Thethingsthatyoutalkaboutinthebookaresonewtomeandexquisitelyfull.
Theyarereallya toolkitforhowtobeinthistime.Andtheyaddresssomanyofmy
ownfearsandconcernsandhopesandlongings,really.Andproposenewthoughts
thatI hadn’tgottoyet.Youwrite,“Wecanwakeuptogetherintoresponsibility
insteadofsleepwalkingintoapocalypse.”Andthisbitreallygotme!“Nomatterwhat
liesahead,it istremendouslyimportantthatweparticipateinwaysthatexpress
ourhighestcharacterandvalues.”I mean,I’mquiteimmatureonthespiritualpath!
Andmaybe on a character-building path. But the thought that first of all the outcome
of our time is up for grabs is big. Given that fear agendas take over and we accept
the narrative of fear and react accordingly. But there’s this other emergent possibility
proposed in the book that’s actually generative. We can respond to our time from a
higher, deeper, richer place in all of us. And that might create the future. So the ideas
are big and I’m just trying to wade through them. Maybe you can help? [Laughs].
that in future moments. It’s important to understand that I’m training my neurology in
whatever pattern I’m activating moment-to-moment. And that recognition means that
every moment is an opportunity. Which is a good thing, because no matter what choices
we’re making now, they can be and need to be improved. None of them are good enough
because we’re all part of an international civilisational system that isn’t working. SoSo this calls on me to practice and it calls on me to practice in new ways. Not just the ways
I already know. Not just quieting my mind or being mindful or whatever else I know as
practice. But to actually break new ground. To find my way into a living relationship with
the next emergent moment that is bright, creative and able to find my way into a freer or
more loving or more fully present relationship to whatever is arising. This recognition that
how we are being is going to have to evolve means that we can show up for every moment
with a sense of inspiration and possibility. When I first recognised just how profoundly
difficult the likely climate future was going to be based on the science, once that really
arrived for me, I went through a dark night of the soul. I found it really depressing. As do
most people. There’s beginning to be a cultural conversation about just how depressing
this is and how the depression itself is something we need to talk about. Of the minority of
people in the United States who are awake to how severe the problem is, at most 30 percent
of us, many of us are getting pretty freaked out. And even disheartened and fatalistic. So that
willingness to face the facts is one form of practice but then the discovery of the creative
opportunity these facts present, and that thrilling heroic opportunity they represent for
us, that’s another form of practice, one that brings us alive. This is why we’re talking.Well you know, it’s
nice to bring things
down to simplicities
that just cut through.
I mean it is important
to encounter the
complexities and
really deal with them.
But at the end of the
day you can only do
one thing at a time.
I have friends who
are members of the
collapse community,
the community of people who are convinced that civilisation is going to collapse and
there’s going to be a breakdown of social order, and that’s just the way it is. And they’re very
fatalistic. As you know, I dispute that attitude in the book. The fact that we really don’t know
the outcome is critically important. I don’t think they’re being completely intellectually
honest by concluding that it’s definitely headed to collapse. I think that’s a moral problem.we owe it to our kids and grandkids and great-
grandkids to find a way to do this better. We’re at
the frontlines of an evolutionary moment where
what happens next matters so much.101THOUGHT LEADERCONVERSATIONS