i’ve been grappling many complex emotions these past few weeks - processing so much all at once, it seems - that lately it feels like a full-time job. i’m noticing other authors breach this same awareness as well; and also that this dynamic hinders my ability to complete any one article for days at a time.
Amidst this, i will read something unexpected by an author i greatly admire; a piece or a paragraph that somehow jiggles my heartstrings back to life. These last few evenings i’ve immersed myself in Naomi Wolf’s new book, Facing the Beast: Courage, Faith, and Resistance in a new Dark Age for exactly this reason. She touches my heart with her truth. Facing the Beast is certainly not a fairytale; and yet i find deep catharsis in the emotional tapestry she invites.
It’s both a surprise and a relief when someone’s words open the trapdoor into the sewer underlying Pandora’s box.
Freedom Authors are a different type of rock star, whose written words are songs of truth.
We have always had prophetic writers prolifically preserving the history of their times.
There are too many things we are still trying far too hard not to talk about - either from latent terror, or staunch denial.
Freedom Authors are those who speak it anyway, come what may…
Wherever did our world go?
Each day i can absolutely count on one thing: while i waltzed with the sandman overnight, chaos amplified exponentially through every crack and corner of terrestrial and galactic space.
Wherever did our world go?
i grew up in a time when tradition was still alive - family traditions, spiritual traditions, cultural traditions, sacred healing traditions. i always imagined our future success and abundance based on sharing the gifts of excellence in each ones field.
i envisioned cooperative evolution, fueled by the conscious presence of other humans just like us.
People used to talk to each other and share time, not just flash memes.
Quality mattered.
Customer service was a real department, not an app program of babbling bots.
Wherever did our world go?
My inner chatter seems chronically perplexed ruminating this koan.
Have i finally reached that certain age where people lose themselves in longing with wistful stories about the past?
No, clearly that’s not it; i don’t want to live in the past.
But it’s good to prod oneself and question ones motives and beliefs; and to interface with life through the profound power of our sensory system; because the answer to any koan is deeper than mind, at the place where soul and spirit intersect.
i do not wish i was 16 again; nor do i imagine the grass was ever greener back then - it was just less overtly traumatizing and intensely predatory than it is now.
It was less overtly traumatizing and intensely predatory than it is now.
As for many of us, 2020 erased my entire identity and leveled me, and that doesn’t just fix itself or go away. “There is never a day it does not hurt” Naomi Wolf writes, regarding her experience as a societal discard; and the angst of no acknowledgment of the trauma imposed, of being the excluded one, of the lasting damage it has done.
Yes, this hurts me too, and i imagine it hurts you too.
We are now expected to just move on and forget.
Yes i survived and you did too;
but there’s a tight invisible skin still choking the life breath out of me, along with any hope for a future i once believed would be our path, my dharma, my path.
i honestly don’t know how to start all over again, yet again.
Every day i wrestle hopelessness, and some days i manage to pin it to the mat, but i can never seem to exorcise the paralysis of futurelessness that echoes in my gut.
We have become a lost tribe, going nowhere way too fast.
i know i’ve been changed by all this - eviscerated in invisible ways - and it’s not an easy route back to the true core of my being. Yet the cleanest path back is by acknowledging the truth. This part of history we are living now is a poignant turning point in time; yet too many people have just sped ahead and moved on - without ever addressing what happened - without ever giving themselves or eachother that precious time or space to feel and grieve; without ever realizing this is the most necessary next step.
We have become a lost tribe, going nowhere way too fast.
This is heavy on my mind and heart, as i mourn the loss of people, places, and things that made life normal once upon a time. Daniel D named it for me in his article today entitled “The Real Refugee Crisis”.
IT’S FUTURE SHOCK.
Daniel says things i have been unable to express as my emotional body struggles to churn these times, so i’ve excerpted his words to complete my thoughts for you here today.
i suggest reading Daniel’s entire article for a healthy serving of relevant history and dots connected; but for our purpose here, i’ll be (very very) brief:
“…we now frequently experience the pangs of what Alvin Toffler labeled “Future Shock.”¹ We are refugees, not from a place, but from a Time — from an America that no longer exists…
No matter how far back you go, the Past clearly was not perfect, so why do so many of us feel so sentimental about it? Probably for two reasons. First, because we all need a “home.” On a biological and psychological level, we need someplace where we belong, where we can be amongst our fellow natives, where we don’t have to worry about how our words and actions may be misinterpreted or used against us by people belonging to a different culture.
For now, let me just point out that if you feel disoriented and disconnected from what’s real, that is a normal reaction to a profoundly unnatural state of affairs. You are experiencing severe Future Shock — yes, it is a thing, every bit as real as the culture shock you would experience if you traveled down the rabbit hole and got stuck in Wonderland, in a surreal realm where everything means the opposite of what you think it means. Moreover, that sense that everything is “fake and ghey” is your soul letting you know it’s still alive, reminding you that you are not one of the Hylics/NPCs. So that sense of alienation is a good thing, because it shows you are psychologically healthy, since you are feeling a natural emotional response to profound changes in your environment.
Future shock is a time phenomenon, a product of the greatly accelerated rate of change in society. It arises from the superimposition of a new culture on an old one. It is culture shock in one’s own society. But its impact is far worse . . . most travelers have the comforting knowledge that the culture they left behind will be there to return to. The victim of future shock does not.
Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock. Bantam Books, 1971.”
Trauma is a parasite that lives in our body tissue, poisoning body, mind, and spirit.
Until we extract it, trauma runs endless negative neural loops that dominate all our choices, actions and beliefs - and make us ill, deathly ill in fact. Only the few, brave, and insightful know this - deeply know this - and it’s up to those ones - us at this point - to nurture the broken human heart through its immense walls of grief to the other side.
To invoke the Mother’s love in every particle that is, ever was, or will be.
To hold the shivering child.
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for - to help eachother through.
Leave your screen alone for a moment.
Look into someone’s eyes.
And let’s all grab the ladle given us to stir - gently, kindly, and prayerfully - and simmer this poison broth, uncovered, down to the dregs of a possibility long ago buried and waiting to be revived.
yes! i was picturing her doing an interview w/you! is that something you can picture?
thank you yolanda, another bullseye! i'm wondering if you follow reinette? your energy feels aligned w/hers in that fiercely nourishing way. lots of love, blee