Reminder
Go with the Flow.
I get mad at the guys who know all the horrifying facts about collapse. They know everything about the specifics of, for example, the climate, or the temperature, or the sea ice, or the biosphere, and they can relate long lists of horrifying facts about what is happening in these various areas.
These guys make it their business to be experts in how horrifying the facts are. And they tell us about it over and over again, and they amass large Twitter followings. I don't begrudge them their followings; everyone needs a gig! But I really do feel like after a while, a person has a responsibility to do more than simply recount horrifying fact after horrifying fact.
We can all go outside, and we can look, and we can see the shit that's coming down with the seasons and the weather. Or we can read the newspaper (what used to be the newspaper) and we can read that the leaders of the world are behaving like savage barbarians with magic killing machines, unconstrained by morals, law, or common sense. Okay, fine!
"Is civilization collapsing? Is the climate breaking down? Is it the end of the world?" Those are the easy questions, sad to say. But the question that we are trying to answer is: "Given the horror, given collapse, given the end of the world as we know it, what is our response to be?" What happens to us as individuals? This is what I spend my waking hours (and apparently my sleeping hours as well) considering over and over again. What is the response of the individual human being to this time, to this history, to these happenings?
To me, it's not a question of how can we change the world. It's a question of how we let the world change us.
In the old days, when we believed in the spiritual nature of reality, our own spiritual condition was of primary concern. The world and its history didn't matter so much. It was more about — and these are old words — "Are you right with God?" You can't use the word "God" now because it's been hijacked by patriarchal monotheistic evil, but, nevertheless the question is: "Are you right with God?"
Which is to say: "Is your spirit in alignment with something larger than yourself?" Because we are faced with a dichotomy between "the self" as an individual singularity of selfness, versus a self in connection with everything. And I think it's the connection with everything which is what we are being driven toward.
Or, rather, the rising energy of collapse — the terror, and the disorganization, the fear, all of that — it drives us toward a decision. Do we decide to go into the hell of a limited, tiny, singular self trying to survive against all odds? Or do we allow ourselves to open up to connection with something beyond ourselves?
What does that mean: "something beyond ourselves?" We cannot understand it. We cannot grasp it. But we can feel it, and we can in fact live in it. And if we would only recognize, it's just where we are!
Everything where we are is this cosmic, miraculous, wonderful fountain of being and life. And it's only the delusions of civilization — or perhaps a fundamental quirk of human nature — that blinds us to the beauty and the holiness of everything that we're in all the time.
And so the happenings of collapse — this intense energy, this boiling water in which we frogs are all immersed — it drives us to this choice between the hell of the isolated self and the bliss — the normal, wonderful, holy bliss— of being connected to All That Is.
Personally, I think the right thing to do is “go with the Flow.” If we resist, if we try to preserve the constructed “self” that civilization has trained us to be, it just hurts, because that self was never meant to last.
Much better to be like water, and flow into the low places where gravity wants us to go. Or, if necessary, turn into steam as the temperature rises. The Flow has its own way, and the happenings of collapse are a reminder that it’s our way, too.
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"To me, it's not a question of how can we change the world. It's a question of how we let the world change us." Yep Yep 100% YEP!! Ribbit.
This article popped up in my emails and, I'm sat in my garden with a small cup of iced Bailey's (no one has to know what I'm drinking) reading your words as if they've been plucked from my heart. Thank you for being so eloquent. One of the hardest things I'm having to learn is that all this disruption and dissolution is necessary to reconnect with the Divine. I still read the numbers and endless trail of how it's all ending, and it sadness me. But I feel like I'm less affected by that than before. Now, I'm trying to find a way to live fully and in the moment, but as gently as possible so as not to hurt the living space of my fellow non human relatives.