The Intentional Hiatus: Unfolding Unpredictability Within the Predictable

It has now been over ten days since my last entry—not out of disinterest, but out of resistance to performative production. I did not want to write simply to feed a continuity bias. And yet, in doing so, I was confronted by the internalised belief that non-performance is synonymous with avoidance. This belief, like many others, demands interrogation—not reinforcement.

During this pause, I engaged with the work of Nora Bateson and, inevitably, her father, Gregory Bateson. Their articulation of Warm Data and symmathesy immediately resonated with what I have previously termed polluted intuition—the cumulative cognitive, emotional, and energetic distortion that occurs when our inner navigation system is clouded by social conditioning, algorithmic interference, and systemic contradiction.

Warm Data describes the contextual, relational information embedded in systems that cannot be captured through linear or reductionist models. In the context of this experiment, I see polluted intuition as a symptom of navigating through relational environments that have been flattened—where efficiency has replaced reflection, and standardisation has replaced subtlety. As Nora Bateson suggests, any meaningful shift must occur within the complexity of context—not apart from it.

This isn’t just philosophical musing—it’s neurological and psychological. Returning to Self-Determination Theory (SDT) (Ryan & Deci, 2000, 2020), we know that psychological well-being is predicated on the satisfaction of three innate needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. While my part-time consultancy role offers a superficial fulfilment of competence, it lacks the autonomy of purpose and the deeper sense of relatedness that this work—the 99-Day Rewire—uniquely affords.

The disconnect is palpable: I have created a life that is internally coherent, but not externally sustainable. And that raises the central question of this next phase: how close can one get to internal alignment in a system not designed to accommodate it?

The question is no longer whether intuitive living is possible. I’ve demonstrated that it is—temporarily, conditionally.

The question now is:

How can we model a sustainable form of intuitive living within systems that structurally reward burnout, distraction, and conformity?

To better articulate this tension, I’ve borrowed a concept from systems science: the stochastic process. Stochasticity refers to behaviour that unfolds unpredictably within probabilistic bounds. It is neither entirely random nor strictly determined—it emerges. This, increasingly, is how I have come to view the Rewire experiment. Not as a linear transformation, but as a stochastically bounded unfolding—a process of tuning in to internal signals while navigating the unpredictable flux of work, attention, culture, and context.

And here is what I’ve found: even under ideal psychological conditions (e.g., temporary freedom, inner stability, creative focus), the external system disrupts sustainability. This isn’t due to personal inadequacy; it is due to structural incompatibility. No matter how attuned I am to internal rhythms, they will always be disrupted by a system that rewards speed over depth, visibility over reflection, and output over insight.

After fifty days, my provisional insight is this: no matter how refined one’s internal ecosystem becomes, full intuitive alignment is only ever partial when the external system is calibrated against it. This is not a personal failing, but a structural inevitability.

This new awareness requires a shift—not away from experimentation, but deeper into it. In the coming phase, I will examine how specific cognitive pollutants—especially digital saturation, algorithmic feedback loops, and stimulus-driven attention—interfere with intuitive clarity. Drawing on the contemplative neuroscience of Zoran Josipovic, the ethical urgency in Jeff Sebo’s ecological systems work, and the neurotheological insights of Andrew Newberg, I’ll begin to shape a practical deconditioning protocol.

The goal is not to escape the system. Nor is it to adapt to it blindly. The goal is to test, record, and design conditions of coherence—conditions that allow people to remember what it feels like to be led from within, without collapse.

This is not a pivot—it is a natural unfolding. The experiment continues, with greater precision and a more defined mandate.

Let’s rewire – methodically.

References

Bateson, N. (2016). Symmathesy: A word in progress. Cybernetics and Human Knowing, 23(1), 1–7.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The "what" and "why" of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behaviour. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01

Josipovic, Z. (2014). Neural correlates of nondual awareness in meditation. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1307(1), 9–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.12261

Newberg, A., & Waldman, M. R. (2016). How enlightenment changes your brain: The new science of transformation. Avery.

OECD. (2023). Well-being, productivity and economic resilience. OECD Publishing. https://www.oecd.org

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2020). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation from a self-determination theory perspective: Definitions, theory, practices, and future directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 61, 101860. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2020.101860

Sebo, J. (2022). Saving animals, saving ourselves: Why animals matter for pandemics, climate change, and other catastrophes. Oxford University Press.

Žižek, S. (2008). Violence: Six sideways reflections. Picador.