What really matters in life? While you are asking the big questions, who are you and where are you going? Every culture has stories about the people and answers to these questions.
And the way we answer them has profound effects on the health of both the people and the planet as a whole. There are two stories answered – the story of the Self, and the story of the people.
You see ‘Out there’ as separate from ‘You’, so you convince yourself that things that happen ‘Out there’ do not affect you.
Gulf Oil spills, nuclear disasters, wars, happen ‘Out there’, but I am separate and immune to these things happening somewhere far away. Or am I? This logic contradicts your felt experience.
Millions of people are not supposed to be starving, nuclear weapons are not supposed to be hanging over our heads, the rainforests are not supposed to be shrinking, or the fish dying, or the condors and eagles disappearing.
You can not accept the way the dominant narrative of our culture handles these things: as fragmentary problems to be solved, as unfortunate facts of life to be regretted, or as unmentionable taboo subjects to be simply ignored.
Addiction, self-sabotage, procrastination, laziness, rage, chronic fatigue, and depression are all ways that you withhold your full participation in the program of life you are offered.
When the conscious mind can not find a reason to say no, the unconscious says no in its own way. You can not bear to stay in the ‘old normal’ any longer.
We live a moment of transition between Worlds. The institutions that have borne us through the centuries have lost their vitality; only with increasing self-delusion can we pretend they are sustainable.
Our systems of money, politics, energy, medicine, education are no longer delivering the benefits they once did (or seemed to). Their Utopian promise recedes further every year.
Millions know this; yet we seem helpless to change, helpless even to stop participating in industrial civilization’s rush over the cliff.
As we awaken to the interconnectedness of all our systems, we see that we can not change our energy technologies without changing the economic system that supports them.
We learn that all of our external institutions reflect our basic perceptions of the world, our invisible ideologies and belief systems.
We can say that the ecological crisis is a spiritual crisis. It goes all the way to the bottom, encompassing all aspects of our humanity.
We are unique in having a soul or a rational mind. In our mechanical universe we alone possess Consciousness and the wherewithal to mold the World according to our design.
The only limit to our ability to do so is that amount of force we can harness and the precision with which we can apply it.
The more we are able to do so, the better off we are in this indifferent or hostile universe, the more comfortable and secure.