The Field That Speaks Back

Our conversation with Thomas Mansfield on symbolic resonance, living language, and emergent recovery

There are moments when the world speaks back.

Not in words exactly, but in a kind of echo that reveals the pattern behind the veil. A tarot card pulled that lands too precisely. A phrase overheard that punctures your thoughts. An unexpected animal that crosses your path. Or in this case, a deck of cards—Cards for Life—created by Thomas Mansfield, that feel less like tools and more like invitations.

In our recent conversation on Voices of Emergence with Thomas — and my friend and co-host Rudy — I found myself drawn again and again to what I call the mythopoetic field. That subtle territory where objects, rituals, and language cease being inert and begin to resonate. Not because they possess some inherent power, but because of the quality of relationship we enter into with them.

Thomas named this field a “synchronicity engine.”

The Cards That Choose Us

There’s a quiet magic in how Cards for Life work. Like tarot, they don’t predict. They mirror. You draw a card and suddenly, there’s a story unfolding from the space the card opens within you.

This isn’t about belief or superstition. It’s about symbolic participation. We all do this, innately. The symbolic dimension is part of our everyday lives, often so seamlessly that we forget we’re participating in it at all. Consider these universal examples of how humans symbolically participate in their worlds:

Wearing Certain Clothes for Certain Roles: When we put on a suit for a job interview, or a white coat to see patients, we’re not just dressing functionally, we’re entering a symbolic role. The clothing signifies authority, competence, or respect. Even a child putting on a cape to become a superhero is engaging symbolically: they become the archetype they’ve summoned.

Naming a Child: Names are sounds infused with identity, lineage, hope, and meaning. A name isn’t just a label; it becomes a vessel for love, history, expectation, and presence. And the act of choosing one is a symbolic declaration: “This is who you are to us.”

Placing Photos on a Wall: Decorating a home with photos of loved ones is a symbolic way of making presence out of absence. These images represent belonging, memory, love, or longing.

Greeting Rituals: Saying hello, goodbye, or shaking hands are symbolic gestures that mark thresholds, entering or exiting relational space. Even the words themselves carry subtle intention: a greeting opens a field of connection, just as a farewell symbolically closes it.

Celebrating Birthdays: Rationally, a birthday or holiday might seem like just another day. But the cake, the candle, the wish—none of these are necessary in any physical sense. And yet, we do them. Almost universally. These are symbolic acts that mark the passage of time, the unfolding of identity, and the quiet miracle of still being here. A birthday is not just a date on the calendar, it’s a ritualized portal. A chance to pause, reflect, and re-enter time as sacred. The collective observance of a holiday does something similar: it binds us in remembrance, in interbeing, and in a shared spell of meaning. Sometimes, even in the magic of seasonal observances.

Praying: Crossing one’s fingers, knocking on wood, or saying “God willing” are all symbolic gestures that acknowledge forces beyond control. They’re micro-rituals, tiny symbolic acts that reveal a relationship with mystery, fate, or unseen order.

Tattoos and Jewelry: Last weekend, I was talking with someone who had a dozen tattoos along their arm, and proceeded to tell a meaningful story about each one of them. Tattoos and meaningful jewelry often hold such symbolic stories representing grief, commitment, ancestry, transformation. The body becomes a canvas of symbolic participation, marking inner truths, memories, and values in visible form.

Using Metaphors in Speech: When we say someone “carries a heavy burden” or “has a warm heart,” we’re unconsciously layering symbolic language over lived experience. Our metaphors shape how we see others and ourselves.

In that sense, these cards are not merely visual or cognitive artifacts. They are threshold objects, archetypal triggers that constellate meaning when we meet them with presence. When we listen with the body, not just the brain.

That type of deep active listening, I think, is the real technology. It’s the foundation from which the field grows.

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The Language We Live Inside

One of the most powerful themes we explored was the role of language as a structuring force of perception.

Do we build community or do we grow it?
Do we fight climate change or restore balance?

Each metaphor frames our relationship to the topic: some contain the lens and others give life to it. And while both are necessary, our current times call for deep intentionality in when, how, and why we use each.

As someone who works with both storytelling and silence, I often ask: Is this word opening the field or closing it? This simple question can rewire how we move through reality.

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Recovery as Rite

What also touched me was Thomas’ openness in speaking about his own path of recovery. The way breakdown became, for him, a kind of unintended rite of passage.

It echoed something I’ve known in my own bones: that collapse, when met fully, initiates. That suffering, when digested symbolically, transforms. That there is alchemy in the descent.

This is not romanticism. It's real work. And it’s messy, as my series on healing last year illustrates. But hearing Thomas speak to it with such gentleness reminded me that regeneration isn’t a straight line. For me, it spirals.

And what is the shape of emergence? I see it as a seedling emerging from the soil, an acorn manifesting itself into an oak tree?

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A Living Field

As I sat with our conversation, I realized something: Thomas’ Cards for Life aren’t just cards. They’re part of a larger pattern. A lattice of symbolic objects, tools, and practices that bring us back into resonance with each other, and with something far older and wilder than words: a field that speaks back.

And the moment you listen, it listens too.

There’s a lesson at the heart of it all: Language can wound, but it can also heal. Symbols can mislead, but they can also guide. And we’re not here to control the world, but to be in right relation with it.

And maybe there’s a deeper story, that beneath the cards, the metaphors, the frameworks, we’re all slowly remembering we are each co-conspirators of life.

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🎧 Listen to Episode 4: Thinking Like Gaia with Thomas Mansfield on Spotify, Apple and YouTube

🌱 Learn more about Thomas’s work

📘 Explore the Cards for Life

🌿 Follow Thomas on LinkedIn and Instagram.

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