Crisis invites us, then pushes us
Here’s a short evolutionary systemic look at where we find ourselves and why it is important to make a shift outside of our individual and collective business as usual. It is time to pay attention to what evolution is telling us about our unfolding destiny and our role in that destiny, however it may unfold. It is time to pay attention in new ways, and soon…. – Tom
Crisis invites us, then pushes us
We are thoroughly dependent on systems that are destroying us and our world. The very designs and beliefs that make those systems powerful and toxic are the designs and beliefs that, once transformed, will make us new.
“We have it in our power to begin the world over again,” said Thomas Paine in another crisis era. “The birth of a new world is at hand.” And what kind of new world will that world be?
I see more clearly every day that the longer we delay needed changes, the more demanding they will become. The more we delay them, the fewer resources we will have to work with. The demands on our lives from these truths will become increasingly profound and revolutionary. Evolution, like water behind a dam, senses where all the cracks are, and is working on them right now with increasing intensity. Perhaps, like me, you can “feel it in the air”.
Not changing is not an option any more. Change is being driven by ever-greater forces. To what extent will we participate in that unfolding change consciously and with wise insight about how to serve Life in the long run? How soon and fully will we open to the Call of the Whole in and around us as we step into the arriving future? Whatever we do – or don’t do – will make a real difference..
I have seen so clearly
that all this is not about
us as individuals.
It is not about
issues and candidates.
It is not about
good guys and bad guys.
It is about
the larger motions
we make together,
and the cultures and systems
that shape those motions.
Our individual suffering, our fear, our successes are meaningless transient eddies in the current of Life—unless they are part of shifting those larger motions, those cultures and systems, the Direction of the River.
The meaning of life—at least of my life—is increasingly tied to all this—to this waking into conscious evolution with others so that the Profound Possibility that is larger than our lives can happen through us with sacred beauty and promise.
What is your role in this awakening
from our dream of business as usual
in time,
so that the remarkable experiment
called human consciousness and civilization
will not vanish,
but thrive into more humble power,
and be a blessing for the world?
.. .. .. but take a moment to notice .. .. ..
We are on the edge
We are on the edge
very high up
and the fog has moved in.
When you are on the edge
very high up
and the fog moves in
you need to be very alert
and stand very still.
If you must move,
you need to move back from the edge
very carefully
knowing each foot is on solid ground
before putting your weight on it.
We are on the edge
very high up
and the fog has moved in.
The fact that our feet are on solid ground now
does not mean
that our feet will be on solid ground in our next step.
Stop.
This is not a time for mistakes.
It is not a time for progress.
It is not a time for business as usual.
What time we have
is for paying attention
to what evolution is doing
in the spaces in and around us,
here and now
and creatively becoming
One with that.
- EMPOWERING PUBLIC WISDOM
- PARTICIPATORY SUSTAINABILITY
- THE TAO OF DEMOCRACY
- REFLECTIONS ON EVOLUTIONARY ACTIVISM
Leave a Reply