One of the beautiful outcomes of the noosphere that has unfolded through the internet and the ecology of online media it has spawned is that we are no longer tied to the broadcast networks to curate our news. True enough the plural-cast media has shredded into a thousand-and-one channels that can be as narrow as one opinion-maker.
But tribal-media has emerged so that one can immerse oneself in the beliefs, worldviews and attitudes of the multiple voices who resonate and cohere perspectives around topics, issues, challenges and opportunities.
Amongst the media ecology are emerging digital nomads manifesting as taste-testing inter-viewers, deep-diving seekers, and hum-in-forming strange attractors who give me many chances to titillate, strengthen and reconnect my synaptic linkages. I am often slow to make meaning. I need to marinate in the stew of expressions, experiences and exonerations before the discernible patterns emerge and break free to surface like rafts floating in the river of life.
It is like I go through the panarchic cycle of knowing my existing world (at the top of the S curve), then as I slide down the beginning of the back cycle when all the world breaks apart, I detach and witness the breakdowns that surround me, grab at me and try to pull me under. In this stage I let go of balance, and strain for buoyancy. I notice how difficult it is to keep my eyes open, my ears alert, my mouth tasting strange mixes of unpleasant flavours, my nose sniffing the air for smoke and toxins, my skin parched for comforting touch. It is difficult to name happiness, feel comfort(ed) or find inspiration (my end of day practice).
It feels like I am in the breakdown stage for a very long time – though this year of pandemic it has been a “mere” 7 months – which is nothing in the timespan of evolution. I hear some people calling this time the “dark night of the soul” for humanity or even the globe. It may well be, because it is one of our first globally co-experienced breakdowns.
In some localities, I notice the beginnings of the shift from breakdown to the re-distribution stage – the scattering and eventual re-mix of the elements. Today, after group meditation, I heard some people share how accepting the breakdown was allowing them to consider standing back – as Gen Boomers – to let the next generations come forward with a new world order. But I suspect any semblance of a new world order is very premature. As usual, the stages of change around the globe are not equally distributed.
Where we have not really felt the pain. Where we have not chosen to walk into the refiner’s fire so that all our elements can be released. Where we have not seen that I/We are They/Them. The phoenix cannot yet arise.
For everything there is a season … and this is the season of letting go. Falling into the abyss – trying to remember in the dark depths of the bottom, there may be some kind of buoyancy in a distant future. But I think I am going to have to go deeper than ever before – beyond all my assumptions of safety and hope. Being willing to release all I am. All I have been. And let Life use me for Her ends. My buoyancy may have to be traded for compliancy – not with rules or regulations made by others – but with the Flow of Life. Cutting loose from the structures of the old norms and serving the Great I Don’t Know. If I don’t let go (and let God) then I will just stall the Divine Remix.
One thing is for sure – we are a lonnnnnng way from breakthrough to a new pattern/new normal. Trust, faith, surrender may add weights to take us to a deeper bottom yet, long before they become life jackets that may float us back to a surface where new vision is possible.
This blog series explores how Integral City frameworks can strengthen our immune systems as the best biomimicry defence against the pandemic.
The series includes:
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