Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse

[GliderGuider]

This is a brand new book by author and professor Carolyn Baker. I've been following her blog for more than a year now, and have found that her assessment of the crisis of civilization is virtually identical to my own. We have been informed by the same sources, have connected the same dots into identical patterns, and have come to the same conclusion: the multi-faceted crisis of civilization is a predicament without a solution, and the only reasonable response to it is personal spiritual transformation.

Along the way she has drawn on many sources that have also influenced me strongly over the last couple of years: Charles Eisenstein's remarkable book The Ascent of Humanity", the writings of John Michael Greer, Derrick Jensen and James Howard Kunstler, the movie "What a Way to Go" by Tim Bennett and Sally Erickson, and Daniel Quinn's quirky but seminal book Ishmael". The overlap in our thinking is virtually complete.

When all the snowballing evidence of the failure of industrial civilization has been digested and accepted, Carolyn comes to the conclusion that in this collapse we have been gifted with a singular opportunity to realize our purpose in the universe and the universe's purpose in us. If we have the courage to gaze unflinchingly both outward and inward at the same time, we have a chance to transcend many of the limits we previously believed were insurmountable. If we remain mindful and do the work, we may be able to achieve a union with ourselves, our families, our communities, the universe and perhaps with powers greater than we can imagine.

In the introduction, Carolyn lays out her position:

This book has been written specifically for the purpose of providing a structure for choosing deliberation and introspection—not narcissistic navel-gazing, but deep, conscious contemplation of collapse and its emotional and spiritual implications for you, the reader.

Walking the spiritual path of collapse is a journey that beckons us far beyond mere survival and renders absurd any attempts to “fix” or prevent the end of the world as we have known it. This odyssey is about the transformation of human consciousness and the emergence of a new paradigm as a result discovering our purpose in the collapse process and thereby coming home to our ultimate place in the universe. Our willingness to embark on the journey with openness and uncertainty offers an opportunity for experiencing the quantum evolutionary leap with which collapse may be presenting us. In other words, the opportunity collapse offers is an extraordinary death/rebirth phenomenon which could be tragically aborted if we persist in denial, rationalization, or resistance to civilization’s demise.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. If you are walking the path of awareness regarding the unfolding human crisis, it needs to be part of your journey. You can find it here.

[knowbody0]

1. amen

thank you, I share this vision of our brave new world as well.

peace

[FedUpWithIt All]

2. I had a discussion with a friend a couple of years ago..

where we discussed what we believed appropriate under certain different duress circumstances.

Example...

There is a rampant deadly virus and a very young child who lost his/her parents to it has come to your door for help. You have uninfected young children in your home already. What do you do?

We had very different ideas.

Another woman's child could easily be my own. I would want someone to hold, protect and care for mine if i were unable. I believe that we should try and behave as we would want others to behave towards us. I would want my children to be cared for so i should offer care to others in need.

I KNOW that trying times are coming. I also know that trying times can be times of great beauty, compassion, generosity, growth, heroism...

Even as a mother, death does not frighten me as much as the suffering that can be delivered on the living. But i do feel as if there is a certain peace inside me in spite of the "frightening" changes going on all around me.

I sense what needs to be changed in my life and i am moving to make those changes. I am trying to gently impart to my loved ones my feeling that life is only worth fighting for if you are able to live with yourself after the fight. That some lines should not be crossed in an effort to survive. A "spiritual death" can be an even greater price to pay than a life IMHO.


This time we are in, however difficult, is simply another time. It is another experience in a long line of experiences. I keep feeling as if i am watching it unfold from a sort of distance.

I will look into the book you recommended. Thank you.


:hug:

[lutherj]

4. Your comments are very thoughtful and honest and moving. I also have

children, and it takes a kind of simple faith to overcome the worries about their future. But I have realized that this is probably what most parents throughout history have faced, that life and the world in their times was far more unpredictable than the one we grew up in and took for granted.

[FedUpWithIt All]

7. I think a lot about the parents you mention.

Especially lately.

:hug:

[tama]

5. Spiritual death

"A "spiritual death" can be an even greater price to pay than a life IMHO."

I hear what you are saying and agree that mere survivalism (gun toating tin hoarding ;)) is not the answer but if and as also humans are very likely to be around here in the foreseeable future, even after the collapse, it is up to us, presently living, try to learn to live in better harmony with rest of the nature.

But as for "spiritual death", that expression has also other meanings beside the one meant; it often refers to "being reborn" after close counter with death - often quite physical - a life exchanging event. The psychological trauma of dealing with PO etc. is often a kind of spiritual death + rebirth. According to many spiritual/philosophical paths (e.g. Buddhism) we die and reborn each moment and liberation means letting go of chains of future and past and living (and dying) each moment fully.

Naturally, moments come and go in very different sizes, thought-size moments inside zeitgeist sized moments etc. etc.... :)

[FedUpWithIt All]

8. Perhaps "death of conscience" would have been a better fit.

[GliderGuider]

9. I understood what you meant

It's what is expressed in a Christian quote: "What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul?"

Similarly if I were to condemn another to almost-certain death through my action/nonaction simply because I was afraid of some risk to myself, I would suffer a "spiritual death".

[GliderGuider]

10. Peak Oil and Climate Change can be considered post-modern koans

They're conundrums with no solution in the rational mind. Every twist and turn the intellect takes in trying to resolve them runs into yet another dead end. Eventually the effort to find a solution exhausts the reason, and in the instant of surrender the problem dissolves.

[PufPuf23]

40. They become opportunities for the money changers

in a rotting pie and the money-changers continue to benefit from the rot that slows a humane and holistic evolution into the future and puts us all at great risk of catastrophe.

[GliderGuider]

41. They are many things to many people.

To each of us they present different faces, different challenges, different opportunities, different insights and lessons. Very cool changes indeed.

[lutherj]

3. C. G. Jung once made a comment on the panic that ensued after the Orson Wells radio broadcast

of War of the Worlds, that the panic was actually symptomatic of a much deeper and broader anxiety latent in society at the time. It was toward the end of the Depression, and the forces of war were gathering in Europe, and there was a widespread unease that many people, maybe even most, failed to consciously recognize. I’ve often thought that the same thing, but on a much bigger scale, is happening now. I look at the last eight years of Republican politics and “conservative” behavior, and taken collectively it looks like a classic textbook case of someone in radical denial. You have right wing talk show hosts who spew anger and insults and hatred into the airwaves; you have denial about climate change, dwindling natural resources, the economy; you have a radical swing to an authoritarian, rigid type of thinking; and you have all this inappropriate acting-out kind of behavior – starting stupid wars, torturing people, breaking laws, trashing the most important concepts in the constitution, financial corruption, and exposing a CIA agent working on the very issue that was supposedly the rationale for going to war in the first place. If you saw all this in a single individual they’d be arrested, hospitalized, medicated, and standing trial.

I agree, I think society is on the verge of a profound transformation. I think that’s what, ultimately, the Republicans are in denial about. They are clinging desperately to a system and a way of life and an identity that they, at some level, know is untenable.

John Michael Greer and James Howard Kunstler and Carolyn Baker are dead on. I’ve also been going through a profound transition over the last couple years, and particularly over the last few months. Recently I found myself pouring over Eliot’s poem The Wasteland, as well as King Lear (a play I’ve been obsessed about most of my life), and I realized that at one level King Lear is an expression of the Wasteland myth. It’s also an expression of a person who comes out of denial and goes through a profound transformation. Then it occurred to me that the Wasteland is a very accurate description of what we’re objectively facing in the world around us. The only way out of a Wasteland is through personal transformation.

There’s a quote from one of the Gnostic gospels: Bring forth that which is within you, and that which is within you will save you. Do not bring forth that which is within you, and that which is within you will destroy you.

[tama]

6. Not just Republicans

but the whole political elite at the top of the (crumbling) pyramid.

But that's self-evident and not worth to make a post, hopefully this is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n3n2Ox4Yfk

[lutherj]

15. Thanks for the link. That was appropos and enjoyable. It's nice to hear

Connery's voice with the full scottish brogue going.

[Delphinus]

17. Wow.

Just ... truly ... wow.

[XemaSab]

11. I thought the original War of the Worlds broadcast was in 1954

:shrug:

[GliderGuider]

12. Orson Welles' adaptation was broadcast in 1938

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptations_of_The_War_of_the_Worlds#Radio

[XemaSab]

16. Ah ok

:thumbsup:

[GliderGuider]

13. The Gospel of Thomas

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/thomas.html

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

"If those who lead you say to you, 'look, the Kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds will get there first. If they say 'it's in the ocean,' then the fish will get there first. But the Kingdom of God is within you and outside of you. Once you come to know yourselves, you will become known. And you will know that it is you who are the children of the living father."

The disciples say to Jesus, "Tell us, what do you want us to do? How shall we pray? What shall we eat? How shall we fast?" In this gospel, this Jesus does not answer. He says, "Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate, for everything is known before heaven." Now this answer throws you and me upon ourselves.... Here Jesus, in effect, turns one toward oneself, and that is really one of the themes of the Gospel of Thomas, that you must go in a sort of a spiritual quest of your own to discover who you are, and to discover really that you are the child of God just like Jesus.

This Gospel seems to present Jesus as a Buddha. Needless to say, that perspective appeals greatly :-)

[lutherj]

14. That's pretty amazing. I've only seen the part that I quoted, not the whole

piece. The whole thing seems to go exactly to the heart of what we're talking about. Too bad, it appears that the best gospels failed to make it into the canon.

[Delphinus]

18. I've thought that myself many times.

I read the Gnostic Gospels back in the late 80s and it was a transformational time for me. The Gospel of Thomas was one of my favorites and I love discussing the Gnostic Gospels with others. Some find it way too metaphysical for their liking - which must be exactly why I resonate with so much of them.

[tama]

23. Isn't it wonderfull

that so many forgotten and lost Gnostic scriptures were found just relatively recently, 1945 in Nag Hammadi, Egypt.

For more, see:
http://www.gnosis.org/library.html

[PufPuf23]

42. Elaine Pagels has written a number of scholarly books on

the gnostic Gospels, one specific to the Gospel of Thomas (that is quite personal about her own faith)

[XemaSab]

19. Here's my philosophical take on it:

We're all part of the great circle. Everything that is born will die, and everything that dies creates life for something else.

Studying soils, geology, climatology, biology, chemistry, physics, math... virtually every discipline... this becomes clear. Potassium washes from the leaves of the trees back into the soil, only to be reabsorbed by the roots of the trees. Plants push out new growth in the spring, then in the fall they reabsorb essential nutrients back into themselves, shed their leaves, and enrich their own soil. My dogs and I exist in a sort of symbiosis with the houseplants, where they enrich our air and we enrich their air. Carbon is a perfect little element that forms myriad compounds, and it's so integral to our lives that there's a whole major branch of chemistry devoted to it. The dead body of a large creature such as a deer feeds insects, which feed little flycatchers. Mountains rise out of nowhere, and erode back into the sea.

My take tends to be a little more Taoist than Buddhist, I suppose. We live in a very balanced, orderly world, even if we can't see the order sometimes.

Thinking that living things are the major parts of the order is a mistake, as is thinking that humans are apart from the order. Just 'cause we can't see the end doesn't mean that there isn't a logical progression towards that end that we're all a part of.

Things change; we live in a dynamic world. I imagine the folks at the end of the last ice age thinking the world was coming to an end. For them, it was. Simple things like rainfall patterns were no longer predictable, animals changed their behaviors or went extinct... for that way of life it was a catastrophe. For our way of life, climate change may be a catastrophe.

I think the canoe is 100% in the canyon here, and there's nothing we can do. The roller coaster has started to climb, the ship has left the port. We're committed to the ride.

Changing our sources of energy at this point will not tame the rapids, but it may help us get out of the canyon with our civilization intact. We could all wind up living in the woods eating acorns and hunting deer with bows, but if we really push on new energy sources we might just stay in our houses, keep the lights and air conditioning on, and not go mad.

I am comforted in knowing that all living things, from elephants to butterflies to Andean condors, survived previous climate catastrophes. Survival in the face of catastrophe is built into all of us.

[GliderGuider]

20. Very, very nice.

Thanks for sharing. :thumbsup:

[XemaSab]

21. Thanks for starting this thread.

:pals:

[Delphinus]

24. Since you bring up the condor,

I found this yesterday (coincidently from one of Carolyn Baker's emails):
The Eagle and the Condor, from the Pachamama Alliance
http://www.pachamama.org/content/view/16/21/

[GliderGuider]

25. And since you bring up the Pachamama alliance

They are behind the "Awakening the Dreamer" symposiums, the only organized effort I've found that promote the idea of a spiritual response to the converging crisis. I'm taking their facilitator training in April so I can present the symposiums myself. Here's my article about my first experience with their material: Changing the Dream.

[Delphinus]

27. Ooh, how wonderful.

I've also read the Transition Handbook and was trying to get something started in the city in which I live. It's not been flowing, so perhaps there's a message in that for me. Perhaps the transformation that you're speaking of is what I need to pursue. Much to feel into with this.

Good luck with following through - I've a feeling you'll be a great facilitator!

Oh, and I have Paul Hawken's book right now - it's next (after I finish When Technology Fails) on my reading list.

[tama]

28. My problem with Carolyn Baker

is that she still seems to be solidly hypnotized by the most powerfull drug today - money.

But that's just me. If some-one is in the book selling and lecture selling business, fine, that's guru business and I don't trust those types. My strings are easy to pull, publish with statements like this and I'm sold :):
"My teaching, if that is the word you want to use, has no copyright. You are free to reproduce, distribute, interpret, misinterpret, distort, garble, do what you like, even claim authorship, without my consent or the permission of anybody."
http://www.well.com/user/jct/

[GliderGuider]

29. Well, UG was a true original.

I don't charge anything for my stuff, but I'm still too ego-attached to relinquish authorship. Although come to think of it, I'd be delighted if someone else claimed ownership of some of my earlier writing...

[excess_3]

22. c'mon, Industrial Civilization has the same (cyclical) problems...

c'mon, Industrial Civilization has the same (cyclical) problems
it always had, overproduction and/or a drop in
aggregate demand.


to understand the current situation, follow these links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1837
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1857

[GliderGuider]

26. Keep whistling...

Humans are special! Aren't we lucky the rules of the universe don't apply to us?

[HamdenRice]

30. "the rules of the universe don't apply to us"-No, they don't

At least not if you mean the rules of food supply and reproduction that apply to other species.

No other species has as much capacity to change the environment and produce goods to satisfy its needs.

No other species has consciously modified its reproductive behavior to fit resource availability. No other species has come to the threshhold of voluntary replacement birth rate and zero populations growth.

You might want to look into actual demographic studies rather than the baying of the doomsayers.

[GliderGuider]

31. The sun is always shining in RiceWorld™

Good for you Hamden, keep sweeping away those gloomy clouds.

[HamdenRice]

32. Here's a yes/no question:

Are humans, with our birth control, declining populations, and demographic projections of global population plateau and decline, in exactly the same position as other species?

Yes or no?

[GliderGuider]

35. Yes.

Now what?

You believe that the factors you quoted are evidence for human exceptionalism, I believe that the idea of human exceptionalism is an illusion born from the sense of separation that was the Faustian price for the self-awareness made possible by our neocortex.

You appear to think human exceptionalism is self-evident, I think it's an illusion. What evidence is ever going to bridge that divide, given that for any fact to become evidence it first has to pass through the value-imputing filters of our worldviews?

I decline to play monkey to your organ-grinder.

[HamdenRice]

36. So you live in a counter-factual universe

So, we're basically subject to the same ecological forces as foxes that eat rabbits, and rabbits that eat grass and the feedbacks thereof?

Okey-dokey

That is all.

[tama]

37. What makes you think otherwise?

That human civilization is not restricted by the ecological forces according to which those with whom whe share this planet live and die?

What has made you THAT kind of god?

[HamdenRice]

39. Birth control. Agriculture. Environmental science. Kyoto protocols. Restored ozone.

Agro-forestry. Satellite imaging. United Nations. Peasant wisdom. Indigenous peoples' use of the sacred to conserve resources. Consciousness. Science. Language. The two hundred year record of the failure of Malthusianism as applied to humans.

But hey, if you think we're bound in exactly the same kind of dynamic as foxes, rabbits and grass, enjoy your right wing, deterministic, apocalyptic fantasies.

[cali]

33. I find dystopic fantasists fascinating

sure, it's possible that they're right. And sooner or later they'll almost inevitably be, but there track record historically has been rather poor. Hamden makes some actual points with actual facts. You, unable or unwilling to address them, simply throw out a meaningless quip.

The sun definitely is always shining in my world, but I do know something about "end-time" thinking, both of the secular variety and the traditionally religious flavor.

[GliderGuider]

34. Hamden and I have gone around this bush a number of times.

I don't feel anything would be accomplished by plowing that ground one more time. Just as I won't argue "end-time thinking" with you. You have your opinion, I have mine, and no amount of Internet arguing is likely to change them. If you really want to see what the fuss is about on my side of the fence, all you have to do is read the books by Charles Eisenstein (http://www.ascentofhumanity.com">The Ascent of Humanity) and Baker.

[tama]

38. "dystopic fantasists"

It would seem that dystopia is what we are living in and getting used to more and more depressing updates of this dystopia.