Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door.
~Emily Dickinson~
In the throes of humanity’s unraveling and in and out of the shadowy crevices of so-called “normal” life, we never know when dawn will come. Even in the midst of abject suffering and loss, life frequently surprises us with a thread of light breaking on the distant horizon which then swells to a radiant epiphany. We cannot predict or control an eruption of awareness or illumination, but we must know that it will come in its own time. And because we know, we must “open every door.”
We may or may not witness the myriad epiphanies which collapse is capable of evoking on our planet. Many will not occur in our lifetime, yet we must be deeply engaged in catalyzing the transformation of consciousness by keeping ajar the doors of our own psyche in anticipation of illuminations of which we are not yet aware and that we may not even have the privilege of experiencing firsthand.
I am heartened that even now, so many human beings are awakening to the reality of collapse, accepting it, and committing their lives to finding meaning and purpose in it. Often, people tell me that I’m “preaching to the choir,” at which point I remind them of how important the choir actually is. The so-called choir are all of the potential elders or stewards of the unraveling who understand why it must happen and profoundly appreciate its deeper significance for our planet.
Regardless of how daunting the demise appears---no matter how futile our preparation may feel or how small may be the odds of our physical survival, the doors must remain open for a dawn that has a life of its own outside our limited volition.
In her 2010 book Perseverance, Margaret Wheatley states, “Rather than thinking one perspective is preferable to the other, let’s notice that both are somewhat dangerous. Either position, optimism or pessimism, keeps us from fully engaging with the complexity of this time.”
Occasionally, I receive an email or blog reply from a reader who says something like, “On the one hand, you talk about collapse and the end of life as we know it, but on the other hand, you talk about a new vision, new opportunities, and a new kind of human being. These feel like contradictions to me. It’s really crazy-making. Can you explain?”
This kind of confusion issues from the either/or programming of industrial civilization. In that paradigm, we learn that something can only be one way or the other. In the new paradigm, however, we discover that life is complex and multi-faceted, and that the collapse of the old paradigm indeed holds a new vision with many opportunities. In Perseverance, Margaret Wheatley reassures us throughout that this may be the most frightening, uncertain, and challenging time in human history, and that it is also an era replete with new opportunities for connection, compassion, healing, and re-experiencing what it means to be human. In fact, she suggests that we are standing on the threshold of becoming an entirely new species as a result of living through these turbulent times which are also profoundly transformative times.
Apparently, we are being asked to sit and live with not knowing how it will all turn out, in which case, neither pure optimism nor pure pessimism are appropriate responses. “Much better,” says Wheatley, “to dwell in uncertainty, hold the paradoxes, live the complexities and contradictions without needing to resolve them.”
Can we give up the need to resolve the unknown? Can we simply abide in the unknown, holding both optimism and pessimism without needing to know the outcome?
Some years ago, my friend, Larry Robinson in Northern California captured this dilemma in poetry:
FALLING
In these awe-filled days of fire and flood and plague
We watch and wait and wonder
When that fierce hand
Might reach at last for us.
Those of us not yet touched by calamity
Quake, knowing in our bones
That though we may be spared
This time, time will level us all.
No magic amulets, no prayers, no masks,
Good deeds or good looks
Can promise protection
From our terminal human condition.
And those who have watched a child
Swept forever from our arms
Or fled the flames that swallowed
Our hopes and our memories
Or hid from the bombs or the virus
Or the predator’s gaze
Know that nothing now will ever be the same -
As if anything ever were.
For all of us are falling
Like ashes, like rain,
Like petals, like leaves;
But we all are falling together.
And if we knew, in truth,
There was nowhere to land,
Tell me: could we know the difference
Between falling and flying?
One of the great scientific prophets of collapse, William Caton, author of Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, wrote that “Ecological understanding of the human predicament indicates that we live in times when the American habit of responding to a problem by asking ‘now what do we do about it?’ must be replaced by a different query that does not assume problems are solvable: What must we avoid doing to keep from making a bad situation unnecessarily worse?”
It would be more than enough for any of us to contain if the only demise to which we were asked to surrender were exclusively individual. Yet concurrently, Western culture is in unprecedented decline. William Catton asserts that we have exceeded the carrying capacity of our planet, which invariably results in the dissolution of societies and the massive extinction of species. He asserts that the collapse of industrial civilization and the misery that attends it is a fait accompli. Asking “What can we do about it?” is like asking if repainting the cars involved in a fatal crash will bring the victims back to life.
In a recent New York Times article, An Age of Extinction is Coming. Here’s How To Survive, Russ Douthat argues that the survival of the most nourishing aspects of human culture into the future depends on intention and intensity. “Any aspect of human culture that people assume gets transmitted automatically, without too much conscious deliberation, is what online slang calls NGMI — not going to make it.” The author does not focus on the physical survival of the human species but on what our species intentionally creates and leaves behind for those who may follow us.
The issue is not how collapse is going to turn out, but rather, on how we are going to turn up as it plays out.
While we cannot prevent or reverse the collapse, we can commit our lives to minimizing the emotional and spiritual damage this collective descent will precipitate. While our thoughts may immediately leap to massive efforts on a large scale, one way we can alleviate suffering is by grieving—consciously, intentionally, and with each other’s support. Grieving together accelerates empathy, compassion, and solidarity in our suffering. It minimizes a false sense of hope and enlivens us with a vibrant sense of meaning and purpose. What is more, grief introduces us to its irresistible twin, joy. Grief and joy travel together and need each other. As the poet Mary Oliver writes: “We shake with grief, we shake with joy. What a time these two have, housed as they are in the same body.”
No one can be 100% comfortable with uncertainty. We do not put on our most comfortable pajamas and curl up with it under a soft, down quilt. However, we can increase our acceptance of not knowing the future. In her beautiful book Comfortable With Uncertainty, Buddhist teacher, Pema Chodron writes that, “Ordinarily we are swept away by habitual momentum. We don’t interrupt our patterns even slightly. With practice, however, we learn to stay with a broken heart, with a nameless fear, with the desire for revenge. Sticking with uncertainty is how we learn to relax in the midst of chaos, how we learn to be cool when the ground beneath us suddenly disappears. We can bring ourselves back to the spiritual path countless times every day simply by exercising our willingness to rest in the uncertainty of the present moment—over and over again.”
“Spiritual path?” you may ask. If so, it may be helpful to read my earlier post in this blog on “Collapse and Spirituality.” In it, I argue that the essence of spirituality is to deepen our connection with ourselves, with each other, and with the earth. This is how we become spiritual, not literal, warriors. Spiritual warriors transform the anxiety of uncertainty into service and caregiving in the world.
The result is less pre-occupation with uncertainty and more fulfillment and joy. Regardless of how much we suffer, the joy that lives at our core cannot be extinguished, and it flows naturally and persistently as we increase our comfort with not knowing what lies ahead. From that orientation to collapse, acceptance becomes possible, and as the “Falling” poem implies, falling together becomes flying together in the skies of vast uncertainty.
Learn more about collapse coaching at www.carolynbaker.net