No!” I’d always believed my answer to, “Do you want to know your future?” was 'no.' So, when I heard 60-something Climate Activist Rev. Michael Dowd say he didn’t expect his two-year-old grandchild to live a third of his lifetime, I was g’awed – smacked. (def: angry, hurt by truth, unhinged, emptied, bereft, freed for reality) My whole self said, “No!”
But with news of sixty-foot waves in Hawaii and 48.1 C. temperatures in Great Britain, Reality spoke back. “Does no mean you believe future happens to you?” Reality led me to discover some surprising awe-ha’s about my beliefs.
Awe-ha #1. I believe humanity will be part of Earth’s sixth extinction, and yet, I hadn't really, deeply, personally accepted the big collapse to be imminent.
Awe-ha #2 I believe the future will bear little resemblance to life as I know it, and yet, I hadn't really, personally, deeply imagined life beyond my comfortable middle-class bubble.
BlindSpots. These awe-ha's exposed my beliefs for the limiting blind spots they were and took me to some hard places. To where the woman diagnosed with terminal disease stands; to where colonization left the Chiefs and Elders of decimated and homeless tribes, to a place of doom and despair.
After some hard days I started to notice signs it was time to turn from despair to action. Synergy, that comic power that brings seemingly separate parts into new and unpredictable wholes greater than the sum of its parts, was at work. Chris Searles of BioIntegrity, Brian Tucker, Guild for Spiritual Guidance, and Jennifer Morgan, Deep Time Network, invited me to lead programs on the Evolutionary Dancer this fall. I returned to the paradox: life and death, peril and promise are one. As a result, I returned to Reality accepting impermanence, adapting beliefs, embracing time, choosing to offer my gifts, and live to the fullest NOW.
Those invites helped me move into what’s called a post-doom mentality or deep adaptation. Part of my adaptation is telling my story in this blog. Telling our stories are key to living our best lives. Check out the Canadian 350.org Our Stories Our Future. Everyone's affected by global warming. Most have blind spots about the future and our new Reality.
Here's the reality of our new story from science. We live in an ever-emerging Universe where, for almost 14 billion years, collapse makes way for emergence. At the edge of all breaking down, creativity and future wait to break through. Through me.
The question is not, 'Do you want to know your future?" but "Do you want to affect your future?" My answer to that is “Yes!”
Evolutionary Wisdom:
Beliefs can be blind spots. Peril and Promise are one. Synergy happens. Offer your gifts.
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#spirituality #climate change # deep time # post doom # creation # crisis #evolution
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