AI and the Deeper Self

Threat or no threat?

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is sparking a crisis, yet it’s not primarily a set of practical problems. AI’s emergence also stirs existential issues. The presenting question is, “How will my life – and our collective life – be impacted by AI?” But the deeper question is, “Who am I – and who are we – relative to AI?”  (The latter is related to the deepest question – “Who am I?” but that’s beyond the scope of this post!)

The appearance of AI is making some question their ongoing professional roles and social relevancy. This conundrum has implications for us collectively and as individuals. Before we can address the collective issues, however, we’d be well served to address the dilemma this technology presents to us as individuals.

An earlier version of me would have seen AI as a threat to who I thought I was and the value I believed I brought to the world around me. I strongly identified with my intellectual and analytical capacities, functions of the “left brain.” It’s this that AI could greatly supplant. It’s also the aspect of our brain our modern culture has most revered and rewarded. For the last few hundred years in the West, and more recently across the globe, analytical and rational thinking have been elevated.

Yet, the brain is not the only form of intelligence. There are many others, and I want to bring our attention to the embodied mind, the “gut brain.”

Our body’s midsection contains as many neurons as our brain. This deeper, more embodied place of knowing functions quite differently than our head. It lives only in present time – it neither ruminates about the past nor fantasizes about or catastrophizes the future. Aware in present time, it has fewer filters and barriers to our direct experience. This experience comes through the body and the five senses, yet it isn’t limited to these. Through connection with the body, we can also feel our connection to the fullness of life that is beyond our individuality.

This is the serenity of being in nature, our ease in quiet moments, our joy among loved ones. Sometimes, we are even overcome with a sense of the vastness of our existence, well beyond what our head can comprehend.

Here, in the stillness and great dynamism of our embodied selves, there is no concern about AI, nor need there be. This is the truer and more authentic place from which to live our lives, and locating our sense of self here can resolve our individual dilemmas. We can feel secure and complete, no matter what disruptions and changes are happening around us, even changes as powerful as those that AI may bring.

Recognizing who we are beyond our thinking minds and the value our culture has placed on it will also help us address our collective questions. From this place, there are fewer barriers between myself and another, providing greater opportunity for the natural arising of empathy and compassion. When such qualities are present, what seem to be complex questions about how to use this new technology become much clearer. This clarity is less available to our conditioned thinking, influenced as it can be by the cultural drives for accumulation, recognition, and success. These limited goals fall away, unrealized yet fully resolved, when we are grounded in the deep, unlimited Self. When responses based on generosity and fairness arise, they feel natural and easier to implement.

How do we connect with, and stay connected to, this deeper embodied mind?  There are many activities that can be helpful – meditation, mindfulness, yoga, exercise, martial arts, hiking, backpacking, dancing, playing, resting, relaxing, making love. Our spiritual lives can be a great resource (as long as the traditions we follow don’t denigrate the body!). Space and silence help me the most. When I provide this body-mind with sufficient time and space and freedom, the thinking mind becomes quieter. This silence itself is restful, restorative, whole-making. If I spend enough time in silence, my intuition and creativity, which find their source in the body, may start to speak to me. Their voice is both my own and bears messages from beyond itself.

Touching and being touched by these transcendent resources assures me that while AI may have its place in my life, it will not displace what is most vitally me.

AI may introduce significant changes in our lives. People say it’s unprecedented, but I’ve found that everything declared “unprecedented” looks a lot like the whole string of “unprecedented” things that have happened in the past. In fact, the outlook on AI is like life itself – constantly changing, shifting, emerging. Although the details differ from the last big innovation or the next, our response can be the same – go inward, become familiar with ourselves in our uniqueness and our vastness, rest in the depths we find, and respond with and from the wisdom that naturally arises.