Questions About the Apocalypse, Dreaming the Good Dream, and Coming Back to Life.
“Arise, arise my beloved, how you sleep
The sun and the moon do not sleep
The stars and the trees do not sleep
The lover and the beloved do not sleep
Arise, my beloved, do not sleep.”
-Sufi Chant
I hope you are all settling into this new year, and have found ways to support and care for yourselves and your loved ones through the bumpy transitions and transformations that the last half of 2019 brought us, and that most of 2020 will bring us. Now, more than ever, I believe we need to turn toward one another with compassionate curiosity. When I am confronted with something that I find to be initially repulsive or painful, I ask myself, "If there were more that I could know about this person or situation, what would it be?" I try to remember that each person I encounter is also working to navigate the immense amount of collective pressure and intensity present in this time.
We are all trying to keep up with a frantic pace, overwhelming amounts of information and constant change. This is no easy task and it can feel beyond unpleasant as we are forced to confront profoundly painful truths that urge us toward transformation. It can be easy to turn on each other, to look desperately for someone to blame for our current predicament. The reality is, however, both the problem and the solution are more complex than that. All beings suffer, regardless of identity, class, race, geographic location or gender. No one is immune to the human condition, and no one is ever truly irredeemable. To cut off dialogue, to label someone as inherently evil or irredeemable, only perpetuates the oppressive, systemic shame-machine that has pushed our world into its current state, strong-arming us with its megalithic institutions and shame-fueled hierarchies of power.
In whatever ways you are capable, I urge you to rebel against this shame-based system and the temptation it creates in us to make rash grabs for power through shaming/blaming others. It only reinforces the destructive power structures that already exist. We are all being pushed collectively and individually beyond the edges of what we've known and into the mysterious territory of massive personal and collective transition. We can only make this change together, and curiosity and dialogue will help to guide us through these uncertain times as we work to rebuild trust and interdependence in ourselves and with our fellows.
I have many clients and friends who often share with me their feelings of pointlessness at trying to change their personal habits or relationships because they believe the world is doomed, headed toward an apocalypse that will wipe out all of humanity. In many ways, this apocalyptic belief can be a coping mechanism for the immense amount of stress and pressure we are under as individuals. It is easier to assume that all will suddenly be washed away, then to imagine the immense undertaking of massively transforming our ways of living into something interdependent with the web of all creation. Facing such unknowns, and such overwhelming systemic obstacles at each turn, it can be easy to shut down and give up. It can be easy to get what a friend of mine calls the "fuck-its." I don't blame you, I find myself at times looking at the world and it brings me to my knees, my only response is one of deep grief.
My mentor and teacher Randy Morris, PhD calls this collective heaviness we are all attempting to cope with "extinction anxiety.” This anxiety is with us always, deeply rooted and underlying everything we experience in life. How do we cope with the idea that all of life could be suddenly erased? How does one comprehend this possibility of annihilation and then live on in a way that works toward building a future for ourselves and the coming generations? Although total extinction is possible, it is not the most likely outcome, so I ask you this: What if you live? What if life continues? What world are you building for yourself and for those who are coming, and can you bear to live in it?
This anxiety and overwhelm is not something to be denied, but facing it can feel like too much and cause the shut down I was mentioning earlier. In the book “Coming Back to Life” written by the wise elders Joanna Macy and Molly Brown, this shut down is named “Apatheia,” or “the deadening of the mind and heart.” Macy and Brown consider this to be the greatest danger facing us as individuals and a collective, but also a natural response to the unbearable weight of the pain of the world we each carry. As Wendell Berry writes, “It is the destruction of the world in our own lives that drives us half insane, and more than half. To destroy that which we were given in trust: how will we bear it?”
So, how will we bear it? What is the antidote to this deadening of heart and soul, this intense desire most of us have to turn away from what otherwise feels like a pain and anxiety so overwhelming it could consume us?
Elders Joanna Macy, Carolyn Baker, Andrew Harvey and Molly Brown have some suggestions for how to cope with these intense feelings, so that we can begin to listen to the very important messages speaking to us through our pain, messages that are powerful enough to move us into action if we will hear them:
“Resilience is the absolute crux of how we must respond to the terrifying and daunting events unfolding in our time. The definition of resilience. . .is: The life-giving ability to shift from a reaction of denial or despair to learning, growing, and thriving in the midst of challenge.” (Harvey and Baker, p. XX)
Resiliency Practices: Tools to help support and restore you, so you can stay human and remember what's good about life.
Expansion Practices: Tools to help you increase your conscious awareness.
Connection Practices:Tools to support your reconnection to your body, others, your community, and the web of life, to help restore collective wholeness.
Resiliency Practices:
Simplify – belongings and commitment.
Embodiment Practices – movement.
Build Community – create islands of sanity and connection.
Time in Nature – connect with the web of life.
Relationships with Animals – learn about love, compassion, and service.
Humor – remember what's good.
Envisioning a Positive Future – what would it look like if things were ok?
Daily Gratitude Lists – there's always something that's working.
Expansion Practices:
Mindfulness Meditation – connect to the present moment and your senses.
Creative Expression – give birth to the new!
Shadow Work – bring the darkness to light so it can be transformed.
Empathy/Compassion Exercises – put yourselves in the shoes of another.
Meditation on your place in the Web of Life – you are part of a whole.
Meditation on all which has come before you – you come from a long line of humans who have survived.
Meditation on Deep Time and Future Ancestors – think about the next 5, 10, or 20 generations. What will they remember of us? What can we give them?
Receiving Therapeutic Care – get support.
Connection Practices:
Service to others – creates perspective and moves us beyond ego.
Cultivating Curiosity – what if there was more that you could know?
Seeking Meaning – what matters to you? Why is life worth living?
Conscious Eating – reconnect to the web of life.
Gardening/Permaculture – reconnect to the web of life.
Community Support Groups – create islands of support to help your community connect and stay strong.
Power with vs. Power over – meditate on how we are stronger together.
Normalizing Emotion – Feelings are normal. What are they telling you?
To learn more about Resiliency, Expansion, and Connection, check out:
*Coming Back to Life: the Updated Guide to the Work that Reconnects, by Joanna Macy and Molly Brown
*Savage Grace: Living Resiliently in the Dark Night of the Globe, by Andrew Harvey and Carolyn Baker
*Seek support where you can, and offer support when you are able. If you need counseling or other supportive modalities, I have an extensive referral list of healers and therapeutic practitioners who may be able to support you through the transformations these times are demanding of us: http://www.wordsbetweenworlds.com/referrals
As my teacher Deborah Frances Dancing Crow always reminds me, in times like these it is important that we remember to "dream the good dream," for the world and its future. Although it is easy to see how many things aren't working and lose ourselves and our consciousness in that place, it is also vitally important that we find a way to dream the good dream of what could be.
In the spirit of dreaming this good dream of future life, I again ask you: What if you live? Or, what if your children or loved ones live? What if life continues? What world are you building for yourself and for those who are coming, and can you bear to live in it? I know these questions can hurt, but I urge you to try any of the suggestions listed above and see if they help you to find some semblance of center, strength and power so that you can begin to move forward in your individual life, and in your life as part of the collective of humanity.
You are a part of the web of all creation, you belong in the web of life, you are not a visitor or an outsider to the Earth. You belong here, this is your home, and how you live, feel, love and act does matter. Don't discount your power, don't believe the lie that it's all too big—even the largest towers eventually fall. Don't discount your pain and the pain of the world that moves through you—you feel it because you are a part of the web of life, connected to the earth and all things, and this is truly good. Let these truths crack you open, let them purify your soul and mind of numbness and delusion. Let them bring you back to life.
With my heart I hold us all as individuals, and the collective web of life, in the prayer of love. May we all start to remember what is good about life, may we have the courage to dream the good dream no matter what the emotional cost, so that our future, and the future of those who are coming, will be one worth living.
With great love,
Katy
