Charles Eisenstein on the Yin and Yang of Active Hope

I want to share this whole essay I received today from Charles. It captures the two poles of hope and realistic despair, and shows how they work together.

Scott Preston's blog, The Chrysalis

What is the collective shift of consciousness so many refer to as necessary for the healing of the earth? 

I was bogged down after spending about a year of inquiry into that question.  I found myself strongly drawn to reading The Red Book of CG Jung, which started with him being called by “the spirit of the depths”.  It took me to a deeper level, but I was unable to connect it with the results of my inquiry up to that point.

Then I stumbled upon a blog called The Chrysalis. Apparently Scott Preston had a fifteen year head start on me, and was uncovering deep patterns from broad reading in the history of human culture. Frequently referenced sources woven into the emerging pattern were Eugene Rosenstock-Huessy, Jean Gebser, and "Seth" (all of whom I was almost totally unfamiliar with), and William Blake, Carlos Castaneda, Friedrich Nietzsche, CG Jung, the Buddhist tradition, and the Sacred Hoop of indigenous North Americans, who were more familiar to me, even special favorites. I have been eagerly reading each new post for months, and following references back to a rich trove of older posts. 

Recently Mr. Preston started reading a book by Iain McGilchrist called The Master and His Emmissary. This was the first time I saw Preston discover a new resource that created a significant impact on the emerging pattern. McGilchrist's twenty years of research into the neuroscience and implications of the divided brain provided a breakthrough for the clarity of Preston’s theme of the structures of consciousness. 

I started submitting comments when Preston's writing suggested a resource I thought he could weave into the mix. Last week I sent two comments to one of his posts, offering two of my major sources for their relevance to the line of thought in his post. He picked up on one of them, Thomas Berry, saying he had a couple of his books on the shelf, had never read them, and would have to see what is there. A couple of days later, on January 28 his post was titled “Thomas Berry: The Great Work”. It began,

Upon Ed Levin's earlier prompting, I dug out Thomas Berry's books that had been idling unread in my bookshelf — The Dream of the Earth and The Great Work. I have begun with The Great Work, and I'm very pleased to have discovered this book. Not only is it a fine illustration of what Nietzsche means by “Be true to the Earth!”, Berry also is, in my estimation, a very good approximation — an evident precusor, an incipient manifestation — to what Jean Gebser anticipated as “the integral consciousness”.

In a reply to a comment at the end of the post, Preston said,

For the next little while, I'll probably spend more time speaking to the meaning of Berry's “Great Work” in its relation to Gebser, Rosenstock-Huessy, McGilchrist, Nietzsche, Seth, and so on. They are all connected, and what connects them is that there is, indeed, an emergent consciousness that is trying to become articulate about itself, and is not finding much in the way of an accommodating language in order to become articulate about itself. So, we are also seeing innovations in language: Berry's “Ecozoic Era” meets Rosenstock-Huessy's “ecodynamics of society” and these correspond to “integral consciousness” as an ecology of being. All this also links back to William Blake, who announced the onset of a “New Age” represented as his “Albion”. None of this is actually following some deliberate plan or logical model. It is a spontaneous, emergent “irruption”, just as Gebser described it.

Coalescence

My far-flung concerns have settled into the interaction of two mythic archetypes: the Bodhisattva and the Anima Mundi. I'm watching to see how it unfolds.

The More Beautiful World

An old friend I haven't seen for years has started a video blog where he and a partner are doing a collaborative discussion of The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible, by Charles Eisenstein. Here's the link to their Facebook page.

I watched their Introductory video and read the first four (short) chapters of the book. They invited participants to comment on their personal reactions to the material. Here's the comment I submitted to the web page:

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I've been stuck in my blog because I have defined the theme as inquiring into "what is the shift in the global planetary consciousness that will be necessary for the self-healing of the earth?" I had developed a table some years ago of various answers found in books I had been drawn to read (11/29/2013, second paragraph, link at "List of authors"). I read the first 4 chapters of "More Beautiful World" yesterday. The shift from the Separation story to the Interbeing or Reunion story is a perfect fit, and in fact an underpinning, for the contrast that has been forming up.

Reading the beginning of the book I realize it is time for me to move from asking WHAT IS the change to looking at WHY the change is so difficult for the Earth Community to make. One dimension that Charles provides a lot of insight into is the pervasiveness of the psychological resistance to the new story (not excluding my own resistance). Global consciousness change is far from a single-factor issue. The tipping point to collective critical mass is something I still hope to see in my lifetime. Dialogs like this are part of the work that make it possible. Thank you for hosting. I look forward to participating.
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It's been almost a year since my post about starting to read Jung. I'm still slogging through the Red Book and a whole lot of support and background material about him. Based on that and my as usual far-flung reading, this is the only note I've made directly related to this blog:
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Possible next blog post: mention of Jung in Dream of the Earth essay, Pope's Encyclical and Integral Ecology. David Graeber, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Jeremy Rifkin, David Korten, David DeGraw, Meg Wheatley.

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I'm swimming in the opinions of others. That's why I'm glad Scott and Jeremy's project got me excited enough to break the silence.

Called by the depths

Reading C.G. Jung's Red Book and using it as a tool for digging deeper in my life, thought, and various practices.

I mentioned Jung at the end of the last post, but that was more than three months ago. I have since been drawn in by the vortex of his Liber Novus (The Red Book). The gigantic facsimile edition has graced our home for almost five years, ever since I read this tantalizing pre-publication article in the New York Times. I was able to read a little of the book, but I eventually found the size and weight too unwieldy to handle. Recently I discovered its more conveniently sized companion, The Red Book: A Reader's Edition, which arrived in the mail last Tuesday, along with Reading the Red Book by Sanford Drob.  I have a lot of momentum into reading The Red Book after listening to all of Lance Owens' lectures and starting to read C.G. Jung: A Biography in Books, which I bought on Owens' recommendation. It seems I am being called by the Spirit of the Depths to overcome the Spirit of This Time :-)

Also, last Tuesday my brother-in-law brought my 1976 Antioch degree portfolio back from [the first typist I hired to type it] along with my copy of Ira Progoff's At a Journal Workshop. Seeing all the above on the dining room table at the same time makes me hopeful that engaging with The Red Book might provide the energy to drive me deeper into my own writing projects.

In this moment I see two avenues opening. One is talking with [the new typist] about finally getting the Antioch portfolio into machine readable format, so I can work it into my memoir project. The Red Book will be my touchstone setting the tone for that project. (How's that for enhancing gravitas?). The second avenue is reconnecting with my Progoff Intensive Journal as I look for an outlet for the energy I access from the Red Book experience.

At the same time, I have several other projects that are percolating in the background. 

I am hoping that engaging with The Red Book might allow me to go deeper with many
of these too. I prioritized them by the intensity of my current engagement, selected the top four, and together with Jung, appointed them to the new version of my five-member imaginary internal Board of Advisors:

Current advisory committee

1. C.G. Jung - The Red Book

2. A.H. Almaas - Spacecruiser Inquiry

3. Tenzin Wangyal - Inner Refuge

4. Thomas Berry - The Dream of the Earth

5. John Cobb - Whitehead as the Philosopher of an Ecological Civilization

As you can see, participation in my Advisory Committee does not imply having ever met me in "real life".

My committee also has five "backup" members:

Dogen - Whitehead, ecology, identity

Joanna Macy - Active Hope

David Abram - Earth in Eclipse

Matt Segall - Dissertation (Whitehead, Schelling, Steiner)

David McMahan - Buddhist Modernism

I am hoping that working with all of them on their interconnected visions will eventually help with the global consciousness koan that initiated this blog and remains it's primary focus.  In any event, I wanted to share what's churning as I try to process the difficult question of what is the consciousness shift necessary for healing the Earth.

Seeing the Ox

In his 1990 book of essays The Practice of the Wild, Gary Snyder says, "Creatures who have traveled with us through the ages are now apparently doomed, as their habitat--and the old, old habitat of humans--falls before the slow-motion explosion of expanding world economies. If the lad or lass is among us who knows where the secret heart of this Growth-Monster is hidden, let them please tell us where to shoot the arrow that will slow it down." 

I so wanted to be that lad! Every time I have read that line over the years I took it as a personal challenge.

Now over twenty years later I am six months into a project of trying to answer almost the same question, restated now as, "What is the shift of consciousness needed to support the Great Turning from our industrial growth society to a sustainable civilization?"

The quote below from David Korten comes pretty close to serving as a summary of my findings to date. He has been working for years to articulate the over-arching "Story" that is struggling to emerge to replace the belief system that has gotten us into this mess. On page 28 of the .pdf of his latest iteration he pauses to summarize what he has been saying:

I now see a world gripped in a values struggle between money and life. Global corporate power aligns with the interests of money. An expanding global people-power movement aligns with the interests of life. Corporate power mobilizes around a well-defined Sacred Money and Markets story with a pervasive public presence in corporate media and a corporate dominated educational system. The people-power movement is far less visible and mobilizes around a wide variety of peace, justice, and sustainability initiatives that lack a recognized and accepted framing story.

Based on the lessons of my life experience I have no doubt that the choice between the well-established Sacred Money and Markets story and some version of the Sacred Life and Earth Community story will determine the human fate. If the Sacred Life and Earth Community story is to prevail, it must gain clear articulation and public presence.

(Korten's quote is in italics above. My comments continue below, in regular type face).

Is it possible that this Sacred Life and Earth Community story might take hold on a mass scale?  In my opinion it is  possible, but it will be a real stretch, challenging the current mass mind's capacity for complexity. It will require a larger view on at least three levels.

1. Space - It requires people to see beyond their current personal horizon, to see the whole earth as an interactive system. This is a great leap of complexity, but the number of people who have made the leap is growing, if not exponentially, at an accelerating rate.

2. Time - It requires seeing the period of the Industrial Revolution as a recent brief, and uniquely destructive, moment in human and earth history. This awareness is also growing.

3. Depth - It requires seeing the foundational beliefs and ideas of our culture as a "story" that can be examined alongside other stories. This is maybe the most difficult leap to make, because we so totally "identify" with the culture that shapes us.  But as our cultural stories disintegrate, and options appear on the horizon, it gets easier to entertain the idea that we have an "operating system" that may need a major upgrade.

It seems to me that each of these levels is attainable for most people, at least momentarily. Putting the 3 together requires additional effort. The resulting view is something like the "shift of consciousness" needed to change our course. It needs to be digested and integrated so it becomes a pervasively assumed mental baseline. This is a very tall order to pull off globally, is theoretically doable, but will probably require an intense mobilization of symbolic resources. And...I see increasing signs that it is happening.

And... after writing all the above I was drawn back to an Internet posting called "The New Myth For Our Species: The Creation of Consciousness", based on the book The Creation of Consciousness, Jung's Myth for Modern Man, by Edward Edinger. It's basically about the unification of opposites, so maybe this whole "Sighting of the Ox", based on a clash of worldviews, is just a transitional precursor, in which the New Story makes healthy contact with the archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, and the life-affirming myth for our time emerges for all to see. One can hope.

Meanwhile, the research project continues.

Sources

1. Gary Snyder. The Practice of the Wild, p. 5

2. David Korten."A New Story for a New Economy”, p. 28

3. David Ratcliff. "The New Myth For Our Species: The Creation of Consciousness"

Day before my 70th birthday

One of the first things I saw this morning was Joan Halifax's Facebook update: "So happy to be home here at Upaya. Clear skies, fresh air, sunshine, deep quiet. What a blessing. Today will be aimless". 

Aimless sounded just right, a perfect (non)guideline for my day. It's the only day this week I will be without company at home. My todo lists for reading, writing, home bookkeeping, etc. have become so gnarly I can't figure how to start prioritizing. And my 70th birthday tomorrow seems a good enough excuse to take a day off to drift and reflect on life, and on some of the deep inspiration I have found recently online and in print.

One additional blessing for me about Upaya Zen Center is their Dharma Podcasts. Being practically housebound, I consider it something of a miracle that I could listen to all the talks and discussions from very recent retreats taught by world-class Buddhist teachers without leaving my dining room table. i was especially inspired by John Dunne's teachings on Shantideva's Bodhicaryavatara (The Way of the Bodhisattva). Dunne is so bright and sharp, and I'm tickled by the quirky speech mannerisms he absorbed from studying with Robert Thurman. His depth of knowledge of the Sanskrit and Tibetan texts, and his emphasis on the western scientific and philosophical implications, accelerated my exploration of how these various traditions are converging on a nuanced view of the deepest nature of reality. 

I had read the Bodhicaryavatara a few years ago, but I was baffled by chapter nine, the very technical Wisdom chapter. Dunne's course inspired me to get the Dalai Lama's commentary on chapter nine, a book called Practicing Wisdom. I usually thought of Shantideva as being only about compassion. But Dunne emphasized the wisdom aspect, and especially the message that reality isn't as solid and real as we think. He followed the thread from the early Buddhist ideas of impermanence and non-self through to the Mahayana idea of emptiness, or sunyata.

This had a strong resonance with a cluster of similar ideas I had been recently seeking out in Western science & philosophy. First, the sociology of knowledge and the social construction of reality. Second, 20th century particle physics, in the context of philosophy of science, the inquiry into whether or not science describes reality or can provide any certainty about the way things are. 

I'm supposed to be searching for the shift of consciousness needed to support The Great Turning from the industrial growth society to a sustainable civilization. Instead I'm reading all this seemingly random esoteric philosophy. But I see now that I am being drawn to sources that strongly suggest  Reality isn't as solid and real as we experience it and think it is. That's a prerequisite for being able to change what seems to be an absolutely overwhelming world situation.

Now I have a better sense for why I am reading

Reality Isn't What It Used to Be by Walter Truett Anderson,

Conventional Reality and Social Construction (a blog post by Tom Pepper),

Moonshadows: Conventional Truth in Buddhist Philosophy by The Cowherds,

and listening to 

John Searle's Philosophy 138 - Philosophy of Society on iTunes U,

and the Great Courses CD called "Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It" taught by Steven Goldman.