Nurturing Our Troubled World

     “A beautiful prophecy they tell in the Andes and in the Amazon is called the prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor. They say that this is the time when the Eagle People – people like you & I, who perceive life primarily through the mind – at this time in history will reach a kind of zenith. They’ll use the mind, and tools to even extend the capacity of the mind. That’s probably a prophecy about computers & artificial intelligence. And we will be materially rich beyond any previous generation’s imagination. But we will be spiritually impoverished to our peril and our very survival will be at risk. While the Condor People – which refers to indigenous people, who live primarily through the wisdom of the heart, the five senses, and inhabit the spirit world as their primary home – they will have reached a kind of zenith & sophistication in their skills & their way of life, but they will be materially impoverished to their peril and encounter with the Eagle world, and their survivability will also be at risk. And they say that at this time in history – the beginning of the third millennium (this is the 1st century of the 3rd millennium) the Eagle People and the Condor People will begin to fly together in the same sky, and the world will come back into balance.
     But the change after hundreds of years of domination of the Eagle People over the Condor People, from the 4th pachakuti, the pachakuti of dominance & darkness, (between ~1492 to 2000), changing to the 5th pachakuti, the pachakuti of balance & light (a pachakuti is a 500-year period of time). This change from the 4th to the 5th pachakuti will take, they say, 25-50 years, and during that time, Pachamama (their name for Mother Earth) will humble all her creatures with huge climactic events – earthquakes, temperatures rising, fires, floods, tsunamis – to humble all her creatures so they remember their rightful role in relationship with her, going into the pachakuti of balance & light. So this time of climactic turmoil and huge crisis with our climate has been predicted for thousands of years by the indigenous people as a way that the Mother is humbling us, in some cases destroying us, but humbling us so that we will find a rightful role of integrity with her as we go into the 500 years of balance & light, where the Eagle and the Condor fly together – the prophecy about the Pachamama Alliance. They say that this is a huge transitional period, this roughly 25 to 50 years, where we are receiving massive feedback from the Mother. They say the pandemic is part of this feedback, an announcement from the Mother. So everything comes from the earth, everything – the computer, the pen I’m writing with, everything we know, including the pandemic. That virus impacts only one species, of the millions of species on the planet, only one species gets sick from it, and that’s us. Why is that?
     They say that the pandemic is an announcement, it’s not a punishment. It’s an ally, it’s halting us, interrupting our way of life so we have to stop and think, re-source, re-check, re-generate who we are for the next 500 years.
     I call it morning sickness for our pregnant species, that’s pregnant for its own rebirth. When a woman is pregnant but doesn’t know she’s pregnant, and she’s vomiting in the morning, and feeling tired by 2 o’clock, and wanting weird things, and feeling very out of sorts, she actually considers herself sick.
     But if she finds out she’s pregnant, then she’s no longer sick – she’s having a baby. She’s still throwing up, but delighted that she’s going to have a baby. And I say that the pandemic is our morning sickness for a pregnancy that we’re entering into as a species, to re-birth ourselves, co-labour, both men and women collaborate into our next evolutionary leap, into what it means to be a human being. All pregnancies do not produce a baby. There are miscarriages, there are stillbirths, all kinds of things. This is a metaphor. The indigenous people say how we hold this interruption – the pandemic, the climate crisis – is not happening to us, it’s happening for us as feedback, so that we will make the changes necessary to survive. And if we don’t we’ll go extinct. These changes are harsh, but gentler than they could be, but are forcing a transformation."
     Lynne Twist (1hr 35min) interview: https://batgap.com/lynne-twist/

The Butterfly Story - A Metaphor for Humanity in Crisis
by Elisabet Sahtouris, Evolution Biologist & Futurist
http://www.sahtouris.com/#5_3

     “A caterpillar can eat up to three hundred times its own weight in a day, devastating many plants in the process, continuing to eat until it’s so bloated that it hangs itself up and goes to sleep, its skin hardening into a chrysalis. Then, within the chrysalis, within the body of the dormant caterpillar, a new and very different kind of creature, the butterfly, starts to form. This confused biologists for a long time. How could a different genome plan exist within the caterpillar to form a different creature? They knew that metamorphosis occurs in a number of insect species, but it was not known until quite recently that nature did a lot of mixing and matching of very different genome/protein configurations in early evolutionary times. Cells with the butterfly genome were held as disc-like aggregates of stem cells that biologists call 'imaginal cells', hidden away inside the caterpillar’ all its life, remaining undeveloped until the crisis of overeating, fatigue and breakdown allows them to develop, gradually replacing the caterpillar with a butterfly! 
     Such metamorphosis makes a good metaphor for the great changes globalisation, in the sense of world transformation, is bringing about, as Norie Huddle first used it in her beautiful book Butterfly. Our bloated old system is rapidly becoming defunct while the vision of a new and very different society, long held by many 'imaginal cell' humans who dreamt of a better world, is now emerging like a butterfly, representing our solutions to the crises of predation, overconsumption and breakdown in a new way of living lightly on Earth, and of seeing our human society not in the metaphors and models of mechanism as well-oiled social machinery, but in those of evolving, self-organizing and intelligent living organism.
     If you want a butterfly world, don't step on the caterpillar, but join forces with other imaginal cells to build a better future for all!”

 

Scarcity in our Time of Abundance

     Someone who earned well over $250k a year, once told me that he envied panhandlers for doing nothing and earning more than he did. He must have been thoroughly intoxicated by the paradigm of scarcity to say something so ridiculous.

     “Buckminster ('Bucky') Fuller in 1976, told an audience of 2,000 people: ‘Now I’m going to say the most important thing I’ve ever said or ever will say. Humanity has just crossed a threshold. And that threshold changes everything. And we’ve crossed it. And it’s recent.’ He meant in the last 50 or a 100 years – he dealt in these large swaths of time. ‘And that threshold is that humanity is doing so much more, with so much less. And that is the direction of our science, our innovation, of all of our technology – to do so much more, with so much less, that we now clearly live in a world where there is enough for everyone, everywhere to have a healthy & productive life. We live in a world of absolute, profound sufficiency and everyone, everywhere can have a healthy & productive life.
     And that was not always true. Before this threshold, we lived in a world of scarcity, where it was either you make it at my expense, because I make it at your expense, because there was not enough for both of us. But on this side of the line, you and I can both make it at no one’s expense, because there’s enough for everyone, everywhere to have a healthy, productive life. We don’t have to compete like mad any longer. We have everything we need. And he said, we won’t realize that for around 50 years, because human institutions inside of which we live, are all rooted in the you or me paradigm, rather than the you and me paradigm – a paradigm of scarcity, rather than a paradigm of enough. And so he said that governance is rooted in a you or me understanding of the world; the economy is clearly designed & rooted in a you or me understanding of the world; education is rooted in a you or me understanding of the world; even, he said, religion is rooted in a you or me understanding of the world. So he said these institutions will need to become so dysfunctional, that they start falling apart and they won’t be able to fix them. And then we’ll have to recreate our human institutions from a new paradigm – a paradigm of profound sufficiency. And it will take about 50 years for all of this to fall apart. He said this in 1976 and here we are in 2021, and things are totally falling apart, and we can’t really fix them because they’re rooted in a set of assumptions that are now so clearly inaccurate. That’s the big lesson I learned from Bucky, and then I began to be a spokesperson for the distinction of sufficiency, which is not an amount of anything, it’s an experience, it’s a way of being where you are in the experience that you are enough, there is enough, and from enough, we build and grow and expand (rather than from scarcity or lack, but from enough). It’s just a completely different way of living. … Bucky said, ‘We can make the world work for everyone, with no one and nothing left out.’

     Brother David Steindl-Rast (gratefulness.org) when asked ‘What’s the difference between gratitude and gratefulness?’ replied, ‘Gratitude has two great branches, one is gratefulness, and the other is thanksgiving. Gratefulness is the experience of life when the whole of life is so full, it is almost overflowing, but not quite. The bowl of life is so full, that it’s bowed at the top but not yet dribbling over the edges. And that’s the experience of the great fullness of life. And when you’re in the great fullness of life, if you’re one with God, one with the Universe, and there is no other. It’s all One. That is so fulfilling that the bowl of life starts to overflow, and that puts you over on the other branch of gratitude, called thanksgiving. And when you’re in the branch of gratitude called thanksgiving, the bowl of life is like a fountain, it’s overflowing. And so all you want to do is give, and serve, and you’re so grateful to discover there’s another so you can give and serve and contribute and share and that’s so fulfilling, it puts you in the gratefulness of life again. … back & forth … And you can live in these two branches of gratitude, and it’s so powerful & fulfilling to live in these two branches, like Brother David does. All of us can.
     But sometimes, when the bowl of life gets full, almost overflowing, we think, ‘Oh, I’ve got to get a bigger bowl!’ rather than realize this is enough.
     And out of enough, natural bounty, or natural abundance flows. Abundance is different from sufficiency. This is sufficiency, and this is natural abundance, which flows from sufficiency, never from lack, and not even from more. Real sufficiency flows from the profound recognition of enough. There’s a beautiful principle of sufficiency I kind of made up: When you let go of trying to get more of what you don’t really need, it frees up oceans of energy you’ve tied up in the chase, to turn and pay attention to what you already have. When you pay attention to what you already have, when you nourish what you already have, when you make a difference with what you already have, when you share what you already have, it expands. This is another way of saying, ‘What you appreciate, appreciates.’
     What you long for in the world, and what you love, where you feel hurt in the world, and what you care deeply about, where you feel the world is longing for your participation and where you’re drawn from your heart to do something about – you put those two things together, and you’ll find your path of service. Albert Schweitzer said, ‘One thing I know; the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought & found how to serve.’ So just get involved in whatever makes your heart sing, touches your heart, and keep engaging in things until you find this is it, this is mine, this is why I was born, this is why I’m here, this is what I stand for, this is my dharma, this is my karma, this is my service, this is who I am."
     Lynne Twist (1hr 35min) interview: https://batgap.com/lynne-twist/