The Moment When Pattern Recognition Becomes Prophecy

Last week I shared about the extraordinary clarity that emerges when you stop feeding the content machine and start listening to what wants to be witnessed. Many of you commented “sensing” - and something beautiful has been unfolding.

Over the past week, the word ‘cypress’ has been emerging everywhere. Dreams, conversations, random thoughts. It had whispered to me for months whilst writing my book, but I couldn’t decode it. Initially I thought it was about oil from the lemon cypress, deeply connected to my Lebanese ancestral line. But the right oil was always just out of reach, so I let it sit until it was ready to make itself fully known.

I find myself dancing in a boundless liminal space. I have lots of ideas about what’s next for my work, what sits under The Presence Lab umbrella. I know it’s connected to me being “an enthusiast curator of people, patterns and stories.” I believe it’s about creating scenes, rituals and spaces for deep transformation - facing shadow sides and egos through Power, Paradoxes and Presence. Yet the specific starting point keeps eluding me.

On Saturday, walking through Greenwich Market looking for a friend’s present, I was stopped in my tracks. I saw a symbol, an image that felt deeply familiar. Ancient. Ritual. As I approached, I discovered the stall belonged to a beautiful human called Omar - an immunology scientist who felt drawn to tap into his own ancestry and started making perfumes using raw botanicals from his homeland, Cyprus.

Cyprus. The missing piece. Not lemon cypress from Lebanon, but the island itself - the ancient bridge between civilisations.

As we spoke, many questions I’d been asking about my work and next chapter presented themselves in his story. Omar had moved from studying immune patterns in laboratories to creating Alashiya - perfumes that bridge ancient botanical wisdom with scientific precision. An immunologist turned perfume alchemist, following ancestral patterns home.

Here’s what struck me: Omar’s journey mirrors exactly what I help leaders navigate - the movement from defending against complexity (immune systems fighting foreign bodies) to consciously integrating it (ancient botanicals becoming modern alchemy). From laboratory analysis to sensory wisdom. From separation to synthesis.

And Alashiya - the ancient name for Cyprus - was a bridge civilisation. A small island kingdom that negotiated as equals with empires, transforming raw materials into diplomatic power whilst maintaining their essential sovereignty. They practised what I call “consensual exposure to complexity” - being thoroughly engaged with larger forces whilst maintaining complete agency over the terms.

The pattern recognition is extraordinary: Omar embodies the technological ancestor question I pose to leaders. He’s bridging scientific training with ancestral knowing, creating something entirely new whilst honouring what came before. His perfumes aren’t just scents - they’re consciousness technologies that transport you across time and space through smell.

This encounter reconfirms something that’s been crystallising: my work isn’t about eliminating the paradox between ancient wisdom and cutting-edge innovation. It’s about creating ritual containers where leaders can be thoroughly transformed by technological complexity whilst maintaining their essential authority.

What if the starting point isn’t a business plan but a scent? What if the containers I’m being called to create are as much about sensory wisdom as strategic thinking? What if pattern recognition through ritual and ceremony is exactly what leaders navigating AI integration and cultural transformation actually need?

Omar’s story suggests possibilities I might have dismissed: that the corporate world is hungry for the kind of ancestral knowing that emerges through scent, ritual, and ceremonial containers. That executives making decisions about our technological future need spaces that honour both their analytical brilliance and their deeper sensing.

Something is wanting to be born that honours both the laboratory and the temple. Both the boardroom and the botanical garden. Both immunity and alchemy.

If you’re feeling the pull towards this kind of work - the marriage of ancient wisdom with cutting-edge necessity, the creation of ritual containers for technological transformation - leave ‘sensing’ below. Something is crystallising, and I’m curious who else is tracking these patterns

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