Looking at modern media you’d think that everything important was the-news-out-there: struggling economy, food shortages, technocratic convergence, cat videos, Central Bank Digital Control, opioid deaths, widespread censorship, iffy elections, the Great Reset and so much more. All of that. We read and watch parts of it daily.
But that’s not all that’s happening for us. We live emotional and intellectual lives inside bodies and networks of families, work and friends. That’s another source of daily news.
The future of the world is largely a result of what happens in the second category, what we might call the inside vertical dimension, as opposed to the horizontal dimension outside. The news we look at on screens is what already happened out there. Our complex inner lives are like the soil and seed from which the future will sprout. We’re like the seed planted in the soil of our time. Nurturing that soil and seed is like regenerative agriculture rather than submitting to an industrial monoculture.
The world seems to be the story of outside forces and powerful people who do it for us - or to us - but that’s only true from the point of view of the non-participative observer. In fact we’re also part of the whole event and what happens to it happens to us.
Traditional religions, esoteric knowledge and wiser parts of modern psychology tell us that inside and outside are aspects of the same thing. The story we make about the outside is intimately connected to the story we have about what’s going on inside us. They’re different takes on the same story.
In other words, how we are in our inner lives has everything to do with what’s going to happen out there. How we take care of the seed we are and the soil we’re in has everything to do with how our individual tree is going to grow. How we do that together has everything to do with how the forest grows.
This can be scary. Or exhilarating. It can also be seen as a duty to do everything we can to be part of the solution. I like to think of it as all three of these.
I think that seeds of this awareness are scattered everywhere in the world already, and warming up. It’s “the more beautiful world are hearts know is possible” in Charles Eisenstein’s memorable phrase. All of our hearts are touched already by that possibility and many of us are deeply moved by it.
I love this: the more ownership you take of your own participation, the more your personal problems, anxieties and concerns become unimportant. That’s because our inner story is intimately tied to our story about the outer. Our personal inner conflicts are related to the inability to creatively or happily engage with the challenge we have. The outer and the inner really are parts of the same thing. If this is true, the seeming comfort and safety of disengagement is a losing strategy.
The winning strategy is grounded engagement. At it’s extreme or in its fullness, it’s a Spiritual Warriorship. We stand up clearly for what we want and believe in, Neither of those two words are popular at this time but I think the two of them will increasingly define the future strategy for both men and women.
I’ll be offering more and more kinds of participative practice groups to explore this Spiritual Warriorship territory experientially with those who want to connect and explore.
The existing Connecting Seeds group is wrapping up and the last two sessions will be just for those who’ve already participated. I’ll send a link.
Thank you, Andrew. Great article, along with some others of yours I've read. I'll keep an eye on what's going on; the group sounds interesting and I might like to participate if it's going to happen again. All the best.
Great to hear from you Victor. Glad you're here!