As I watch the entire Western world, maybe the whole world in its entirety, collapse, I think that we need to allow ourselves to change and adjust as a whole, as a race. It starts small with the shifts on the inside. The work of non-resistance, of turning away, of building and reinforcing your field, of becoming implicit and self-reinforcing. The change that is on its way is inevitable, and there is no avoiding it anymore. We are not going to call this environmental disaster back; recycling isn’t going to mitigate the oncoming destruction. People usually freeze here and stop reading; please continue.
These are the rhythms of truth. Now we need to harness our energies to build new systems. Systems that are integrated and formed in matriarchal focal routes. Energy pathways that weave us together and create interdependent patterns. We need to plan, build, and utilize these networks. Let’s turn our energy here and turn it away from the authoritarian power forces that lead from hate, greed, and most importantly, lack. The lack of a resilient self and the lack of enrichment, humility, and curiosity.
Control and fear can only bring a population to a certain level of despair, inaction, and ill health. The counterbalance to this disease is to use your energy for something else, something that builds community, that shines light on your environment and makes for bravery. We always have the choice to resist less.
In the end, the people who died with respect were the ones who fought for truth, stayed clear, and lifted up their human counterparts. The people who live on in history as cowards are the ones we despise most; their names are remembered, but each time the name is said, it evokes a sense of disgust, and that energy will live on for years to come. This is a strange place: someone who stands up to adversity is shamed, harassed, tortured, and yet remembered as one of the best of us.
Weakness is heralded as strength and, in some cases, as its opposite. The geriatric model of spirituality still places a wise leader or a wise mandate as the all-knowing, controlling center of the system. There were always problems with the leader; humans are innately flawed, and a human has to execute the mandate, therefore making that imperfect as well. Eventually, the congregation is corrupted. We really have to look at why people want to abdicate their own volition in the name of safety.
Modern spirituality will have to rise from the grassroots of humanity, from the rubble, from the brokenness, from the ones on this planet who do the daily work of living. These people can create a community with a sense of purpose, focused on ecological restoration, and bring back the simple joy of being here, restoring the pain-and-pleasure balance of humaning.
This is a mainly philosophical essay; the concrete practices are in the process of development, and they will be reinvented many times in the future. The goal was to plant a seed that changed the way we are looking at things, and even the discussions that are being had. Another conversation to enliven us is about how we do not put our energies towards the regime of hate and destruction, but we can talk about building a different model.
We can educate ourselves, we can practice, and we can shed the shackles of an outdated thought process and birth a resilient model something that can shift as the world changes. It is going to be something that we do not even understand at the moment. This generation of youth is going to create something we have not even seen, something we do not even know can happen. In some ways, this can be very uplifting.
