Well, you know, we all want to change the world... ." - John Lennon
As 2022 comes to an end, that feeling of putting some truly strange years in the rear view mirror is a real temptation. In the US, the Covid pandemic disrupted so many familiar patterns of life in a cacophonous swirl of illness, economic changes, and political unrest that many found themselves pausing to ask questions that the rush of modern life often doesn't encourage. Questions like: what are we (humans) doing?, why are we doing any of it?, where the hell is this all leading?
On that last question, the answer at the moment doesn't appear to be an uplifting narrative. The vague unease that many feel about the future has real roots in some hard realities. However at the same time, things are getting spectacularly weird in some intriguing ways and honestly with all we are facing-- weird is very hopeful.
The Great Wave
If you have already pushed far out into the ocean of strange, you may have felt the
undulation of a wave of "something" go past you. As far out into the unfamiliar waters as you probably are (i mean c'mon you are reading this post), it might have felt like a modest force where it reached you. However, the power of that wave will inevitably be orders of magnitude greater when it crests and reaches the shoreline of public awareness.
There are already some prime examples of this in the US where the government,
academia, and private sector have established numerous efforts to study Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (the artist formerly known as UFO ). The fact that so many public figures including former presidents, former CIA directors, NASA directors, and accomplished scientists are openly talking about UAPs and that serious efforts are underway to study this topic should be THE MAJOR news story , and yet the media and public blithely go on as if nothing strange is happening. The disconnect is dizzying and the impact of the coming wave, even with ostensible attempts to manage it by gradual societal acclimation, will likely be made even greater by the incurious nature that some have descended into.
So what is the coming wave composed of? It is in truth a mixture of possible woe, weirdness, and hope conjoined in a spectacular fashion. We don't have time to trace all the contours of this great wave in a post but some of these themes will undoubtedly already be very familiar to you.
We are deep into a mass extinction event which from the reference point of geological time-frame is occurring at an unbelievable speed.
Many areas of the earth in the next few hundred years will likely be uninhabitable due to global warming and environmental refugeeism will dwarf political or economic migrations.
Our entire civilization has materially been built on a model and ratio of petroleum production cost to market valuation that will at least begin to break down as the century progresses.
We are still just one crazy ego-maniacal world leader away from escaltory annihilation via nuclear or biological weapons .
These elements lend some pragmatic concern that the music for this dance could be coming to an end.
However, interestingly , mixed in with the troubling element found in this wave of coming changes, there are also stunningly weird aspects. These aspects seem to involve the impending collapse of dominant scientific paradigms sprinkled in with secrets that have been kept from us (though really hidden in plain sight) for some time. Some of these lovely oddities include:
Space/time are probably not fundamentally 'real' .
Objects themselves probably do not have any inherent properties.
Reincarnation is probably real.
"Magick" is real (meaning focused mentation actually has an impact in the world).
"Aliens" are real but most likely many of those who have access to that secret have no idea fully what that means.
Psychic functioning is real (and the"Aliens" are prob. really damn good at it).
All of the above is probably an odd dance of what we consider science and spirituality together.
Ok got all that? Feeling dizzy? In many ways when we don't draw a barrier to just keep the strange things out, all of life starts to feel very much like a fever dream or perhaps an episode from a rather poorly written science fiction movie.
Irrespective of any stylistic critique of the possible "plot line", it time for us to just deal with the fact that the world is actually magical, terrible, wonderful, and complex as shit -- and turn to the next chapter of the book.
So what is that next chapter? Are we living in the waning days that herald a great collapse back into darkness or at the very advent of a new halcyon age? Perhaps more importantly -- do we even really care?
While the world still feels "stable", it is easy to just get caught back in the everyday
familiar flow of life that is going on around us -- this is after all where the most aspects of a human life take place. Yet, many of us can't help but see that the "stage" where this act takes place, is but a self-imposed area where the light of awareness currently shines. We can perceive in this truth that we are personally part of some grand perhaps repetitive drama that extends long before our "birth" and well after our "death". Who lingers in the audience observing this performance is often hard to perceive though our spiritual traditions offer us many significant clues.
As more of us are drawn (often kicking and screaming) to personally explore and refine our understanding of a broader reality, I believe the very conversion of what we presently consider bizarre into the familiar remains a real reason for hope. This is a hope derived from a new shared knowledge that leads not to perfection but to a heartful evolution of how we perceive ourselves as individuals and through this broadening understanding of self, a new path of evolution for human societies as a whole -- quite literally -- a new world if we can take it..
Whether we can leap the gap to realize this opportunity in time enough to prevent a full collapse into another dark age is still yet to be seen.
However, one thing feels absolutely certain, the zeitgeist of our time remains one of transformation -- we can feel it when we dwell in moments of silence-- the tingle that runs down the length of our spine -- the pregnant and heavily charged energy of a growing swell, a lovely song that draws us further out into the arms of deep mystery.
Somewhere out in the dark ocean - a great wave still rolls