Fifteen minutes passed. No one came. The Zoom room was quiet, still. And to my surprise, I wasn’t disappointed.
There was no tightness in my chest, no voice whispering that I had failed. Something had shifted. The story that used to run—"if no one responds, you don’t matter"—was simply... absent. And in that absence, I began to see more clearly how often I had lived within the invisible architecture of meaning.
I’ve been aware for a long time that the lens I look through shapes what I see. I’ve even spoken about it. But recently, something new came into view: not just the existence of lenses, but the subtlety of their creation—and the sheer number of them I’ve been wearing.
Words have power, not just because of what they say, but because of the assumptions and definitions that trail behind them like shadows. Some of those meanings come from culture, some from early life, and some from moments of wounding we never fully unpacked. Over time, they become lenses. And we forget we’re looking through them.
A word like "silence" might mean peace to one person, and rejection to another. "No one responded" could mean nothing—or it could mean everything, if you're unconsciously equating presence with validation.
I’ve become acutely aware in recent weeks—especially in the stillness of these last few days—of how many meaning loops I’ve been caught in. The word leads to the definition, which leads to an assumption, which leads to a judgment, which becomes a story... and then life seems to confirm it. Not because it’s true, but because the lens I’m looking through shapes the world I see.
So how do we get out of the loop?
We don’t fight it. We notice it.
We name the lens: "Ah, that’s the belief that if no one hears me, I don’t count." We breathe. We pause. We ask: What else could be true?
Could it be that silence is a form of listening? That presence doesn’t need applause? That the field I’m holding matters, even if no one walks through the door today?
Each time I ask those questions, something loosens. I return to the body. I touch something real. The floor beneath me. The breath within me. The knowing that I am here.
This is how the spell unravels—not all at once, but thread by thread.
Noticing the lens is how we begin to see beyond it. Asking a different question is how we begin to live outside the loop.
And maybe that is the deeper eldering work: To no longer confuse perception with truth. To tend the field, even when it's invisible. To anchor a new world, by living its frequency before it's widely recognized.
Not everyone will hear. Not everyone will come. But that doesn't make your presence any less real.
So I ask myself again, gently: What subtle lens might I still be looking through, without realizing it?