The Vital Shift

     Our usual way of doing things is obviously NOT working. Despite our wealth & scientific advances, quality of life continues to decline as seen by rising rates of depression, anxiety, misogyny, divorce, racism, antisemitism, trauma, burnout, addictions, homelessness, suicide, violence, incarceration, wars, hunger, climate change, populism, partisanship, white nationalism, extinction of species, etc etc etc. Life, as we know it, is UNSUSTAINABLE!
     So we must change for our own sake, but especially for the sake of our children & grandchildren. A part of us resists change, even a change we all know is urgently essential. One bright fellow's thoughts on this:

     “Of course I’m romanticizing prehistory here, but we went from a matriarchal society: Nature-honoring society, mother-honoring society – both actual biological mothers, but also The Mother as our archetype of reality, and probably with the onset of agriculture, everything shifted to a patriarchal religion. And Judaism is at the pinnacle of patriarchy, as is Christianity & Islam. But we moved to this patriarchal & parochial kind of religion, and that has brought us ecological devastation, pandemics, “storms of the century” recurring yearly, fires and all this stuff – the earth is trying to shake us off. But all of this I think is because we’ve lost the wisdom of the Divine Mother in Jungian archetypal terms. And that wisdom is the wisdom of interconnectedness, the wisdom of interdependence, the wisdom of cooperation, mutuality. All those things are in patriarchal religions, but they’re just not emphasized. And that devolution into patriarchy is, I think, the root cause of 90% of our problems. And the solution is going to be a radical shift, but it’s not going to be comfortable, it’s not going to be graceful, it’s not going to be slow. It’s going to entail a collapse of the norms that we have lived by for centuries. And the questions we have to ask ourselves are: ‘Are we going to collapse mindfully or mindlessly?’ ‘Are we going to collapse compassionately or cruelly?’ and ‘Are we going to collapse with a sense of grace, or just a sense of horror?’ And I think it’s all about horror, cruelty and mindlessness. That’s what it looks like to me, but it doesn’t have to be that way. But I think that’s where we’re at at the moment.
      If you asked me what would be part of playing our cards right, it would be for individuals to take on a kind of spiritual practice that would, in Hebrew terms they talk about being of two minds: one is narrow or egoic mind, where it’s us against them, me against you, and I’m apart from nature, God & everything else; and the other is spacious mind, where I’m a part of the whole. And spiritual practices - every religion has them, and I’m not talking about formal liturgical, go to church, go to mosque, go to temple, go to synagogue. I’m talking about meditative practices, which doesn’t have to be silent sitting cross-legged on a mat, but contemplative practices that allow the egoic mind to drop of its own accord, and for you to experience something greater – that direct experience of the vastness of which we are a part. I think that has got to be a part of the mix. And if it is, I think that shifts us (out of our current downward spiral) and toward a more ideal future.”
     Rami Shapiro March 14, 2021 EXCELLENT (2hr) interview: https://batgap.com/