A literal interpretation of meta-crisis suggests a combination of interdependent factors combining to create stress, most likely leading to, if we do nothing, unmanageable breakdowns. Complexity reaches an ungovernable state, suddenly and unpredictably reverting to a lower level. The various forms of stress reflected in crisis leave considerable leeway concerning its identity, scale, and impact. But one thing is likely: meta infers a superseding principle on a planetary scale.
The current crisis is an internal one, referring to the collective mind, combining cognitive, philosophical, and spiritual factors having to do with the human relationship with the world; namely, our objectification of it. We have placed ourselves at a distance. We have created conditions categorizing the world as other, permitting us to reject others, to reject waste, to carve up the commons, to create registries of property and to accept the ongoing externalized violence committed in the name of progress.
To look at the crisis within returns us to the world and restores us to its indivisibility. To imagine the planet as more than a visualization, we enter a sensing, intuitive, feeling level intra-action with planetary life beyond the human. Connecting at this scale is the nature of the transition we are in. We are feeling ourselves between worlds now. We’ve not left the old world behind, nor do we see more than the outlines of a new world emerging. But we surely sense ourselves in transition. We are in a liminal, fragile, some might even say treacherous, terrain. What are we to do? A Nigerian proverb declares, “To find our way, we must first become lost.” We cannot embark on any real journey with certainty about where we will arrive, especially when we are wandering between worlds. In some sense, arrival itself is a quaint notion, serviceable at times, but in the broadest sense, not so much. Perhaps we will never arrive. The case of humanity encountering profoundly disturbing and threatening conditions is also not far removed from either the transition of birth, or from receiving a terminal medical diagnosis. Our attention is immediately drawn inward. Shall we live or shall we die? What must die for us to live?
The feelings arising in this circumstance mostly align with what we expect. Feeling our way into an advancing radical condition elicits a flood of anticipation, fear, disorientation, helplessness, confusion, denial and even despair. It’s dawning on us that our lifeboat, the Ark of earth, has been cast adrift. We are tempest-tossed in the sea of the unconscious, reflexively reaching for guidance, for solutions. Ironically, accepting such an analysis produces an inexhaustible supply of abstractions as we grasp for meaning, much of which merely reifies the dilemma. It may be the way our minds work, meta-upon-meta, but abstractions do not explain the heart of the matter and distract us from exploring our innate capacities and a full view of our condition. So, we may resist the first impulse to grasp for medicine. Instead, becoming lost in not-knowing may be the most appropriate first response.
With an initial grasp of the nondual view, we can examine our responses, addressing systemic issues with a measure of confidence and vision. We may realize that while we are on the Ark, we should understand that we arethe Ark, we builtthe Ark. We have made the storm! Humanity is the flood!! There are plenty of signs of breakdown already before even touching the question of flawed human thinking. We can look to Nicholas Lattanzio, Terry Patten, Zak Stein or Daniel Schmachtenberger for deeper context. Many refer to it as a proliferation of rising existential threats. And since the term meta-crisis cannot be reduced to any single one of those threats, it is only by viewing them as interdependent that we arrive at the meta-view. While any of these perspectives may reference a seamless reality, wholeness, the essential definition of nonduality is too often stripped of spirituality with the notable exception of Steve March.
A Developmental Model for Meeting the Meta-Crisis
Steve March is a professional coach and founder of the Alethia Project. He takes a developmental view to coaching and applies it to humanity’s status, which he sees reflected in his model. According to that framework, we are already on a path of realizing deeper states of being and releasing ourselves from the destructive trajectory we are on.
He outlines a hierarchy of four cognitive states with the deepest being nondual awareness. It’s immediately apparent that overlaying this hierarchy upon the meta-crisis also reveals parallels with the common description of experiencing critical illness. We can readily interpret the planetary process as an immersion in a critical illness diagnosis reaching existential proportions.
March’s four categories represent distinct stages of attention and capacity both at a personal and a collective (or cultural) level. They are indicators of ways of thinking and ontological limitations on our grasp of our circumstances. These seem to be so clear and relevant as indicators of background awareness. We sense their potential as a means of intervention, as ways of expanding beyond the limits of category to a deeper comprehension of our condition: wholistic awareness, or nonduality.
March’s Levels of Attention:
· Depth of Parts: Everything is experienced as separate. Things are nameable, things are structure. Very attached to identity. Assumption that there’s nothing deeper. The inner experience is of parts of self that feel different things, but none of them define us – there’s plenty of room to be more than any single state. Parts work can be very effective in opening more space for hidden sub-personalities to express themselves and become known, to be discharged, helping us become more available for access and participation in a wider field of emotional response.
· Depth of Process: With a more fluid view of world, everything, including identity, is in constant flux. Internally we connect with a flow of experience. We have a somatic sense that is meaningful, rich, complex – so multifaceted that it’s not easily put into language. The parts level might correspond loosely to a left-brain function. It represents the common rationality of seeing the world as a collection of objects other than oneself, as well as seeing the self as a collection of parts. Even so, gaining objectivity about the Process level, the identity and behavior of those parts can be quite liberating, leading to greater integration of the whole self, more freedom to feel.
· Depth of Presence/Presence and Absence: In this depth we land in innate wholeness and completeness, that not only can we love but we’re made of love or compassion or relatedness, resilience, creativity, and intuition. This is a realm of innate virtues or qualities that may be acquired or trained on a (superficial) self-improvement path. The deeper path is that we now understand these things are intrinsic. They are what compose us. They can be unfolded, but not diminished or taken away. This level can be viewed as an integration of brain functions, a transcendence of both left and right brain, neither becoming dominant.
· Depth of Nonduality: At this depth there is no separation. This is the level of source, of oneness. At this level we fully relax into the body, the mystery, without a need for anything to happen. This is the realm of mystical unity and ultimate freedom. The world, experience, are experienced as uninterrupted subject, held in unwavering absolute trust and confidence.
Thinking further about these spheres of contemplation and action, we can glimpse a few of the questions humanity is exploring just now to address the crisis/illness:
· Self-improvement vs self-unfolding: must we become better people, improved people? Or must we become our authentic selves? Is the crisis or disease process revealing a need to improve how we implement known strategies for addressing dysfunction or that we need an entirely new strategy?
· Stability vs instability: The meta-crisis is destabilizing. Yet it also calls into question whether there has ever been stability. What is it we are chasing as we pursue stability? A false security? What do we see reflected in our responses to crisis/illness? Can the strategy be modified if it doesn’t seem to be working? Maybe we must redefine stability to become more resilient.
· Simplicity vs complexity: How do we define these terms? Where do we find balance between them? How do we come down in a measured way off the mountain of complexity into the plains of simplicity?
· Control vs surrender: If remaining in relationship is a primary value, how does that influence our responses to crisis/illness? What are we surrendering to?
· Centralized vs decentralized power: Where does our personal or collective agency lie? Are we deluded about what real agency is? What sustains and legitimizes power? How does power become transformational?
We can see the potential to develop a flow of perpetual inquiry to focus attention on these polarities and to explore deeper levels of imagination as either ego or eros drive our responses to the meta-crisis and in the critical illness space. Most people are thinking/experiencing the present moment in relation to crisis at March’s elementary Parts level, with fear, confusion, and reactivity. We are solution-oriented in the most reductive ways, seeking management models without much inquiry into how our view of reality has gotten us here. It’s disembodied.
The Process level of experience, by focusing on somatic responses, a feeling level flow of responses over time introduces a deeper level of inquiry. Seeing ourselves in an ongoing nonlinear, layered experience is also freeing, but it’s still not fully stepping into wholeness. The Presence level is a much more realized way of being that recognizes intrinsic qualities implied and activated by adversity. We can readily see a flow back and forth between these two initial levels in a dynamic process. The character of this balance between parts level and the process level mirrors, according to March, the larger cultural impasse.
Ultimately, developing nondual awareness is the deepest integration of experience—which, ironically, transitions into an escape from ‘experience’ altogether, entering a supreme unity with all, uncontrived, unaffected, living in trust, confidence, and benevolence. This model need not be formalized, although it may become a personal guide to discerning one’s patterns and responses to the shifting circumstances of an advancing illness/crisis, to become more mindful of the opportunities to elevate one’s awareness to a more inclusive, wholistic view.
Despite the psychological nature of March’s model, there can be no doubt that our drift is a spiritual crisis. Others may have differing root beliefs about the dysfunctions driving it all, of overcoming separation, and technical solutions are so appealing. March’s developmental approach addresses the transformational potential of nonduality. The nondual view is personal, spiritual, and collective, transcending and including the dominant cognitive frames of our time.
Spontaneous Presence 