

Conspiracy theories and bigotry flourish in a polluted information ecology driven by corporate interests. Our complex civilisation is built upon collaboration - that requires shared understanding.

Content that is more divisive, exaggerated and intense gets more views. More views equals more advertising revenue. Simple. What’s true is irrelevant for the algorithm

“If you don’t read the news, you’re uninformed. But if you read the news, you’re misinformed.” Quite the conundrum.

As I laid out in the documentary Leviathan, separation from our fellow beings is the root cause of our predicament. How many of my comrades who believe ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards) have shared dinner with an off-duty cop? At a wedding party recently, I asked one why he wanted to become a cop? “Because I think we need more decent people in the police.” Build bridges, not walls.

I'm writing this newsletter to you as much as I am to myself.

I'm tired of being told I need to produce content, engage with people's LinkedIn posts and read their heartfelt stories as mere abstracted pixels on a screen.

Get me in front of a real person. Someone I can connect with in an embodied way and share a momen that feels REAL. That's what I'm hoping for in my new part-time job as a high school counsellor - though I’m realistic in the challenge of opening up a generation numbed by the social media landscape we’ve created “for them”.

Abstraction or Aliveness? It's our choice.

Got a lust for life? I think we all do, even if it’s buried underneath your job as an accountant (my sky diving instructor worked this profession in the colder months.) Aliveness is one of my key values. I experience it in the co-creative festivals I share with friends, the climbing & scuba diving holidays of my family and the therapeutic spaces I hold for intense emotions.

Escape your large concrete boxes and leave your tiny “smart” box behind. Say hi to strangers on the street, have dinner in your local neighbourhood house, breathe in the crisp autumn air, attend public meetings about issues that resonate with you.

It’s that moment when you meet someone IRL that you’ve previously only interacted with via Zoom. There’s a momentary misalignment between the embodied reality and the abstracted projection of how you thought they’d look. But then you catch-up! You bridge the abstraction and form a deeper, embodied bond.

Moving through abstraction into aliveness is a commitment to life

If we can bridge our abstracted realities, perhaps we’ll realise that the real world is a more beautiful place than through our screens. Our embodied experiences of the human race will likely be more positive than the the individualistic dog-eat-dog world-view that neoliberalism would have us believe, or right wing fear mongering about immigrants.

Chat GPT may be able to instruct you how to fix your bike, make a tasty meal or translate a Dutch article. But it’s not going to do it for you as a smiling, loving friend.

P.S. Chat GPT helped me brainstorm the structure of this piece, but these words are fully my own. Research is suggesting we lose the capabilities that we consistently outsource to machines, so the question is then: who do we want to become? I got lost in a forest last weekend without Google Maps!

Last month, I flew in a glider for the first time over the French Alps. I felt an exhilarating connection with the sky as we glided on the updrafts, launching us up further and further above the mountains. Highly recommended.

“The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.”
- Joseph Campbell

The water isn't the issue; it's how we navigate it. Not only are we invited to swim, we're encouraged to ride the waves.

Thanks for reading!

-Tom 💚