A Gathering of the Tribe
Charles Eisenstein
Once upon a time a great tribe of people lived in a world far away from ours. Whether far away in space, or in time, or even outside of time, we do not know. They lived in a state of enchantment and joy that few of us today dare to believe could exist, except in those exceptional peak experiences when we glimpse the true potential of life and mind.
One day the shaman of the tribe called a meeting. They gathered around him, and he spoke very solemnly. "My friends," he said, "there is a world that needs our help. It is called earth, and its fate hangs in the balance. Its humans have reached a critical point in their collective birthing, and they will be stillborn without our help. Who would like to volunteer for a mission to this time and place, and render service to humanity?"
"Tell us more about his mission," they asked.
"I am glad you asked, because it is no small thing. I will put you into a deep, deep trance, so complete that you will forget who you are. You will live a human life, and in the beginning you will completely forget your origins. You will forget even our language and your own true name. You will be separated from the wonder and beauty of our world, and from the love that bathes us all. You will miss it deeply, yet you will not know what it is you are missing. You will only remember the love and beauty that we know to be normal as a longing in your heart. Your memory will take the form of an intuitive knowledge, as you plunge into the painfully marred earth, that a more beautiful world is possible.
"As you grow up in that world, your knowledge will be under constant assault. You will be told in a million ways that a world of destruction, violence, drudgery, anxiety, and degradation is normal. You may go through a time when you are completely alone, with no allies to affirm your knowledge of a more beautiful world. You may plunge into a depth of despair that we, in our world of light, cannot imagine. But no matter what, a spark of knowledge will never leave you. A memory of your true origin will be encoded in your DNA. That spark will lie within you, inextinguishable, until one day it is awakened.
"You see, even though you will feel, for a time, utterly alone, you will not be alone. I will send you assistance, help that you will experience as miraculous, experiences that you will describe as transcendent. For a few moments or hours or days, you will reawaken to the beauty and the joy that is meant to be. You will see it on earth, for even though the planet and its people are deeply wounded, there is beauty there still, projected from past and future onto the present as a promise of what is possible and a reminder of what is real.
"You will also receive help from each other. As you begin to awaken to your mission you will meet others of our tribe. You will recognize them by your common purpose, values, and intuitions, and by the similarity of the paths you have walked. As the condition of the planet earth reaches crisis proportions, your paths will cross more and more. The time of loneliness, the time of thinking you might be crazy, will be over.
"You will find the people of your tribe all over the earth, and become aware of them through the long-distance communication technologies used on that planet. But the real shift, the real quickening, will happen in face-to-face gatherings in special places on earth. When many of you gather together you will launch a new stage on your journey, a journey which, I assure you, will end where it began. Then, the mission that lay unconscious within you will flower into consciousness. Your intuitive rebellion against the world presented you as normal will become an explicit quest to create a more beautiful one.
"In the time of loneliness, you will always be seeking to reassure yourself that you are not crazy. You will do that by telling people all about what is wrong with the world, and you will feel a sense of betrayal when they don't listen to you. You will be hungry for stories of wrongness, atrocity, and ecological destruction, all of which confirm the validity of your intuition that a more beautiful world exists. But after you have fully received the help I will send you, and the quickening of your gatherings, you will no longer need to do that. Because, you will Know. Your energy will thereafter turn toward actively creating that more beautiful world."
A tribeswoman asked the shaman, "How do you know this will work? Are you sure your shamanic powers are great enough to send us on such a journey?"
The shaman replied, "I know it will work because I have done it many times before. Many have already been sent to earth, to live human lives, and to lay the groundwork for the mission you will undertake now. I've been practicing! The only difference now is that many of you will venture there at once. What is new in the time you will live in, is that the Gatherings are beginning to happen."
A tribesman asked, "Is there a danger we will become lost in that world, and never wake up from the shamanic trance? Is there a danger that the despair, the cynicism, the pain of separation will be so great that it will extinguish the spark of hope, the spark of our true selves and origin, and that we will separated from our beloved ones forever?"
The shaman replied, "That is impossible. The more deeply you get lost, the more powerful the help I will send you. You might experience it at the time as a collapse of your personal world, the loss of everything important to you. Later you will recognize the gift within it. We will never abandon you."
Another man asked, "Is it possible that our mission will fail, and that this planet, earth, will perish?"
The shaman replied, "I will answer your question with a paradox. It is impossible that your mission will fail. Yet, its success hangs on your own actions. The fate of the world is in your hands. The key to this paradox lies within you, in the feeling you carry that each of your actions, even your personal, secret struggles within, has cosmic significance. You will know then, as you do now, that everything you do matters. God sees everything."
There were no more questions. The volunteers gathered in a circle, and the shaman went to each one. The last thing each was aware of was the shaman blowing smoke in his face. They entered a deep trance and dreamed themselves into the world where we find ourselves today.
****
Who are these missionaries from the more beautiful world? You and I are surely among them. Where else could this longing come from, for this magical place to be found nowhere on earth, this beautiful time outside of time? It comes from our intuitive knowledge of our origin and destination. The longing, indomitable, will never settle for a world that is less. Against all reason, we look upon the horrors of our age, mounting over the millennia, and we say NO, it does not have to be this way! We know it, because we have been there. We carry in our souls the knowledge that a more beautiful world is possible. Reason says it is impossible; reason says that even to slow -- much less reverse -- the degradation of the planet is an impossible task: politically unfeasible, opposed by the Money Power and its oligarchies. It is true that those powers will fight to uphold the world we have known. Their allies lurk within even ourselves: despair, cynicism, and resignation to carving out a life that is "good enough" for me and mine.
But we of the tribe know better. In the darkest despair a spark of hope lies inextinguishable within us, ready to be fanned into flames at the slightest turn of good news. However compelling the cynicism, a jejune idealism lives within us, always ready to believe, always ready to look upon new possibilities with fresh eyes, surviving despite infinite disappointments. And however resigned we may have felt, our aggrandizement of me and mine is half-hearted, for part of our energy is looking elsewhere, outward toward our true mission.
I would like to advise caution against dividing the world into two types of people, those who are of the tribe and those who are not. How often have you felt like an alien in a world of people who don't get it and don't care? The irony is that nearly everyone feels that way, deep down. When we are young the feeling of mission and the sense of magnificent origins and a magnificent destination is strong. Any career or way of life lived in betrayal of that knowing is painful, and can only be maintained through an inner struggle that shuts down a part of our being. For a time, we can keep ourselves functioning through various kinds of addictions or trivial pleasures to consume the life force and dull the pain. In earlier times, we might have kept the sense of mission and destiny buried for a lifetime, and called that condition maturity. Times are changing now though, as millions of people are awakening to their mission all at the same time. The condition of the planet is waking us up. Another way to put it, is that we are becoming young again.
When you feel that sense of alienation, when you look upon that sea of faces mired so inextricably in the old world and fighting to maintain it, think back to a time when you too were, to all outside appearances, a full and willing participant in that world as well. The same spark of revolution you carried then, the same secret refusal, dwells in all people. How was it that you finally stopped fighting it? How was it that you came to realize that you were right all along, that the world offered to us is wrong, and that no life is worth living that does not in some way strive to create a better one? How was it that it became intolerable to devote your life energy toward the perpetuation of the old world? Most likely, it happened when the old world fell apart around your ears.
As the multiple crises of money, health, energy, ecology, and more converge upon us, the world is going to collapse for millions more. We must stand ready to welcome them into the tribe. We must stand ready to welcome them back home.
The time of loneliness, of walking the path alone, of thinking maybe the world is right and I am wrong for refusing to participate fully in it... that time is over. For years we walked around talking about how wrong everything is: the political system, the educational system, religious institutions, the military-industrial complex, the banking industry, the medical system -- really, any system you study deeply enough. We needed to talk about it because we needed to assure ourselves that we were not, in fact, crazy. We needed as well to talk about alternatives, the way things should be. "We" should eliminate CFCs. "They" should stop cutting down the rain forests. "The government" should declare no fishing zones. This talk, too, was necessary, for it validated our vision of the world that could be: a peaceful and exuberant humanity living in co-creative partnership with a wild garden earth.
The time, though, for talking merely to assure ourselves that we are right is coming to an end. People everywhere are tired of it, tired of attending yet another lecture, organizing yet another discussion group online. We want more. A few weeks ago as I was preparing for a speaking trip to Oregon, the organizers told me, "These people don't need to be told what the problems are. They don't even need to be told what the solutions are. They already know that, and many of them are already in action. What they want is to take their activism to the next level."
To do that, to fully step into one's mission here on earth, one must experience an inner shift that cannot be merely willed upon oneself. It does not normally happen through the gathering or receiving of information, but through various kinds of experiences that reach deep into our unconscious minds. Whenever I am blessed with such an experience, I get the sense that some benevolent yet pitiless power -- the shaman in the story -- has reached across the void to quicken me, to reorganize my DNA, to rewire my nervous system. I come away changed.
One way it happens is through the "gathering of the tribe" I described in this story. I think many people who attended the recent Reality Sandwich retreat in Utah experienced something like this. Such gatherings are happening now all over the world. You go back, perhaps, to "real life" afterwards, but it no longer seems so real. Your perceptions and priorities change. New possibilities emerge. Instead of feeling stuck in your routines, life changes around you at a vertiginous pace. The unthinkable becomes commonsense and the impossible becomes easy. It may not happen right away, but once the internal shift has occurred, it is inevitable.
Here I am, a speaker and a writer, going on about how the time for mere talk has ended. Yet not all words are mere talk. A spirit can ride the vehicle of words, a spirit that is larger than, yet not separate from, their meaning. Sometimes I find that when I bow into service, that spirit inhabits the space in which I speak and affects all present. A sacredness infuses our conversations and the non-verbal experiences that are becoming part of my events. In the absence of that sacredness, I feel like a smart-ass, up there entertaining people and telling them information they could just as easily read online. Last Friday night I spoke on a panel in New York, one of three smart-asses, and I think many in the audience left disappointed (though maybe not as disappointed as I was in myself). We are looking for something more, and it is finding us.
The revolutionary spark of our true mission has been fanned into flames before, only to return again to an ember. You may remember an acid trip in 1975, a Grateful Dead concert in 1982, a kundalini awakening in 1999 -- an event that, in the midst of it, you knew was real, a privileged glimpse into a future that can actually manifest. Then later, as its reality faded into memory and the inertial routines of life consumed you, you perhaps dismissed it and all such experiences as an excursion from life, a mere "trip." But something in you knows it was real, realer than the routines of normalcy. Today, such experiences are accelerating in frequency even as "normal" falls apart. We are at the beginning of a new phase. Our gatherings are not a substitute for action; they are an initiation into a state of being from which the necessary kinds of actions arise. Soon you will say, with wonder and serenity, "I know what to do, and I trust myself to do it."
Image by foreversouls, courtesy of Creative Commons license.
- Charles Eisenstein's blog
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Thank You
As well
I too have felt aimless and unfullfilled more and more with silly social distractions.
Thank you for this posting. It reached me at a lonely time.
I desire frequently to act and apply my energies and talents and will toward a community that builds independently and exemplifies loving kindness as a means to heal and recruit.
I currently reside in Central Pennsylvania but will be moving Eastward to Philadelphia. Is anyone else out there?
Where can I be among my tribe? Should I move to where there's more? or help build here?
I too have been feeling an
I too have been feeling an impending sense of loneliness, disapointment, disatisfaction and even fear, regretably.
I know this is a brief comment, but I just wanted to express my thanks in being shown that I'm not alone. Beautiful article. I plan on giving it a more in-depth look in the morning.
where to go
I'm going to try to go to the Rainbow Gathering in New Mexico this year. It's been 10 years since I've been to one and I feel the need, even though I'm older now and it will be harder mentally and physically then it once was-- I need to be around others who are aware.
(It's been called "the Gathering of the Tribes" for 40 years)
I'm in a band called "Unless and the Thneeds"
Spiritual Retreat..
We are one
The whirlwind of events unfolding around us can be discouraging. Especially when we feel the heat in our own lives.
I worked in retail, but the past few months have found an extremely negative saturation of emotional-energy within the general public, and myself being an extremely sensative empath, had to quit the job to focus on more important matters of a soulful nature. And so I too have drifted psychically here and there, looking for something greater, disappointed in the petty negativity, racism, hatred of this population of the unawakened.
How through sacrificing ourselves to what will be, our egos are completely destroyed. And then and only then are we prepared to for complete integration. To build a community that will last or flourish in any significant sense requires that its participants have overcome the crass needs and wants of the ego, but are interested in the positive growth and sustainment of the True Self, and the Community as a whole.
Don't be discouraged. See the beauty. We are having a huge impact. We are together already - we are one. Within meditation, I am with all of you, we are together. If we open ourselves to this sense of non local unification we indeed have our community, distance and time and space are meaningless concepts in the place of the Soul. I reach my hands out to you.
Meditate on integration. Meditate on a "coming together." Find silence, do your part.
The Recession in the US is our doing. We have let go of the materialism and overloaded, overstimulated way of life that drove the Economy. We stopped buying it, and now, we have the opportunity, through the deterioration of old ways, to reinvent the world in Our Image. This window of opportunity, called Event Horizon, will be a confluence of the Spiritual, Scientific, Technological, Social. A knowledge - information explosion. However, with this convergence we will also experience a critical mass of crises as well. The recent economic turmoil and geopolitical turmoil, including N. Korea's nuclear tests, are clear evidence of this. The window will remain open for a relatively short time, and 2012 marks the point where we step into our power to affect this physical plane, not as Americans or Europeans or North Koreans or Chinese, not as Christians or Muslims or Pagans, not even as Human Beings. But as Spiritual Awareness - integrated, transcendent of the self, the self having been mastered and tucked into dicipline and beauty.
Look at how beautiful we are. We offer a special light to this physical plane, we are the bridge that will span the time in between the ravaging horde-generations of the past, and the brighter future generation waiting to arrive. We are here to save the world.
Do not be discouraged. Do your work. Stay connected to nature. Observe the seasons. I myself have begun to observe the Wheel of the Year. Simplify. Go to your gatherings and events. Speak openly, meditate, stay focused, read and study.
Hold light for each and every one of your brothers and sisters. Of all ages, not just of the millenial generation. Indigos, our time is Now. Be joyful and we shall bring back a time of dance and of laughter!
Friends in georgia for Rainbow Fairy
You have friends and family so close...inside the city! Come check out the Lake Claire community located near little 5 points on Nelms avenue.
Drop me a line at adean14@student.gsu.edu for some more info. We would love to meet you!
Call to Connect
We need to form a network, we who are working to organize societies, and to network with those who have already been organizing societies.
There are myriad different questions that arise when someone works to organize. Questions like, "How do I find others?", and "How do we inspire those who are sympathetic, but don't know how to get the will to action?" "How do break the spell of the mundane, nullifying, repeating, to make something truly different?" "How do groups form?"
And so on, and so forth.
It is by no means obvious.
Answers come from both within and without. Receiving help and lending a hand simply make sense.
I share phone calls with 2 other groups: SolSeed in Portland, and Upward Spiral in Chicago.
I believe that there are people all over who want to make societies, though. I myself am inspired by Damanhur, Findhorn, Zegg, Bucketworks.
We have learned some things, but we need to know many more things before everything clicks into place.
If anyone is interested in sharing learnings, figuring out ways, please post here, or call me: 206.427.2545.
If you are part of or know of a group that is working on these questions in a very practical way, please let me know.
careful
Convential wisdom dictates
Convential wisdom dictates that leaving your front door unlocked in New York City is a bad idea, too.
Funny thing is, in over 12 years of living in the city, only very good things (people & opportunities) burst through my unlocked front door.
You see, if someone walks up to your door with the intent of breaking in or doing you harm....well, it's not gonna matter much if its locked or not, ya dig how this relates? :)
Maybe for You.
I've posted my cell phone number online since 2001; I have yet to receive a call I didn't want.
However, I've received a great many that I did want, including from interviewers, collaborators, and just interesting people.
My eyes were opened when millionaire Philip Greenspun , a major center of attention, noted that in all his time with his cell phone number online, he has only twice ever received calls that he didn't want.
Form your own conclusions.
-
We are forming a network- evolver.net
You note, "we need to form a network." Well we are forming a network -Evolver.net - first off-line regional meet-ups of "Evolver Spores" will be June 17. Hope you can make one in your area, or organize one yourself if nobody else is doing it.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Yes, yes.
I wrote the above two days before you posted "Evolving Spores: Spreading the Network," so forgive my not referencing it.
I've already talked with Jay in person, Seattle spore organizer, and did a bunch of organizing with him. (Specifically, a bus tour of neighboring ecovillages, communes, and coops, and then a vision of Gaialogs. We didn't talk about June 17th, but I'll email him immediately about it.)
I already wrote about this.
As I work with Evolver/RS-infrastructure more, I'd like to understand more about: How it sees itself, what role it sees itself playing in the world, how it intends to cooperate with others, what it's vision of the future in 10 years is, and so on.
Basically, whatever questions it asks of me, I'd like to ask of it as well.
Heartfelt Thanks...
A very powerful metaphor for 2009
Well, Charles, that is a very powerful metaphor for our current world situation today!
Could it be that a substantial number of advanced spirits have incarnated on Earth from elsewhere, as volunteers, to help us make it through this difficult time?
And as they mature, might they slowly recover the past-life spiritual memories of the world (or worlds) they left behind, never quite fitting in here on Earth, with its powerful social forces of conformity and/or violence?
"Some are here, and many more will come."
"In the dream I am with a group of people, and I feel connected to those people. We are discussing how children will be prepared for an upcoming spiritual change in the world, but how governments won't support it" (Martin Keitel, 2002).
Please tell D. or others if you see them, that R.C. and his like-minded friends plan to be in Compton Bassett in early August, to watch the finale as it comes down probably on the 13th (unless prior events intervene).
Bless
Thanks Charles,
That story is a beautiful analogy!
We are waking up! Its so beautiful.
And the inner process is so connected to that outter connectivity and alignment.
I strongly advocate for these gatherings to reconnect with our full power and those of the larger intention.
The power of ritual and ceremony are keys to this shift. These gatherings indeed... as insignificant as they may appear have a powerful effect at a deeper level. Stay focused everyone.
IT IS MOST DEFINITELY REAL!
Bless Bless Bless
"When the power of LOVE overwhelms the love of power, the world will know peace" - J.H
Great writing. It is
Great writing. It is inspiring and speaks to the truth in me. But I am still a little blind as how to apply its truth into my own life though I believe and intuit that my vision and connection with others is just beginning to unfold.
I am thinking about attending the NYC Evolver launch even though I live in Indiana.
Yes
This is Weird!
This is Strange!
This resonates in the most mysterious ways. I feel understood in an impersonal way. Acknowledged by something that isn't there.
Recognized.
Thank you,
"Grow with the flow"-Timothy leary
Wonderful article
A Gathering of the Tribe
Go to your windows, stick your head out and yell:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WINDtlPXmmE
:)
Thanks, I needed that
The world has darkened in my eyes for so long that it's like a deliverance to catch such a glimmer of light as you offer us. I hope this troublous time we've entered proves to be the end of our Stygian historical tunnel, or maybe the cusp of some hitherto undreamt of dawn. Ashé: be it so!
Pluriforms
It's rather late in my corner of the earth (literally and metaphorically) but I thought I might add my tired voice to the din and say thanks, Charles, for having the clarity, insight, wisdom and wit to write about these things, whether in a style closer to typical analytical academia or in legends such as these that speak intuitively rather than intellectually. Your voice, and the things you choose to say, have been greatly appreciated over the years.
Superficially, this piece of writing puts me in mind of a classic Philip K. Dick essay, Pluriforms of God. I like your version better, because it drops the Christian/Gnostic jargon and speaks more plainly and intuitively to the overall idea, what it might mean and how we may apply it in our lives. It's easier, that way, to avoid getting stuck in the story since the parable is made plain. However, I would like to add my own emphasis (one the article alludes to) that while each individual and movement is special within its time, the desire to build a better world is timeless; we're hardly the first, we won't be the last and while we'll never fully "get there," it's a road worth walking all the same.
Beautiful story...legend...archetype of our times
Book of Life
Amen.
All the talking, all the peak experiences – the dreams, awakenings, trips – are a foundation on which the house is built. The foundation can take a very long time, but once it is set – VOOP – up the house goes. The architects have been imagining the house for a long time. They have the blueprints. “Blueprints” have been a recurring theme in my inner-life of late.
The allegory of the shaman has several parallels in my inner-life, mainly from 2000 when psychosis was opening me. Here is one of several visions related to the allegory:
There were five naked women in a circle, looking up. The perspective was from above. They looked like a flower with five petals. The countenance of each was nymph-like and pure. Their faces were similar, but each had its own subtle character. Music was playing. Music was indistinguishable from the women’s existence, and that of the place they were in. It was a churchlike place inside God’s mind. God’s mind was the place where we were created.
The vision changed perspective. I was still in the churchlike place, but floating on my back with others, all of us naked, in a peaceful pool. I looked to the side and saw that all of us were side by side, like cells in an organism. We belonged there and flowed perfectly together as if we ourselves were water. Our eyes were gazing up into the high dome of the place.
I was at peace in the safety of our unbreakable belonging, and then the peace was suddenly annihilated, as it had been in the first instant of Creation: God tore us from his mind, jettisoning us into existence and time and space. Our Creation was synonymous with the obliteration of our unity.
Knowing nothing, my mind reflexively rushed back through the force propelling us into existence. I was reaching back through time for the balance I had lost, in the same way people do when they are preoccupied with the good old days, only it happened over a split second and instead of forty years
Like shrapnel, a scene of my story, as it was written in the Book of Life, punctured my mind. The Book of Life was a real thing to me, something introduced to me through my dreams. In waking-life I understood it contained the story of how God would use history to weave himself, as Jesus, back into existence. It was also about how people would be woven into the Family, the global family.
In the scene from the Book of Life, a voice said, “Rose Mary Pillowwater,” as I glimpsed her standing with Jesus in front of a lush forest. The air was fresh and cool. Rose Mary was wearing a hat. She was a beatific buddha in a world without chaos.
Thats all very nice, but...
Times are changing now though, as millions of people are awakening to their mission all at the same time
This is one of those New Age dictums constantly re-hashed since the 60s, yet the evidence of the millions "awakening to their mission" remains elusive. Are they all in California, is that why I don't see them?
I appreciate Charles' vision and i always enjoy his writings, but there's a somewhat stale odour on this one. Seems like wishful thinking.
It's pretty hard to bite the bullet and accept that the time of the so-called homo sapiens is coming to an end. It may be more dignified and enlightened to work towards a somewhat graceful exit from the evolutionary game instead of expecting miraculous interventions.
When you feel that sense of alienation, when you look upon that sea of faces mired so inextricably in the old world and fighting to maintain it, think back to a time when you too were, to all outside appearances, a full and willing participant in that world as well.
A long time ago!
The same spark of revolution you carried then, the same secret refusal, dwells in all people.
These are nice ideals, but unforunately don't quite correspond to reality.
Christianity teaches that all people are born in God's image, and that can be taken to mean that all people are born with a soul and a sacred essence. This is patently not true, as the behaviour of people easily shows, and many genuine traditions teach that people have to LEARN and cultivate their interior world, their soul grows with them and evolves. When they're born, they're don't necessarily have any interior substance. In our society, most people are simply meat for the grinder, little more than domesticated slaves given a sense of self-importance to maintain them in working condition. This isn't meat to be a value judgment, just a detached observation of the situation.
The truth is you who are reading this are most likely not important, and your ego is certainly not important at all. So instead of world-saving fantasies it would be more appropriate if people actually cultivated some self-reflection and naked awareness of their position in the food chain.
Division has become fractal, and each person is his/her own tribe, infinitely internally divided!
There's no going back. The time of "shamans" and tribes is over, the time of "humans" is soon to be over, the only work that matters is tuning into the planet's heart and mind and adapting to change.
Everything must go!
These aren't comfortable messages, and i'm sorry if they make someone feel bad, but this is the truth as far as i can see at the moment. I would prefer to be wrong on this one. We certainly all need help.
Soon you will say, with wonder and serenity, "I know what to do, and I trust myself to do it."
It will turn out to be another pipe dream.
Coming from a place of profound, cosmic ignorance, one is more likely to become a fertile ground for whatever seeds of conscsiousness are to sprout from the compost formed by our decomposing humanity.
Instead of attempting to once more be the do-gooder, it would be best if we all just GET OUT OF THE WAY.
http://www.tranceparents.orgDespair
Just a quick response to the following:
"The truth is you who are reading this are most likely not important, and your ego is certainly not important at all. So instead of world-saving fantasies it would be more appropriate if people actually cultivated some self-reflection and naked awareness of their position in the food chain."
My opinion is nearly the opposite: The truth is that ALL of you who are reading this are very important. This is quite an irrational opinion, I will admit. What can a person do, in the face of the juggernaut of destruction that is bringing down our civilization and ruining our planet? My mind, or a small, angry part of it, agrees with this comment, that all such inspired, idealistic feelings and desires to create a more beautiful world are sterile fantasies. But my heart knows otherwise.
In fact, I think our world-saving fantasies are what will save us. I like to think of the example of Diane Wilson, a shrimp boat operator in Louisiana who decided to stop a multibillion dollar petrochemical plant. She had no money and almost no allies. Against her were arrayed the chamber of commerce, the county commissioners, the newspaper, the governor, the legislature, Formosa Plastics and its scientists and billions of dollars, the EPA, and so on. Yet she won. Why? How? Because she was a person of integrity, and trusted her own feelings no matter what. If she believed that her world-saving (or bay-saving) fantasies were mere fantasies, she never would have acted. Imagine the world we could create, if we all acted like Diane Wilson? You have nothing that she doesn't have.
Charles
Not desperate , just stoic!
The point is that "we" will never "all" act like Diane Wilson. No matter how bad it gets! When they start rolling out the RFID implants , i guarantee you there will be queues of customers (human no longer applies) eager to sign up!
Blind confidence , common in the naive US and Australian cultures , isn't really all that hot, and it is not regarded too highly over here in ol' Europa.
Personally i gave up waiting for the "enlightened millions" to act like Diane Wilson some time ago . It just ain't happening, man!
A writer who tells his audience they're all very important will be more popular than one telling them they're not. So it may feel good to write these nice words that make others feel good, (u sure not seeking validation?) but my point about pipe dreams and harsh realities remains. Nothing angry or desperate about it, just how things are.
you're both right
I think both ecolocal's and Charles' insights are correct.
But that doesn't mean they cancel each other out.
The answer is always both.
Perfect
Mostly agree - it's always both
Like you I have both an apprehension of inevitable doom and an awareness of infinite promise, each of which exists in its own orthogonal domain. Like you I want to find my tribe(s) and develop independent of the herd.
The one place I differ (and it's a big one) is in my lack of desire to physically separate myself from the herd. I want to stay embedded within the mass of humanity for a number of reasons.
The main reason is that if we are in fact humanity's "imaginal cells", spreading our awareness and influence through viral infection of our neighbours, separating ourselves from them defeats that possibility.
The second reason is more pragmatic: in a world of 6.7 billion people, there is no "away" any more. Any attempt to isolate ourselves will be doomed with a very high degree of probability, as the tide of humanity laps into every nook and cranny of the planet.
If we and all those billions of our brothers and sisters are to have any hope at all, it can only come from transforming that mass, not in running from it.
So while I will try to limit the impact of the mainstream masses on my psychological and spiritual development., I will deliberately make no such effort to shield my physical being. That, as I understand it, is the way of the bodhisattva -- and we are all bodhisattvas now.
distance
Don't underestimate the power of your own vibration
Lower vibrations, in the presence of a higher vibration will ALWAYS rise to meet the higher vibration, or self-destruct in chaos.
Thank you Charles for such a well-written article. It brought tears to my eyes and touched my heart.
I agree, very good article
Humanity is fine as it is.
lightinmyhands, you might find value in this interview with Falco.
There's nothing wrong with the human being; It's just that humanity is in poor conditions. Many people don't realize it consciously, but you can't blame them for that. There is love and genius within even the "lowest" and even the most "ordinary" of people, behind all surfaces.
It is not important that all people be the same, it is not important that all people do what you and I have chosen to do. Life will express itself in billions of different ways.
All of us are learning, and we are all here for each other and the great dream.
Pipe Dreams
Perhaps this sense of spiritual mission and self importance and discovery is a natural reaction to the sheer enormity of what we begin to see cresting the horizon, Event.
We are having a confluence of planet-species shattering crises:
-Resource wars
-Rogue states with no options remaining
-Climate destabilization-Global economic collapse
-Global Social/Political chaos
Did it ever occur that the Gathering may be that spiritual reaction to the growing awareness to Event Horizon? Or perhaps your own reaction is a growing, and corrosive nihilism, which teaches you to eat your bread in shame, keep your head down, and wait till the fighting starts in your own neighborhood.
Is it not an encouraging sign that a growing number of individuals are realizing the incredible nature of this Era, and are beginning to feel a sense of responsibility for the future? Perhaps your mindset is responsible for this great convergence of crises.
We are human beings of a human nature. But we do carry a divine nature within us. There is something about the human spirit that opposes needless conflict, exploitation, destruction, failure of the Human Species. We choose to see the Light, not the Dark.
Lonely still?
Just a general response to some of the comments as well as emails i've been receiving. Some people say they are still very much in the experience of loneliness, looking for their tribe. I want to suggest, perhaps, that that experience is changing right now! It was true up until today, but not any more. Maybe for some people, reading this story will mark the turning point.
It is not necessary to move to somewhere else to find one's tribe. You will find it waking up around you wherever you are. I also think it is helpful to make pilgrimages to special places and special gatherings to quicken the process inside of you. Then you will come back and provide that for other people. it is infectious to those who are susceptible, and as things fall apart, more and more people are becoming susceptible. A bout of unemployment, loss of life savings, disease from a toxic world, etc. does wonders to open the mind. These kinds of things are happening to more and more people.
When someone is not susceptible, it is futile to try. Wait until the spirit is called through you. Really, the goal is not to "find your tribe". Searching and searching for people who get it, always seeking validation. I am saying in this essay that the time for that is ending. If you constantly seek validation from the people around you, for whom the old world is still working, you will be disappointed and lonely. The attitude shift that is happening now is from one of seeking validation, to one of service. Don't seek validation. You have found it, or it has found you, maybe even in this essay. Instead, validate others, in the spirit of the Gift, and your tribe will gather of its own.
Charles
www.ascentofhumanity.com
our return home
The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes. Marcel Proust
In our voyages of experience, in the infinite possiblities of universal harmony, I know we will overcome to heal this beautifull place and ourselves in the process.. Our mother earth has provided all the tools we need to ascend away from the illusion of separation. We are ONE, all sentient beings, from cosmic to microscopic. I know that if we can unite and overcome the fear of ego-death, and embrace the totality of existance in the abscense of ego, we access the universal magic of existance, the subtle eb and flow of infinitly powerfull forces weaving our souls and spirits to create true peace, true harmony, and ultimatly true evolution. The human species is amazing in the inherient capabilities hardwires into our neurochemistries, into our DNA, and into our bodies. It is an amazing gift to incarnate in this time period, to be blessed with such amazing possiblities. Embrace today for the "present" is indeed a present! Away from the illusionary bindings of linear 12:60 time we are free to manifest a reality of infinite evolutionary experiences, each capable of liberating and inspiring. Let us rise together, weave life, love, and harmony and finish our mission!
"The attitude shift that is
"The attitude shift that is happening now is from one of seeking validation, to one of service. Don't seek validation. You have found it, or it has found you, maybe even in this essay. Instead, validate others, in the spirit of the Gift, and your tribe will gather of its own."
Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES. THANKYOU.
simply amazing
locked comments
It's happening, isn't it?
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for this, Charles.
All around us, by the millions, people are waking up and looking around for tribes. "Blessed Unrest" is seizing humanity by the scruff of the neck and waking us up -- some gently, others with a violent shake. This magnificent article calls to those whose slumber is fitful, to those who have just woken up and are wondering why, and to those who have woken up and are wondering how to rouse other nearby sleepers and help them re-find themselves.
Every major shift in human history begins with a vision -- it is the primal seed of all cultural evolution. Without vision we are left with simple pragmatism and expediency. Visions impel the efforts of many, while expediency just fills the pockets of a few. Even if things don't work out, it will have been better for our souls to have been vision-keepers than cynics.
After four years of despair brought on by figuring out my position in the food chain, I finally woke up by transcending that whole idea. I recently found my tribe, in the Pachamama Alliance, whose symposium "Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream" has the power to open many fitful dreamers to the waking vision.
There are now literally millions of such tribes, all over the world. Look around, find one, and say "YES!" Or create a small miracle by starting your own...
Open Source Society
Hopefully, it will not be a "small miracle" for long..!
When we figure out how to do this right, it should be the case that there are small societies all over the planet -- that for every person who has hoped and dreamed for something like this, there is a variety of societies for them to unfold in, and that even the process of developing new societies is understood and articulated and made even easier -- like starting an Open Source project.
A wealth of people, understandings, and resources, to help us get to the future.
A Gathering of the Tribe
Literally
I hear you.
Although I presented the story as an allegory, it is also literally true. Ha ha, well actually there is a paradox. "Literally" or "actually" or "really" doesn't mean what we think it means. It isn't "just" a story.
Charles
A Mailing List, Perhaps?
Hello, hello -- is anybody out there? Do you read me?
People are at very different places on the spectra of action and understanding here.
There are a lot of things that I really need to understand, to help make this real in my local area, Seattle -- about spiritual community, about sharing dreams and vision, and inspiring action. I've been holding tight to spirit for about a year and a half now. Many experiences have succeed, most have failed. There are many people who very much want to do this, but main stream consciousness keeps invading and subverting action streams. I know that there is a way through this: Does anyone know how to break this barrier/walk around it/walk through it, etc., ..?
And, there are some things I've figured out. I have seen at both Bucketworks and Damanhur and from Peter London about creating artworks with others is a first step that simultaneously weaves conversation and activity, making it easier to cultivate action from there.
We are unique, but aligned in effort. Can we work together? Mailing list? Phone calls? Existing places where people are collaborating through the work?
I do not understand why nobody is responding. What am I missing? I understand that many people are not at the same point of action, but surely, there is someone, you, who is further along this than I, who is reading, who knows how to do this. Please post here or contact me.
the Gatherings are beginning to happen
Ohio you say?
There is a Gathering this weekend in Canton, Ohio, the 22nd-24th. You might want to check it out if you are ready :) Bring a tent and dancin' shoes.
http://thirdeyesqueegee.ning.com
to charles, ecolocal: importance/responsibility
"Each of us is an animal, and a child of this earth. Each of us has responsibility to all other animals and plants and to the process of evolution that created us. All of us alive now are members of the most important generation of human beings who have ever lived, because we're determining the future, not just for a hundred years, but for a billion years. When we cut a huge limb off the tree of natural diversity, we're forever halting the evolutionary potential of that branch of life. That's what if fundamentally comes down to.
Nobody has ever lived who is more important."
- David Foreman, in an interview with Derrick Jensen
www.ecofuture.org/pk/pkar9510.html
I think the crux of the disagreement here is that ecolocal doesn't think humanity is imbued with a special spark of goodness, a flake of god's light or what-have-you, that behavioral science shows that people are only what they learn, programmable meat machines, domesticated slave-animals, etc, etc... Our dominant culture certainly behaves as if that were the case, and spreads that world-view all over the place. But its not true. And, you know it. As my wife sings in a song she wrote - 'we are sparks of light, but we hide it'
-as if in divine affirmation - or perhaps in validation of eco's sardonic observation about the tribe being all Californian - my LA apt just got rattled by a little earthquake.
By the way, great article Charles. One thing. The Shaman and the Tribe are not from another place, planet, or interstitial realm. Its all planet Earth, and its all humanity. I'm sure that the allegory is implied in your writing, but their are a lot of literalists out in Reality Sandwich land who don't need much coaxing to believe that they're from Alpha Centauri, or that space ships from the Pleiades are coming to the rescue in 2012 or whatever else. Its up to us, as earthlings and humans, to what needs to be done.
Love & Revolt,
Devon