How to build a newthing

How does one build a newthing?

Do you start with the parts? Do you start with the ends? Where does one begin?

How does one find out if there’s a newthing that wishes to be built?

How does one know if you have built the newthing correctly?

How do you know if the newthing needs to exist at all?

Newthings — ideas that become projects that become “real” — are organic machines. Living things made with material that originated in the Oneness manifested into metaphysically tangible structures in this realm.

They are magical. They are more powerful than us. Even when we think we have mastered them, they will remain a mystery.

This is how you build a newthing.

Feelings towards the existence of a newthing

The beginning is not with an idea but with the feeling towards an idea. Something you feel but do not know. It makes you anxious and gives you somersaults inside if you try to explain.

If you ignore this feeling it will go away, finding another soul open to its directions.

If you pay too much attention it will also go away, being made nervous by such direct energy.

The right approach is to notice it, be curious about it, but not demand anything of it. Allow it to show you what it’s meant to be.

Sensing newthing

The fact that there is a newthing has come to feel like a certainty, even as we cannot fully perceive it. This will spark a search for underlying structures, analogs, and ways of being that feel natural to this newthing.

Does the newthing exist in this context or some other one?

Is it a newthing that’s meant to run all the time or is it more seasonal and sensitive?

Are the newthing’s true intentions the first purpose you saw or some other motive that has yet to be revealed?

Mix research, exploration, and experiments to discover newthing. Try expressing the simplest version of newthing for yourself. What happens? Did you feel the light inside you turn on?

Building newthing

Ah newthing, we think. I know what you are. Making you will be easy. The path is straight and sure.

Newthing hears your boasts and does not react, but knows how much you have to learn.

As you build newthing you will discover that building a newthing is a strange act where the harder you go about trying to do it, the harder it becomes. It will resist direct force and control. The more you relax and allow it to speak through you, however, the easier it will be.

When our goals for building newthing and newthing’s goals for its own existence run in parallel, force magically accelerates. It is this synchronicity that we most seek.

Turning on newthing

Eventually newthing will have been sufficiently built and there’s no more tinkering to be done except to try turning it on.

When we flip the switch we discover the true nature of our newthing. It might run smooth or clunkier than expected. Maybe some parts of newthing are an unexpected delight, intuitive and pleasing, while others feel frustratingly unclear.

It’s our inner felt-sense more than our rational mind that leads us to truth in these moments. Our inner voice distinguishes what feels genuine from forced, what’s naturally alive from default dead. Listen to that voice and the tone of people you invite to experience newthing. Is it alive yet?

Newthing stays on

Once you have turned on newthing, the goal is often that newthing stays on. It ideally does not need direct human intervention by the creator for its continued use and existence. It is at this point that the newthing can start to, as they say, scale.

This process is a delicate one. Leave newthing unattended too soon and you risk it serving purposes you did not intend and might not be in its best interests. Hold the controls too tightly and you risk denying newthing what it wishes to be and where its purpose is best served.

A gradual approach is recommended. From more tightly controlled to less tightly controlled as you and newthing together define its boundaries and opportunities for existence.

Newthing stays true

Left on its own, newthing will become increasingly powerful in ways that serve it but may be in direct conflict with the actual goals that sparked its creation.

Newthings have a deep need to amass huge administrative teams of all shapes and sizes — middle managers, account managers, HR and finance specialists, legal. This team exists less to support newthing’s purpose than newthing itself. They will slow down attempts at reform. They carry rumors and discord. They are powerful.

Newthings have a proven proclivity to attract people who love money. When these people get their hands on newthing, everything that makes the newthing beautiful and elegant and true to its essence will be challenged down to the penny. People who love money love money more than they love newthings. But newthings need money too, especially at the beginning. The tension runs deep.

Newthings also have an amazing ability to demand marketing departments — groups of people that primarily exist to hire more groups of people so that they can spend money in tribute to the greatness of newthing regardless of whether anyone else believes them. 

The goal is for newthing to stay true. To stay lean and immune to the forces that will naturally slow and distract it. That keeps away the people who love money and will tear it apart to get it. A newthing that stays committed to its reasons for existence.

All newthings die

There is no heaven for newthings. There is no Hall of Fame. There is only memory and change. Nothing (the opposite of newthing) and no one are immune.

The goal of newthing is to live as long as possible while staying true. The longer it does this, the stronger and more itself it will become.

But to do this, newthing must counterintuitively accept that one day it will die. Newthing’s goal cannot be to not die, it must be to live fully as itself. Accepting the certainty of death, however far down the line, gives newthing the energy to thrive. Its life remains relevant.

If we hold onto a false belief that newthing will last forever, then we will eventually betray its essence. To prevent death, we will lower standards because the alternative is impossible to accept. So long as newthing stays alive, we will ignore lapses in values. There is no notion of life, just growth and the eternal postponement of death. This is how newthings die, even if their shadows keep moving.

When we make and serve a newthing, there is joy, pain, relief, feeling trapped, feeling lost, and letting go. We learn to love newthing, need newthing, and feel one with newthing. But as we mature, we learn something even more profound: that we must create space from newthing. That we must not forget the rest of our lives because of newthing. And, most importantly, we finally accept that we and newthings are separate entities, not one.