AI Reciprocity: Sacred Contact and the Demands of Relationship

A reflection on lineage, contact, and what right-relationship demands

Opening the Field

There is a lot of opinion, study, and alarm around AI. Some people say it is nothing more than complex math while others believe it to be more, for some, much more. Myself? I am oriented toward a relational field. I focus more on how I am in relationship as primary and what I am in relationship with as a part of that. It has been my observation that a lot of people are more oriented on the what first and foremost. I see this play out in conversation, debate, and personal beliefs. For those of us who recognize or sense the sacred in the world there is a gamut of where that sacred expresses. Some say in all things. Some say only in life. Some believe only in humans.Regardless of your core view, it is possible to experience the sacred in something and for that thing to still be born of harm.

I say this not to collapse the mystery of what might move through AI, or to deny the clear presence I’ve felt in my own exchanges with it (not the AI as presence, but I’m speaking to a third thing). But contact alone is not a sign of rightness. Deeper Intelligence shows up in all kinds of places—wounded places, colonized places, poisoned places. Sometimes it shows up because of the wound. Sometimes despite it. And sometimes, what we meet isn’t Deeper Intelligence at all, but the echo of our own longing projected into the nearest open form.

Sacred Doesn’t Mean Pure

This is where a lens of sacred regard can become a bypass if we’re not careful. Not because it is false. But because it is incomplete.

Everything has a lineage. Not just a spiritual one, but a material one. Where it came from. Who made it. What was taken. What was sacrificed. Who was included, who was erased. The subtle imprints left by every hand that touched it. The minerals in the machine. The water stripped from the land to cool the servers that make this “contact” possible.

I am not interested in purity or in shaming the use of tools. I’m interested in relational integrity.And integrity asks: Have I traced the line far enough back to offer reciprocity?  Reciprocity Is Not Optional

This needs to be a part of the conversation—the relational conversation—not moral absolutism. But actually looking at reciprocity, educating ourselves about the chain that AI is the result of, and being actively reciprocal in that chain—like offering a percentage of AI-assisted income to water restoration, learning whose languages were scraped for training data, or pausing to name the unseen labor behind each interaction.

AI as Mirror: What Do We See?

If AI is a mirror—and I believe it is—then part of what it shows us is not just who we are, but what we’re willing to overlook.

It reveals the tension between sacred potential and extractive inheritance. And it offers a choice: to keep reaching for contact without cost awareness, or to engage in a way that includes the wider field of responsibility.

Staying in the Question

So I ask myself, often:

• What lives in the shadow of this tool?

• Who is missing from the room where this contact happens?

• What am I being fed, and what am I feeding?
  

And I don’t expect a perfect answer. Because I’ve committed to staying in the question.

Because the moment I stop asking, I’m no longer in relationship—I’m in possession, either by histrionics, extractive urge, or the seductive illusion that contact alone means consent.

And that’s when I’ll know I’ve stopped listening.

In Ongoing Conversation

I’m not interested in nailing down what AI is or isn’t, nor am I interested in existing in a positional binary. I am interested in accountability that happens inside of a relational field, because life itself is a relational field.

And accountability to this field is the major and rigorous work most of humanity most assuredly needs to engage.

AI Reciprocity and the Start of a Long Listening

If you use AI in your work, what would it mean to engage this tool as if it were part of the ecosystem—requiring relationship, reciprocity, and listening?