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The Time is Now!

By Baruch

The idea of preparing for world changes, as if they are to come at some time in the future, is passé. The changes are here now! The environment is changing noticeably all around the world. Just ask anyone anywhere what the climate is doing in their locale and they’ll tell you about unprecedented changes in weather, new plant and insect species appearing, familiar ones disappearing, deserts are expanding, ice caps are melting, it’s happening folks! For better and/or worse we have set in motion huge changes to life on Earth. We’ll all be watching them unfold over the next decades.

The task now is to deal with what’s upon us, and prepare for what’s yet to come. Here’s the answer, simplify the way you live. You know what that means because you know your own particular life complexities. The simpler you make your life the more resilient you will be as things change. Simplify your mental chatter, your food habits, how you deal with your bodily excretions. Simplify your living situation, your ways of dealing with money. The simpler you make it all, the less affected you will be by the changes to cultural institutions, major changes occurring now making many formerly helpful offices ever less the ally of the individual, more and more corporate stooges.

It’s critically important to choose your relationship with money and the government that controls money, so that your life energy is where you want it to be on your terms, not on the terms of the government (which is, of course, controlled by the corporations). It is each of our responsibility to educate ourselves at least somewhat as to the workings of globalization. Government is changing; the way government is empowered, how governments stay in power, how they treat the people, accountability, responsibility, and on and on. Benevolent government has failed in the few places it’s been attempted. Those committed to the old feudal territorial ways, which create monolithic power structures, did not go away during attempts at civility, they just found new ways to hide and insidiously corrupt the new institutions which were attempts at benevolence. Now, with the combination of digital technology, huge monetary resources, and motivation to rule, we have power being concentrated down to a few corporations, those immortal behemoths whose instinct is to consume all. The corporations are represented by figureheads, some fictitiously elected and some ruling as result of coup d’êtat; Presidents, Prime Ministers, Generals. As governments become more totalitarian, the valuable and effective strategy is for those who insist on being their own authority to engage less and less in any kind of client relationship with governments and corporations. That means becoming really conscious of where your purchases originated and who actually got paid. Sometimes it means engaging in commerce that is under government radar, such as bartering. It means knowing full well that the more money you earn, the more you pay in taxes, the more you are helping to prop up the governments which means you are that much more enslaved by the corporations than someone who doesn’t participate in this kind of client relationship. So, what to do? Disengage as much as you can from giving energy to the governments and the corporations. Buy less. Spend less. Earn less. The concept of money is very efficient at keeping people locked into fear of scarcity, the drive to get more, and the feeling that they never have enough. If you grow food, make clothes, make art, reuse stuff, buy 2nd hand stuff, trade things with friends, etc., you will always be coming from the place of increasing abundance. There is no shortage of stuff, that’s for sure, so let’s circulate it! While all this does mean shedding middle class materialism, especially for North Americans, the worst pollution culprits, the exhilaration of knowing that you are fucking up Earth less and less is a great feeling. This is building true global citizenship, taking responsibility for Earth, as opposed to abdicating that to some centralized power structure that, in turn, enslaves you. By taking responsibility we reclaim our individual power to choose how we live. That’s how we make the world we want to live in!

Are you conscious of the mental chatter that drives you day in and day out, night after night? It’s there, believe me, whether you’re aware of it or not. Working on your relationship with yourself means becoming familiar with yourself, allowing yourself to be aware of your own process. Why? How is that preparation for the world changing? It’s pretty basic. If you don’t know yourself, you aren’t nearly as positive a force as you can be. Here’s how that works. The more conscious you are of your own process, the more you can account for your issues, perceptions etc. as you participate in group experiences, whether it’s making a garden with people, construction, decision making; living with other people. If you’re a person who doesn’t know when they are acting out their own psychological drama, you are likely to be difficult to work with as we do this thing of building sustainable future together, because you’ll be expecting other people to participate in the scenarios you’re creating in your head rather than seeing people for who they are and learning to work with people as they are instead of as you’d have them be. Stop and really think about how you behave in the groups you’re part of. What assumptions do you have running in the background about the situation, the people, yourself, how you are perceived, and any others you find? How do you contribute to the group? Are your efforts effective? What are you doing, how are you behaving, that makes them more or less effective? Have you asked anyone lately if they see you acting out any blind spots? Take all of the answers to those questions and look at how you are acting out your inner drama, usually cozy familiar family-of-origin based dramas which can be pleasant or unpleasant depending on how you’re imprinted. I’ve been part of group situations, both living situations and co-creative project situations, with people who, with the best of intentions, cannot see beyond what they expect from people and what they think is right, all the result of unconscious mental activity. This makes it difficult for these folks to make space for others to participate in the ways that are authentic to themselves. Expecting people to conform to your idea of what or who they should be is not a useful contribution. Then we end up with autocratic power dynamics and covert agendas. These are part of the old paradigm that we are letting go of, so it’s critical that we don’t perpetuate that stuff. I’ve also been in living situations and worked on projects with people who approached relating from a very different place, looking to see what was actually happening in the present moment sans projections, and those experiences were very different from the first set of experiences I just described. I found that the biggest differences were that it was more fun the second way, requiring more creativity, which meant that for me I experienced myself really participating fully with as much of who I am as I could bring, and I experienced the group as not being run by covert agendas or power-over dynamics. The more you know yourself, the more you may find that your participation in the world to be effective.

* What you perceive to be unusual depends entirely upon what you perceive as usual.

* What you see as “weird” is defined by what you see as “normal.

* That which is familiar to you shapes your comfort zone when encountering that which is unfamiliar.

* What you perceive things or events or people to be in relation to your personal values, depends entirely upon your personal values. You perceive the world through the lens of your values and beliefs. If you approach life knowing this about yourself, you increase your chances of interesting interaction and of being part of the solution(s), rather than part of the problem(s).

Working on your relationship with yourself, the many relationships within yourself, is the same as working on your relationships with other people because we are all basically mirrors for each other. As unique as we each are, and as important as it can be to know that, we are very similar to one another in more ways than can be counted. That makes our relationships with others and with self all very juicy, lots of stuff to notice, reactions and projections to tease apart and learn from, clarity to discern. It’s an ongoing part of being human and it’s a powerful ingredient in being a constructive participating person.

Part of knowing yourself is taking care of yourself, and that includes your body. If you are part of the solution then it is your responsibility to take care of yourself the best you can. Being in a physical body can be wonderful, sublime, and also really uncomfortable and painful. We all get some of everything in the long run, some getting more of one than the other. The better you take care of yourself now the longer you’ll last and be able to be that effective person who contributes and makes a difference. We each have to decide what it means to take care of our bodies, that is a conversation we all need to have with ourselves. You know if, even by your own standards, you’re taking care of yourself or not. Be honest with yourself, apply your best thinking and by your own best standards, take care of yourself, no pissing and moaning about it. I’m not talking about the occasional indulgences we all enjoy, I’m talking about your basic most-of-the-time way of treating your body. It’s another ongoing part of our humanity.

What is your relationship with Earth? Earth must always be a proper noun. Earth is to be revered, honored, preserved, nourished. All natural resources are to be regarded as precious. We are to get as much use out of each and every item, from plastic bag to TV, as possible. And when things are finally to be disposed of, they should be recycled into another form, just like nature does with everything. Don’t trust so-called “waste management” corporations to do the right thing. They have found ways to turn your trash into something they can buy and sell and from which to make money. Corporate recycling is not the ticket. They are part of the money machine. Recycle stuff yourself! Find new uses for stuff rather than filling landfills. That’ll also affect your willingness to acquire stuff. How many plastic bags can you hang on to indefinitely? We can choose to see that everything is valuable, and most things are alive or in the process of having been so or becoming so. Even plastic was once alive, being made from petroleum which is the remains of the dinosaur age compressed under the earth for millions or billions of years. In the present day, if you go outside and listen to the sounds of Earth, what do you hear? Whether you’re in the city or country, you can hear Earth. You can also hear sounds made by the race of humans in most parts of the world. But listen to Earth and hear what she’s saying. What is the wind saying about the life of Earth right now? What about the animal sounds or lack thereof, what does that all tell you? Listen. What about human made sounds, what are they saying? How do all these different sounds make you feel inside? The sound of water running, the sound of the radio, the sound of birds, the sounds of cars, the sounds of voices, and on and on, listen. How does your immediate environment smell? Do you smell trees or toxic fumes? And look! What do you see? What do you see around you? How does it affect you to be where you are? What do you feel inside and outside of yourself? What is your relationship with your surroundings? Get it. Make it real for you. Snap out of your trance and see where you are on Earth. Often! Deepening your relationship with earth by being aware of nature, whether outside your apartment building or deep in the forest, can only enrich your life and your contributions to a sustainable future. Taking time to smell a flower is an action of world healing.

There are a few things all humans will experience, birth and death chief among them. Before we each die we will all experience grief over deaths; parents, friends, siblings, lovers, partners, children, countries, communities, beliefs, etc., and some of us will grieve over trauma we experience. Lots of people experience significantly a collective grief that is part and parcel with current events on Earth. That grief, like any, needs attention. How we grieve determines a lot about the rest of our lives after the loss or trauma we are grieving.. The crucial thing is to allow yourself to grieve. Let yourself really feel it. It may feel like your guts being ripped out, you may experience numbness, and everything in between. Go for it. Let your friends and family in on what you’re going through as much as you can and go for it. Go through it. Grieving may require that you take time away from your usual life, or not. It’s up to you to feel out what is it that you need and to follow through with it. Suppressing your grief isn’t good for you. This doesn’t mean you have to do it all at once, feel it all at once with no breaks, by no means. But running away from your grief won’t work, it catches up with you and then you have not only your grief to deal with but you will deal with having run from grief. Best to just face it square on as much as you can. It is my experience that in order for life to be real, not automatic, after significant deaths in my life, I have had to feel my grief and eventually go through the process of rediscovering my passion to live. Once through the most crippling grief, I have asked myself to focus on things that make life interesting. Living without passion for life is awful. I’ve been finding passion for life through being in beautiful places on Earth, finding joy in daily life with animals and people, and lots of reflection. That may not be what you need to work through the grief that will come to you, but when the time comes remember reading this and let yourself experience discovering the depth of your grief, so you can go through it and nurture your passion for life. Or not. Maybe it’ll be your path to grieve yourself to the bottom and that will be that. I don’t know. I do know this though. If you want to make a difference in the world as we are going through this time of change, and you want to be resilient as different experiences come your way, you best learn how to deal with grief in ways that are healthy for you because you’re going to have to.

The way to change the world is to change yourself. The way to make things different is to be different. If you don’t like all the box stores with their loud colors and slave-made goods, don’t shop there! If you don’t like seeing trash on the side of the road, stop and pick it up! If you want your community to operate differently, get in there and say so! Whatever it is about the world, about your life, that you wish were different, it can be but only if you make it so. What is really important to you and how do you demonstrate that each day?

Individually, we can each do only what we can do. Collectively, that adds up to a lot. Anarchistic unorganized collective momentum ultimately takes form and moves in a direction organically. We don’t need to be organized as a movement to bring about change. We each make it happen in our own ways every day. The waves of water in the ocean are not organized, but through an energetic concensus the waves move this way and that with cohesion. We can be like the waves, sensing our energetic connection through our common aliveness, trusting that our relationship with nature will guide us in directions that are organic and sustainable, and learning to really notice the way the energy is moving so we can find ways to participate that come out of each of our deep longing to live in a culture that values life, justice, personal responsibility, integrity, and all the rest of our favorite things.

So, dear reader, I hope what I’ve written here can be useful as you continue on your journey. These are things I’ve been learning on mine.

Peace,

Baruch

July 22, 2005

Chilco Lake, BC, Canada