“At the heart of the pronoiac way of life is an apparent conundrum: you can have anything you want if you’ll just ask it in an unselfish way. The trick to making this work is to locate where your deepest ambition coincides with the greatest gift you have to give. Figure out exactly how the universe, by providing you with abundance, can improve the lot of everyone whose life you touch. Seek the fulfillment of your fondest desires in such a way that you become a fount of blessings.” –Rob Brezsny, author of Pronoia
I feel like a banker in the economy of the community–taking inner wealth, making it visible, and sharing it with others. There is so much! There is so much to be thankful for! There are so many blessings! No matter how terrifying our unknown future presents itself, we must not forget that the holy spirit (the homo plasmate, for all you PKD fans), has not abandoned us. It is inside us. Jesus, son of man that he was, said the kingdom of god is to be found not in heaven, but within us. We have it in ourselves to realize the garden of eden beneath our feet, to spit out the original sin. We thought we were getting a taste of the knowledge of good and evil, but that is for the gods alone. So, have we learned our lesson yet? We can sneak into the garden, through the back door, where angels with fiery swords do not deter us. The symbols, signs, and stories–they’ve all been given to us. Making any sense of them is the hard part.
We are in fact living through the apocalypse right now. It’s a slow crash. You wouldn’t even notice if you weren’t paying attention, as usually these happenings are invisible. The ice cap melting–well, now, that’s a bit more in our faces, eh? Even with the silly repetitive blather about global warming, our blind spot is becoming obvious. The media-glorified spectacle of our culture may be able to distract some, but ever increasing numbers of us are waking up out of the trance of the cave of treasures, becoming cognizant of the bars of the black iron prison, wondering where are the keys to our gilded cages. There’s good news and bad news: there are no keys, and it is up to us to forge our own.
The apocalypse (from Greek, to uncover) is as much about rebirth as it is about collapse. It’s damn hard to convince the nightly news of that, though. They enjoy telling us about murders, bombings, punishments; fear sells way more crap than telling us about people in blighted areas tilling under our yards, sharing seeds and produce, and forging community in abundance. For certainly, the primary way we experience apocalypse is through the intimacy of our daily lives. Ideas like abundance, chaos, beauty, community, love, passion, care–these are real things that exist, as long as we believe in them and enact the stories behind them in the background of our daily lives. These are the things that matter, and they don’t cost money. You do not have to enslave yourself to get them, nor shop at Wal-Mart.
It’s exciting, isn’t it? We realize we have in ourselves the power to shape the humanity of the future. We realize we don’t need to trust someone else to take care of it for us. It doesn’t need to wait until the next president takes office, or even until tomorrow. As Thom Yorke says, “No more talk about the good old days. It’s time for something great.” It’s exciting to see the paradigm shift taking place before our eyes, in the fabric of our daily lives, and to look around at all the other robots, waking up out of their trances, realizing our minds, bodies, and souls are drawn into the process of figuring out the answers for ourselves. It’s not that we follow one answer or another, it’s that we think!
During this time, we will instinctively be drawn towards that which encourages blossoming and abundance, and away from that which is of no help. Our ideas and inspirations come from our direct personal experiences. We are becoming what we are becoming. This dangerous and unknown future is being lit from within in our process of healing and renewal. We hear the call within ourselves that wakes us. We arise and begin a future of doing something different than age-old destructive civilization. As brief love affairs become distant memories, so too do the memories of full-time employment, health care benefits, and retirement packages. Into our lives waltz joys of deep human relationships, care for each other, and sharing wealth and scarcity, the joy and the sorrow. It is raw. It undeniably can hurt. But the joy of life shared in community is unmatched.
“If you’re really listening, if you’re awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break; its purpose is to burst open again and again so that it can hold ever-more wonders.” –Andrew Harvey
We have indeed passed through an arid stretch of our journey, but now, through the process of rebirth, we find ourselves in more fruitful surroundings. Times of desperation and inner tension, when recognized, can be some of the most fertile beginnings of our lives. We trust that the destruction of stagnant ideas and ways of life can only set us free, allowing us to assume the innocense of a child, and wander through the garden unhindered. If we allow ourselves to walk in the hands of the gods, we will.
“The moment you come to trust chaos, you see god clearly. Chaos is divine order, versus human order. Change is divine order, versus human order. When the chaos becomes safety to you, then you know you’re seeing god clearly.” –Caroline Myss
Retreating from fear or pain denies a central part of ourselves. Abundance comes from giving without question. We trust in our perception that the more deeply we are engaged in feeling the spectrum of human emotion, the more comprehensive our insights will be. We can trust in our intuitive nature, our inner voice, and our ability to heal ourselves. We trust in our responsibility to ourselves, the responsibility we have to our community, and the responsibility of our community to us. Introspection allows us to find our way to the fertile oases within, the source of which becomes a fount of our strength, courage, and creativity. The more we accept ourselves and share with others, the clearer our individual and collective vision will be. To transform, we relax and give ourselves up to the dance. To walk in the hands of the gods, we give up our worries and embrace the entirety of human existence, to remember the garden beneath our feet. Anamnesis, the loss of forgetting, is our recollected blessing.
Contained within our daily lives is everything we need to remake, rebirth, recreate, realize–REALize–our future as humanity. It’s a challenge, no doubt, but surely one that our giant brains, vivid imaginations, and unending creativity are up for. It’s the greatest challenge of our lives, of the life of humanity as far as we know: turning on a dime, throwing our useless baggage into the gears of the system of destruction and death, and walking away into creation–giving birth to ourselves.
The origins of any kind of wealth lie in human consciousness. When we bring these hidden treasures into the world, they manifest in our daily lives. The blessings overflow into our physical, spiritual, and emotional modes of being. We share the blessings, making them ever so valuable and abundant. Giving ourselves up to live this life we all know is possible takes courage–a tremendous amount. We discover this courage deep within ourselves, deep into where we radiate a satisfied sense of self-sufficiency. We draw up our courage and feel it spilling forth as we look around and see the strength in our numbers. Our fears have nothing to do with reality. Wake up and see what is really happening! Wake up! We are already free!
Shine the spotlight directly into our blind spot. We become the black swans, the outliers, the butterflies of chaos, the unexpected events that change reality as currently perceived. Let the power of your inspiration liberate you from the bonds of your conditioning. Let the apparently impossible manifest itself in marvelous ways in our daily lives. In the course of human existence, we trust in our own energy and move with it. We give birth to ourselves, as do stars, which reflect every fractalized cell in our bodies. We have boundless potential. We face insurmountable opportunities.
We have attracted to ourselves everyone who is a part of our lives. We have created and participated in every situation in our lives. Indeed, we create our own reality. The wealth we hold in our hands is ours to do with as we choose. It is our freedom and our responsibility. What a blessing to find ourselves endlessly wealthy in the things that matter.
[poem]
I mirror the universe–
a constant state of flux
to maintain some sort of
chaotic balanced order
so complex it cannot be perceived
and then, I explode, collapse
grow and expand
turn inward and get to know myself
an endless spiral of growth and decay
being reborn again and again
[end]
There is infinite abundance born from the dust of a decaying star, the love and strength and beauty flowing through us remind us of this. Everything unfolds at the proper time when we relax and trust in life. There is no fear or danger when we let go. Having given birth to our own souls, it becomes ever easier to support others doing so. We crawl out of our collective exoskeleton that no longer fits, and we follow our hearts as they push forth in search of beauty. The untrodden path beckons us to behold a new life waiting to be lived.
“Learning is finding out what you already know. Action is showing you know. Teaching is letting others know that they know it as well as you.”
–end–
Many thanks to Robert Brezsny for his book Pronoia and to Gerd Ziegler for his book Tarot, Mirror of the Soul. These two books have had a tremendous impact in my continuous breakdown breakthrough of the last six months. Also many thanks go to my community, for reminding me of my strength and courage when I forget.
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