Growing Wings: On Transition, Capacity, and the Courage to Continue
Why Living Disciplines Must Expand Beyond Their Original Institutions
Author’s Note
There comes a moment in any long arc of work when friction gives way to clarity—not because the path becomes smooth, but because its contours finally reveal themselves. What once felt like resistance begins to read as information. What once felt personal is understood as structural. And what once demanded explanation slowly releases its grip.
This essay is written from such a moment.
—Baruti KMT-Sisouvong, PhD
For years, my work unfolded within institutions that offered legitimacy, lineage, and an initial architecture for service. I am grateful for that foundation. It provided the training ground in which the discipline as cultivated within me by my parents was honed, relationships were formed, and undeniable results were achieved. Yet over time, something subtle but unmistakable emerged: the scale, integration, and velocity of what was being built began to exceed what those structures could reasonably hold.
This was not a failure of intention. Nor was it evidence of malice or exclusion. It was, rather, a lesson in capacity.
Institutions—especially legacy ones—are designed to preserve coherence by minimizing variance. They excel at sustaining what is already known. They are less adept at metabolizing forms of growth that cross categories, dissolve silos, or generate outcomes faster than governance mechanisms can adapt. When that threshold is reached, tension is inevitable.
For a time, such tension can be misread. It is tempting to narrate it as conflict, targeting, or loss of footing. But with distance and reflection, another interpretation becomes available: the system has reached the edge of its own elasticity. What presses against it is not threat, but emergence.
I have come to understand that moments like these are not invitations to fight harder for inclusion, nor to shrink oneself for the sake of accommodation—an act both my Maternal and Paternal Grand Parents would never brook. They are, instead, invitations to ask a more honest question: What is this system capable of—and what is it not capable of?
When answered without resentment, that question is liberating.
In my case, the answer was clear. The work underway—now expressed through a growing constellation of endeavours including Serat Group Inc. and Radical Scholar Inc.—has evolved into something integrative by design. It bridges scholarship and practice, consciousness and culture, inner development and collective consequence. It does not fit neatly into territorial boundaries or inherited hierarchies. Nor, frankly, should it.
To continue this work faithfully requires air.
Ruminating over the last 2.5 years in light of these clarity-inducing reflections, which I now view as a period of incubation, it seems this experience was inevitable. And as a friend of mine from China once said to me after she showed me how to prepare a dish that I later sought to prepare on my own, commented: “Hmm. Someone is growing their wings.” This is where the metaphor of wings becomes most apt.
Wings do not appear in opposition to the nest. They appear because the nest has done its job. At a certain point, staying is no longer an act of loyalty—it is an act of limitation. Growth demands space.
Seen in this light, transition is not retreat. It is not a withdrawal from legitimacy. It is the next logical expression of competence, coherence, and clear-eyed vision. It is what happens when the work itself begins to indicate its own conditions for continuation.
There is a particular calm that accompanies this realization—it almost feels transcendent. The need to explain diminishes. The impulse to justify fades. What remains is a steady commitment to build, to document, and to serve—without antagonism, but also without self-erasure.
This is not a story of being pushed out. It is a story of growing beyond.
If there is any counsel to be offered from this essay, it is this: when the structure can no longer hold what you are becoming, do not mistake that for failure. Attend instead to what is being asked of you. Sometimes the task is not to repair the container, but to recognize that you have outgrown it.
Wings, after all, do not need explaining.
They need air. And such is supported by history.
A Rumination on Precedent: How Disciplines Grow
History offers a useful corrective to the anxiety that sometimes accompanies moments of repositioning. Nearly every enduring field of study began not as a universal system, but as a local experiment—rooted in a particular place, shaped by a particular context, and limited by the imagination and capacity of its initial institutional home.
Sociology, the discipline which supplied my second Bachelor’s degree and 2.5 years of Graduate Study, provides a telling example. The first Department of Sociology in North America was founded at the University of Chicago in 1892 under Albion W. Small, giving rise to what would become the influential Chicago School. Just five years later, W.E.B. Du Bois—the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University—established a parallel centre of sociological inquiry at Atlanta University, grounded not in abstraction alone but in rigorous empirical study of social conditions confronting African Americans. In 1904, Columbia University followed by creating a department devoted exclusively to sociology, further extending the field’s reach.
None of these developments negated the others. Each expanded the discipline’s capacity, diversified its methods, and strengthened its relevance. What began as a single institutional seed became, over time, a global intellectual ecosystem—one that no single university could rightly claim to contain.
If we widen the lens further, we find that the impulse toward expansion predates modern academia altogether. In the 14th century, Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah advanced forms of social-scientific reasoning concerning social cohesion and conflict centuries before sociology was formally named. His work, largely unacknowledged by later European founders of the discipline, nevertheless stands as a reminder that insight often arises outside the centres that later consolidate authority.
The pattern is consistent: disciplines do not remain whole by remaining centralized. They mature by propagating—by allowing ideas, methods, practices, and people to take root in new soils, informed by new conditions, and shaped by new questions.
Seen in this light, the expansion of consciousness-based education, Vedic Science, Consciousness and Human Potential studies beyond their original institutional homes is not a rupture with tradition, but fidelity to it. Growth beyond the nest is not abandonment; it is transmission.
What matters most is not where a field begins, but whether it is allowed to move where it is needed.
And so the arc continues—not as rebellion, but as ancient precedent fulfilled.
And as we embark on this fast-evolving adventure to position the idea of a Consciousness-Based Society to as many people as possible, we are energized by the strands of knowledge gained from the various sources along the way and welcome the opportunity to further this Great Work with all like-minded beings who desire to work shoulder-to-shoulder with us. That support may take many forms—inviting us to speak with your group, organization, or institution on the matter of consciousness and human potential; to co-author reports and conduct research on the benefits of expanding one’s perspective on possibility and acting accordingly; to offering financial support to the non-profit wing—Radical Scholar Inc.—of our constellation. Either of these paths related to this work are valid and welcome.
So, continue to remain vigilant for our offerings as they are sure to help, aid, and assist you in this magical journey of being an aware human.
Now, let’s get to work!
Suggested Practice: Recognizing When It Is Time to Grow Wings
Take a few moments to reflect—ideally after meditation or a period of self-imposed silence.
Where in my work or life do I feel friction that no longer leads to learning, but to constraint?
What structures once supported my growth but now feel unable to hold what I am becoming?
Am I interpreting resistance as personal failure, or as information about capacity and fit?
If I asked honestly, “What is this system capable of—and what is it not capable of?” what answer arises?
What would it mean to continue my work with clarity rather than justification?
Allow these questions to settle without forcing conclusions. Growth often announces itself not through urgency, but through a subtle sense that the conditions for continuation are changing.
Close by considering this image: wings unfolding not in defiance of the nest, but in gratitude for what the nest made possible.
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About the Author
Dr. Baruti KMT-Sisouvong is a scholar of consciousness, researcher of human development, and Certified Teacher of Transcendental Meditation® based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His work explores the relationship between Pure Consciousness, neuroscience, and social systems, and how deeper awareness can inform both personal growth and institutional transformation.
He is the Founder and Chief Meditation Officer of Transcendental Brain, an initiative examining the intersection of consciousness research, cognitive science, and high-performance decision-making. He is also President of Serat Group Inc. and Founder and Director of Radical Scholar Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to consciousness-based research and public scholarship.
Alongside his wife and teaching partner Mina, he co-directs the Transcendental Meditation program for Cambridge and the Greater Boston area. He is also the host of the On Transcendence Podcast and Founder of International Meditation Hour, a quarterly global gathering dedicated to the unifying power of silence.
His writings—spanning frameworks such as The Model for Perpetual Growth and Progress and The Seven Layers of Manifestation—explore the evolving relationship between consciousness, leadership, and society.
He writes from the conviction that the most important race is not between nations or machines, but between the conditioned mind and the awakening soul.
To learn more about him, visit: https://www.barutikmtsisouvong.com/.