What’s now? What’s next?

I really miss the time when we received the emotional tools of our generation. I remember being so excited! Myself & everybody I knew thought, in our newness, that we would FIX ourselves. In this age, I understand my only job is to create a safe place to be WITH the waves of challenge. To at least sometimes change the wear spot of pain so we don't rub the same place over and over, but steadily unwind one pain, then another, another & another. To observe over and over, and in that attention, ask pain portals to rebalance and reintegrate in their own way.

Now it seems, the counterintuitive unwinding is to attune to, augment, enhance and expand the acceptance for what IS. To listen too what poor experience, rich in disfuncion, injury and challenge brings, to any semi-conscious being. I won't say I'm not pissed about this. Pissed & exasperated.

It does bring a longer, wider, higher bridge for the medicine. But WWHHhhat a show to live through. Going darker and deeper with all the speed we can, only find out the road back up and out is exponentially longer and slower, often confusing and excoriatingly circular. Not at all like that slippery but straight dive down.

But the cause we come out with, the compassion for the blood we spilled, particular to our experience, is verifiably more focused; if we survive our crisis, many of us become a champion of that very crisis for others. There's a million to choose from inside and outside of the collective story of unlovablability, un-worth, and not enough-ness. So which causes are ours? Where you chubby? invisible? Controlling, controlled, parentalized? Did your parents, not receiving the tools that we seem inundated with, believe the cultural & “structure is safety & silence will save you” scarcity story, and how did this affect our own stories?

Every one of us is coming out of a postwar culture. The collective trauma obscured by the “I’m fine” culture, pacing restless and hungry inside of the collective unconscious; Lineage trauma hidden inside of the cysts and tumors of organs, willing to speak when we can’t or won’t; The inequality of the gender, race and cast, and inescapable pressure inside of the modern child. The modern kid, with no vote, often no voice and almost no rights, who is simultaneously offered addictive colors and movement, with the chance to escape their emotions, unchecked peer shame, and the same looping stories & self shame thoughts their parents had.

So when I hear “I’m scared for kids today”, like people can't believe the choice that they're making, I guess I can believe it. This is the other thing. Kids today are coming in super savvy to the natural world and the imbalance it's already in. They have more intuitive knowledge about the effects of climate change, exploitation & inequality, and maybe, really soon, they will also have an exponentially larger set of emotional tools. I hope so. We're gonna need ‘em.

If we were to survive a bit longer as a species, and bring back the the animal, plant, feral human & other survivors of our white hot species youth & the extinction jag we’re on, there would have to be a relatively immediate unwinding of the contracted untruth of our post ag, people, animals and land as enslaved and exploited resources. That or the algorithm would have to change….translation: Alien intervention is as good as anything else, ‘cuz It just doesn't seem like that big astrology is coming in fast enough to save us.

Unfortunately, we're probably not going to change the age-old rule of destruction fast and healing slow. I've kind of put down the superhero fantasy of people hustling up that healing hill, putting our spandex/bamboo suit on and saving everything in the nick…my thoughts have turned away from saving humans/the planet and towards the eternal nature of things, and the beauty of change. Like any mature relationship, I'm starting to let go of the potential of humans, and starting to accept that what we have now is what we get. Seriously, look who's in line to speak next…Dolphins, whales, bonobos & the great apes. Hell, most every monkey you ever saw has genius, even if it's a jackass genius. Jackasses are grumpy and stubborn, but smart, sweet and made for survival. the tarsier, in its spooky wisdom, looks like a great candidate. We're so proud of our opposable thumbs. Have you seen an octopus lately? They use tools like they were born to it. And they are. Raccoons? Thumbs and super smart, but probably just as destructive as we are.

What if the next incarnation of genius was SOFT! Looked different, thought different, felt different & has a different response to their PAST! Maybe they don't make the story that being inside of nature makes our lives and nasty, brutish & short, (I do not thank you Hobbs, for that little line).

What if the new incarnation doesn't explore separation, but stays in the waves of belonging? What if it doesn't build megolith structures, housing religions who sole purpose seems to be to put an authority between people and their divinity. Sexuality and thoughts controlled by sin shaming from another? (Seriously, that was always gonna go wrong) How could it not? And all, ALL, driven by the story that we can never go back to the garden. That we must dominate it instead.

So if the ones who come are not so ravenous, don't try to push away from the natural community and so, are not deathly frightened of love scarcity. Seems silly now, that we would lose all of our belonging just so we could attempt to re-create it. With us on top, coincidentally.

I LONGED to see human consciousness survive this, and now my only question is if the consciousness of an aardvark or a buttercup are really any less than the thoughts & desires of an astronomically creative, loving, super cool, but bloody minded, unhealthy, dominating, and unbalanced manifestation called human. Our choice to explore the wrong way so young in our growth may mean that, like so many other species, we just don't make it through our youth. It's gonna be nip & tuck.

I'm so grateful for our language and the poetry, the songs we sing back to the universe. But a non-human expression is just as valid, and aardvarks and buttercups are still in their evolution and we don't know what they will become, or who will speak beauty into the void next.

although every minute seems immeasurably crucial, maybe we don’t change the speed of our healing. Maybe the best thing we do is to change our understanding of being IN our healing.

In our intent, at the axis…..we don't fix it…..Translation, “humans might not make it”….Can we be okay with that?

When I was younger, I would've turned away from this page now. Probably disgusted. I am not giving up on humans, but my path is acceptance. And uncomfortably close to that is non-attachment; The validation, the truth, that other species, life on earth, is worth the loss. Worthy of life and growth; The ability to see their children succeed and change to adapt to a changing climate. I hope we are among the survivors, and I hope there's not too much blood for it. Maybe in this second evolution we will entwine again with other creatures, the waters, Earth, the elements in the garden and the truth of connection to divinity. Maybe we put down this exploration and myth of singularity, superiority and solitude.

Coming back into the garden may be arduous, but it's the right way, and we’re gonna need as much empathy as challenge ever gave us.