This blog was inspired by Michael Meade's Podcast; Living Myth, Episode 237 Standing in the Water of Life. 22 July 2021. Here's a quote from the podcast.
"Wherever a person, wherever a group, is most restricted, where the imagination is most narrow, that's where the energy of apocalypse will pull things apart."
This stopped me in my tracks, as deep truths are want to do.
This whole shitshow within western culture, the slide towards toxic individualism, the final eruption into general white consciousness of racism and the harm we are culpable for, the arrival of Covid19 and the subsequent avalanche of mistrust, misinformation and fear mongering that is every.where, all of this is like the coming of a kind of destruction.
The alarm i felt in my whole being (i have written about that here ) continues to be a very real response to what i consider a force for harm in the world.
The dismantling and destabilising of information that literally saves lives is deeply alarming. That those who believe no one can be trusted and those who profess kindness are actually deeply dangerous is an Alice in Wonderland phenomenon that is taking a pair of nail scissors to the fabric of our communities. I see friends accusing friends of being stupid, gullible, sheeples. I see people saying you can't take away my freedom at the same time as being totally oblivious to, at best, or uncaring about at worst, others suffering long term impacts of covid, if not mourning a loved one.
There is a lot i could ponder about around the psychology of fear, needing to feel special, fear of being abandoned and lack of capacity for change but what i want to focus on is the capacity for uncertainty.
Uncertainty is a bloody horrible place for humans to find themselves in. In western culture there is only scorn for those who are caught in uncertainty. We respect someone who can make clear decisions, hell, i have even created an ecourse about it, stimulated partly by my dismay at my own uncertainty at that point in time.
When we don't know we feel weak. We feel vulnerable. It gets to the most tender parts of us of us. We have nowhere to hide if the unknown is around.
Humans try to guard themselves against uncertainty in all kinds of ways; we buy protection, we bank on the dominant ones who purport to be certain. But of course, life has other ideas.
As Meade named it in this great podcast (and i am paraphrasing here) life cycles through the following stages; we are in the known, there is a falling away of what is known, a separation from what was, uncertainty and then new form arises. This is the cycle of life, of the seed, the animal body, our hair, our ideas... all of what we know has to go through this gate, this messy scary gate, of uncertainty.
Meade's quote above stopped me in my tracks because i think apocalypse is what arises when we are most uncertain, most challenged and most likely, most tightly gripping onto that which is falling away, refusing to allow the new, wanting to make our lives great again.
I looked up the etemology of Apocalypse and this is what it says: apo = un and kaluptein = cover (the last part changing in the Greek to the word kalupsis) The force behind the word is to uncover.
If, as it seems we humans are back in this deeply polarised place where we are rigidly holding onto our rightness and their wrongness, where we are able to call our friends stupid and imagine they are being duped while we alone know the truth and that there is heinous calumny everywhere we look, are we perhaps creating the conditions for apocalypse?
What if this destruction happening all around us is uncovering something, revealing something?
Personally i would rather not have to get to total destruction to uncover what wants to arise. What new thing needs to be born. What new way we could perhaps learn to tend to our own shadow and injuries so that we don't project them out onto the world and cause harm in the crusade of destroying that which is ours to own and mend?
That is the old way and by God are some people clinging to that like it is going to save them. Humans have done that back into history and i would hope that the new that wants to arise is to put an end to that
i don't know that we are going to get a chance to find out.
This whole shitshow within western culture, the slide towards toxic individualism, the final eruption into general white consciousness of racism and the harm we are culpable for, the arrival of Covid19 and the subsequent avalanche of mistrust, misinformation and fear mongering that is every.where, all of this is like the coming of a kind of destruction.
The alarm i felt in my whole being (i have written about that here ) continues to be a very real response to what i consider a force for harm in the world.
The dismantling and destabilising of information that literally saves lives is deeply alarming. That those who believe no one can be trusted and those who profess kindness are actually deeply dangerous is an Alice in Wonderland phenomenon that is taking a pair of nail scissors to the fabric of our communities. I see friends accusing friends of being stupid, gullible, sheeples. I see people saying you can't take away my freedom at the same time as being totally oblivious to, at best, or uncaring about at worst, others suffering long term impacts of covid, if not mourning a loved one.
There is a lot i could ponder about around the psychology of fear, needing to feel special, fear of being abandoned and lack of capacity for change but what i want to focus on is the capacity for uncertainty.
Uncertainty is a bloody horrible place for humans to find themselves in. In western culture there is only scorn for those who are caught in uncertainty. We respect someone who can make clear decisions, hell, i have even created an ecourse about it, stimulated partly by my dismay at my own uncertainty at that point in time.
When we don't know we feel weak. We feel vulnerable. It gets to the most tender parts of us of us. We have nowhere to hide if the unknown is around.
Humans try to guard themselves against uncertainty in all kinds of ways; we buy protection, we bank on the dominant ones who purport to be certain. But of course, life has other ideas.
As Meade named it in this great podcast (and i am paraphrasing here) life cycles through the following stages; we are in the known, there is a falling away of what is known, a separation from what was, uncertainty and then new form arises. This is the cycle of life, of the seed, the animal body, our hair, our ideas... all of what we know has to go through this gate, this messy scary gate, of uncertainty.
Meade's quote above stopped me in my tracks because i think apocalypse is what arises when we are most uncertain, most challenged and most likely, most tightly gripping onto that which is falling away, refusing to allow the new, wanting to make our lives great again.
I looked up the etemology of Apocalypse and this is what it says: apo = un and kaluptein = cover (the last part changing in the Greek to the word kalupsis) The force behind the word is to uncover.
If, as it seems we humans are back in this deeply polarised place where we are rigidly holding onto our rightness and their wrongness, where we are able to call our friends stupid and imagine they are being duped while we alone know the truth and that there is heinous calumny everywhere we look, are we perhaps creating the conditions for apocalypse?
What if this destruction happening all around us is uncovering something, revealing something?
Personally i would rather not have to get to total destruction to uncover what wants to arise. What new thing needs to be born. What new way we could perhaps learn to tend to our own shadow and injuries so that we don't project them out onto the world and cause harm in the crusade of destroying that which is ours to own and mend?
That is the old way and by God are some people clinging to that like it is going to save them. Humans have done that back into history and i would hope that the new that wants to arise is to put an end to that
i don't know that we are going to get a chance to find out.
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