It is critical to understand the difference between recognizing a potential opportunity and concretely predicting the future. This pattern represents an energetic opportunity, an alignment of forces which we might choose to use to our advantage. But, just as it is critical to know which way the wind is blowing in a sail boat race, that knowledge by itself will not win the race; it is then a matter of the skill and determination of the sailor. So too with the human race, as we attempt to traverse this our most critical passage through the neck of the hourglass of history.
It will not be enough to act just outwardly, nor just inwardly, in these times. The scale of the despair and suffering we face is unparalleled in human history - yet so too is the potential. The challenge seems to be to at once actively imagine the most positive possible outcome, while at the same time facing that which is before us. Envisioning the best is no excuse for failing to face reality and act with courage and compassion in the face of it.
Yet, by some strange paradox of existence it often seems that the instructions for proactive magic are something like this: Actively imagine how everything that 'is' could turn out to be part of a most positive possible outcome. At the same time, fully accept the despair of reality, as it seems not to be that way at all. Surrender fully to acceptance of what 'is'. Then, sometimes, and in my own experience increasingly often, just after you surrender - what you had originally imagined manifests itself. This little exercise is cast entirely in the ethereal plane of intention and awareness and thus leaves out critical steps involving hard work on the material plane, but it does serve to illustrate the point. Envisioning light and accepting darkness are two sides of the same coin.
So, what might we do with this moment of opportunity? My favorite metaphor is dropping a seed crystal into a super saturated solution. This pattern looks like a crystal. The six pointed star has significant meaning in virtually all world religious and philosophical traditions. One exercise might be to try to imagine how the prophesies in all different mystical and religious systems could all turn out to be true, when viewed in hindsight. They might all turn out to describe an event which was essentially indescribable, unimaginable, until it was almost upon us, a collective transformation of consciousness arising out of a collective psychic death and rebirth. Viewed from this perspective the social and ecological crises we face might be seen in a different light, and yet, if the process is to run its course there can be no cheating, no individual escape from psychic death prior to rebirth.
We might all choose in one moment to envision clear white light together in unison, but at the same time, we would be well advised to look the apocalypse which we have so nearly wrought squarely in the face, and decide collectively as a matter of conscious will and intention, that we will do differently. Perhaps we have collectively brought ourselves to the brink of the abyss for a reason, if nothing else than to shock ourselves into waking up. If the planet is growing a nervous system, at some point it must wake up, be born and come to consciousness. But what would that look like? What would collective consciousness mean? Could it be any different than each of us knowing that we are part of the collective, not just intellectually as a passing thought but deep in our core, that we are not separate. This sounds a lot like a functional definition of what the mystics have always described as enlightenment. But millions have strived after such a state for centuries, does it really seem likely or even plausible that a state which has eluded so many for so long would in a matter of moments, weeks, months or even years suddenly become the prevailing state of humankind? I don’t know and certainly wouldn’t presume to claim to, but it does seem that life has an amazing propensity for doing exactly what is necessary to continue itself.
Jim Fournier
August 23, 1996