What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire

These are unprecedented times. They are going to require unprecedented actions by many people; people willing to leave behind the stories and assumptions, values and lifestyles of the culture of Empire; people willing to discern and claim their own unique part to play in this unfolding drama as the world spins ever faster, and ever closer to meltdown.

The more each of us takes the risk to step into our own unique brilliance, the farther we move from the lock-step of the mainstream. But most of us were reared and schooled for life in the mainstream. We were not supported as children and students to listen to our own different drummer. Any move away from the dominant family or societal system felt extremely risky because as children we were dependent, not able to take care of ourselves.

As Richard Heinberg points out in What A Way To Go, the people of Empire, as adults, are also highly dependent. We are dependent upon the structures of Empire. We are living in a culture that infantilizes us. Everything we need to live is dependent on huge structures that we have no personal control over.

The freest among us may be the handful of small, organic farmers who are not totally dependent on fossil fuels. They, at least, are able to grow a portion of their own food and could, if necessary, barter that food for other things they need. The rest of us are dependent on them, but even more dependent on the vast structures of civilization that keep us warm and fed, distracted and entertained.

We tell ourselves the story that we are living in an advanced civilization. We tell ourselves we are free. But as individuals we are highly dependent, highly vulnerable. This is not the mark of freedom or advancement, to be so utterly dependent upon a system that is not sustainable in the long run and is, in fact, actively, rampantly destructive of our basic environmental life support systems.

So we currently live a myth of freedom and independence. We are so highly dependent, just as children are on their families, that it takes some real guts, to challenge that myth, to swim against the mainstream currents, to define and create a life that is in truth freer, one that begins to reflect and express who we really are.

We are social beings. We need to belong. We need that like we need to breathe and to eat. But we do not need, in any real way, to belong to highly dysfunctional systems that stifle and distract, systems that exploit our energy and creativity.

I have experienced what happens when I am in a highly functioning group, one that both supports people to be their unique selves but also has learned to effectively tap the collective wisdom of the group. This is what indigenous councils experience when they make decisions. This is part of our ancestral and genetic heritage. The ability to be both a unique individual and also a member of a highly functional group was a trait that was selected for, evolutionarily, over eons. And we need this ability, right now, more than ever before. We need to be able to give and get strength, support, and counsel. We need a circle, a tribe, an extended family, a village.

Several weeks ago nine of us met in a circle for twenty-seven hours over a long weekend. As our time came to a close I said: “I don’t get any better than this.”

There is magic in a group that has tapped into collective wisdom, the wisdom that includes that of unseen forces, call them ancestors, or guardian angels, the Holy Spirit, or simply the collective unconscious. The magic of such a circle is that it provides something for the individual psyche, a safety, a strong container that allows full expression and freedom to be oneself.

In the context of such a circle or community, instead of feeling I’m at greater risk to say and be who I am, I feel safer. It becomes safe to say the unspeakable and feel the heretofore un-feel-able. It becomes safe to be quiet for long periods of time, to slow down, to listen profoundly to others. There is no worry I will be lost in the crowded dysfunction of old family or societal patterns.

Instead I feel both deeply centered in myself and connected to the strong selves of others.

It was in the strength of that strong container a few weeks ago that I was able to go to the mat with a fear that has been lurking in the shadows of my consciousness:

“What if we are too fucked up to make it?”

What if human beings are just too dissociated from their true brilliance as living, breathing, beings; too conditioned, too numb, too ripped-off of their essential selves; too damaged and unconscious to do what will be necessary to save ourselves from extinction?

It’s one thing to allow that thought to traverse one’s rational mind from time to time. It’s another to allow that possibility to course wildly through one’s veins, to be wracked with the tremendous sadness of that possibility.

Are not all thoughtful people, at this time in the story of humankind, aware of that prospect, but understandably holding it back from full consciousness because the pain of it is too much to feel on one’s own? How much of our individual and collective energy is tied up in NOT feeling that, in staying in denial and distraction?

I was able to feel that sadness fully, to release the tension in my body and to allow the tears of that fear to spill forth into the strong and safe cauldron of our group. The astonishing paradox is that doing so actually healed the disabling effects of that fear. Being seen and psychically “held” by the circle in the midst of the fear lent weight to the opposite:

“We are not too fucked up. The evidence of that is that we are here, sitting together, with huge love and compassion and courage.”

That experience was palpably healthy, even sacred. It was what I used to call “a corrective emotional experience,” in my earlier days as a psychodynamic psychotherapist. This is the brilliant paradox of healing: When we risk facing and feeling the worst, in the presence of a loving witness, or in this case even more powerfully, in the presence of a whole circle of loving witnesses, the worst dissolves, as naturally and beautifully as the mist dissolves at dawn.

Every human soul deserves this experience. How do we begin to create communities, tribes, families, partnerships, that provide this kind of real safety and security and opportunity for healing?

Without such experiences, all the renewable energy and sustainable paraphernalia in the world will not be sufficient to create the quantum shift at the level of our very being that will be required for a viable and desirable future.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, March 31st, 2007 at 6:44 pm and is filed under Sally's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.