Crisis & Love – A New Old Way Forward

We are at crisis point

Many individuals I know are now cracking up. Messaging a cry for help: I have some challenges. My back’s gone. I’m exhausted. Im diagnosed PTSS. We are coping best we can. I’m not coping well. Not easy to know what to do exactly… I see the current volume of people reaching out for help as a good sign, a chink in the armour of ‘soldiering on’ and ‘business as usual’… an opening to real relating…

Global chaos/a potential collective dawn

Last year was a tough year and many people went through the mill then. Now seems to be a different moment. A ‘breaking through’ time, an up against the wall moment… when we might now under pressure of fear, pain, guilt, shame or anger choose a different better way…

Right now nothing makes sense according to our maps of how things are. The lay of the land has changed, is still changing and we are being asked to change too. As my old friend David Manning says it, We are crotch deep in the shit at the moment.

The old ways we have no longer function in this new unknown terrain. Many of us literally don’t know what to do. How to progress. What is progress? It is all up for re-evaluation, re-organisation, re-imagining… a new way of being is possible now.

Masculine

For the last thousands of years our Patriarchal society has valued competition, dominance and analysis. Drive. Achievement. Profit. Work hard and play hard. The consensual perspective was about gaining personal possession. Mine and not yours. Mine at the expense of yours. Me or you. Divide and rule.

In fact, this is so much the obvious perspective of our times you might be wondering why I am describing it…Because the way of the distorted dominant masculine can’t go on. (Masculine energy. In all of us.)(As opposed to true masculine, which we all need.)

Feminine

A long time ago, before modern society and religion, there was Matriarchy, led by belief in the creative Goddess, with women in roles of authority, especially spiritual authority. Women were respected for their mysterious ability to create life from the empty space of their physical wombs. To nurture from birth into life in the fields and in the homes.

Wholeness

In the old days, the world was perceived as whole. Every element or object was imbued with its own spirit, one for the water and one for the earth… each person, animal, plant, table and food had its own spirit. All the ancient mythologies speak of it. Daily life then included frequent direct communications with the invisible spiritual world ‘within’ the visible tangible world. There was no separation between sacred and secular. Possessions belonged collectively to the temple and the community. Everything belonged to everyone. All equally included. Everyone and everything in relationship with each other.

Fall from the garden of eden

And then came a time when I think men wanted to personally own the possessions. They wanted things for themselves as individuals rather than for the community as a whole. And so began the diminishment of women and the raising up of men, the devaluing of the feminine, domination of the masculine.

The spiritual was separated from the earth and sent to the sky above where the one God was now supposed to live. Hierarchy began…  God was seen as ‘higher’ than humans and the earth. People now had to plead with the spiritual banished outside the realm of their daily life. They set-up intermediaries – priests, rabbis, imans, monarchy – to negotiate between the people and God. With all ordinary people no longer also special and spiritual, interest in external images, gurus and celebrities began…

Disruption

Mind and body separated. Rather than the trinity of body, heart and head, mind alone began to be used for communication with the unreachable god. Over time, the experiences of the body were seen as an obstacle to reaching the Spiritual, something to be negated and ashamed of. We began to think of ourselves as ghosts in a machine, souls detached.

The most ancient world myth speaks of descent and renewal. Innanna had to go down into the unknown and fearful darkness, in order to return renewed back up to the light. We are now at that point in our destabilising world where we have to (be willing to) go ‘down’ into the unknown… in order to re-emerge into a new knowing…

New order

We need to let go of programmed ideas of how things are, descending into contact with our body sensations, feelings and intuitions. We need to move out into the world with honesty, vulnerability and self-love. With self-disclosure and self-responsibility in all our relationships. We need to be willing not to know… unfamiliar and painful as it may be… to activate our deeper (spiritually royal) powers of love, instinctual knowing and creativity.

Physical is spiritual

In the old old old days, it was understood that we ourselves are the gods and the goddesses, we are powerful beyond measure. Love is the force that illumines us and our lives. It is not just for one special partner but for everyone or for many people… As children we knew ourselves to be love… we wanted to be seen and acknowledged in our lovingness… as love…

We are still that.

Love

We love much more widely actually than we realise. Than we usually permit ourselves. Than is perhaps seen as safe or polite.

Love is not a limited resource but a passionate love for life…

Time now to move beyond me me me – into real loving relationship with ourselves, others and the whole of life.

Let’s each be responsible to create the world our hearts really want. Let’s be together a community of humans, living in relationship with both father sky and mother earth. Let’s celebrate the source within us – and the source without.