Tag: emergence

Chaos, Complexity and Emergence I

Everyone knows that one of the primary imperatives of life (at all levels) is to increase security, reduce threats and reduce unpredictability. Our early upbringing, our education and all the adult experience that follows is largely devoted to these objectives. If there’s one thing that motivates us, it’s to avoid chaos. Whether it’s the appearance of threats, insecurity, unexpected obstacles, digression, and breakdown, whether it’s interruption of our plan of the day or being diverted from our life-course — we hate chaos. Every time events start spinning out of control, which is always a possibility, we are reminded of how easily we become attached to the expectation of smooth and unimpeded execution of our plans. We are also quite familiar with the choices and the behaviors we find most natural and comforting.  These are the moments when we feel conscious and connected.

Despite all our efforts, chaos and disorder are guaranteed parts of life. We know that if we avoid such turbulence, we can reduce suffering. We spend a great deal of time either attempting to control the appearance of or devising ways of responding to chaos. Because we know our control is limited, that strategy becomes part of our lifetime project of self-improvement, a recurring meditation on how we meet impermanence and loss.

Just because we may find ourselves in the middle of chaos, we don’t have to be chaos. But no matter what we do, we are cruising down the river of predictability toward the waterfalls of unpredictability throughout life. There is much that reminds us that nothing in life is guaranteed. And yet, no matter our past, our education, our general comfort in life, chaos seems never to be very far away. That’s not such bad news. Trungpa Rinpoche called chaos very good news.

Chaos theory and what we call chaos in our lives may be two different things. Chaos theory says ordered nonlinear processes produce outcomes which are not directly determined by prior events. Causality is unpredictable. This is true at the micro scale of the individual, or the macro scale of the planetary or the universe level. It is also true at the cellular, atomic, and even the quantum level of phenomena. It says that the smallest changes, events that may be far beneath our direct awareness (or detection) in any system can produce huge changes later. The classic illustration of this principle is the butterfly flapping its wings in Argentina causing a tornado in Texas three weeks later (Edward Lorenz, 1963).  That’s the nature of chaos. Moreover, the difficulty in predicting the future is that we don’t know which events determine the outcomes we are most interested in.

Chaos theory is the science of surprises, of the nonlinear and the unpredictable. It teaches us to expect the unexpected. While traditional science deals with supposedly predictable phenomena like gravity, electricity, or chemical reactions, Chaos [and Complexity] Theory deal with nonlinear things that are effectively impossible to predict or control, like turbulence, weather, the stock market, or brain states.—Fractal Foundation

So really, an event that appears to have a direct and identifiable cause may be entirely beyond our capacity to prevent because its root cause is much smaller or much older than what appears before us in the moment. Our efforts to control events cannot take all these hidden ‘causes’ into account and are therefore practically useless. Since chaos theory primarily looks at small-scale systems with a small number of variables, like what happens when a rubber ball is shot against a wall or when a hinged pendulum swings, the pattern of resulting events may seem to lend a predictability to them. In this sense, determinism, the predictability of future events, is also a feature of chaos. Investigations of chaos examine the zones of predictability and randomness in the behavior of such small systems.

Complexity

Complexity theory is concerned with larger systems with many, including unknown, variables. Complex systems are dynamic in the sense that there is likely to be feedback between subunits. As demonstrated by chaos theory, small changes in a dynamic system, such as when you force your way up the down escalator in Macys on December 24, can have larger (and unpredictable) consequences (fisticuffs?)—illustrating the relationship between a small change and the larger outcome.

Examining and predicting events in larger social systems becomes far more complicated because there are so many more variables operating. Most importantly, complexity theory examines the self-organizing nature of ordered nonlinear processes, which is to say, there is a constant expression of intrinsic intelligence, adapting to internal and external influences to achieve equilibrium at a higher order of complexity. Hence, events are unpredictable.

Social systems made of many subunits undergoing a unique evolution are both complex and dynamic. They are deterministic in some sense because some of the underlying systems operate in generally predictable ways, such as human physiology or photosynthesis. Without any perturbations of their operation, evolution might even take a predictable course. But environmental perturbations are occurring all the time, so clutching for predictability is an attempt to reduce a complex unpredictable system to a more deterministic (predictable) system. This is a denial of the intrinsic properties of complex systems to respond to changing conditions and thus (to a degree) determine their own future.

The unique evolutionary path of any individual subunit of a social system follows the constant and unpredictable influence of ‘external’ events, large and small. The evolution of physiology, brain function, and even the physical boundaries (of cells or the skin) of any individual are always under reformation because the variables influencing that system and the automatic decisions made by any sub-systems of that individual are also always adapting and reforming. The complexity of situational and long-term patterns of response render predictability under most circumstances impossible. That’s a good thing because it means that system is not a machine. It means the diversity of adaptation is not limited by rigid rules. In such a case, the adaptive capacity of the larger system is enhanced.

For the complex, unpredictable nonlinear composite system we call a human, chaos is the unscientific name we might use when uncertainty becomes unmanageable. Circumstances impinging on our survival are going beyond the existing database of adaptive capacities created and embedded over a lifetime. Whatever our dominant patterns of decision-making may be, our secure handholds are lost. We are not in control. There is no default stabilizing act. Immediate adaptation using all our intelligence is required to determine a path forward that appears to restore order. We call this resilience. But such decisions are not guaranteed to work. Adaptation to such instability necessarily becomes a continuous, rapid, ongoing process of trial, error, learning and integration. How successful we are at adaptation is determined by the rewards that follow, unless we already have some record of successful adaptation supported by previous actions. But in every instance of unpredicted unpredictability, past performance is no guarantee of future results.

We are less comfortable with uncertainty and tend not to view the unexpected as an unforeseen opportunity. So, we develop strategies to support our preferred version of reality, reducing the probability of unanticipated events disrupting our plans or expectations. At the same time, trying to improve what is by setting an objective of creating what is not yet is also a complicating factor in the flow of decisions based on the best data we can verify. The deeply embedded social imperative that says we are on a continuous and lifelong trajectory of improvement (a micro version of the macro growth imperative) establishes a pre-existing bias in the way we interpret events. With such a bias, events may appear to be facilitating or blocking our pre-determined objective. The appearance of such randomness in a system is why we give the name chaos to unexpected or unexplained events.

Emergence

Complex systems are very different [from] the systems studied in Chaos Theory.  They contain constituent parts that interact with and adapt to each other over time.  Perhaps the most important feature of complex systems, which is a key differentiator from chaotic systems, is the concept of emergence. Emergence “breaks” the idea of determinism because it means the outcome of some interaction can be inherently unpredictable.  In large systems, macro features often emerge that cannot be traced back to any event or agent.

Nature is a complex system. There are a virtually infinite number of complex subsystems nested within the whole. Nature’s response to the evolutionary challenge of continuous adaptation to environmental stress is to reorganize itself at a higher level of complexity, thereby transcending the immediate condition and expressing the intelligence gained from exposure to those conditions. Emergence is the unpredictable flow of such self-organizing events arising from the ongoing synthesis of predictable interactions at all levels of the natural world. Humans are included in that process, constantly becoming our own versions of emergence. Each adjusted level of organization transcends and includes the previous state. When a flock of birds settled in a tree are suddenly alerted to danger, that all birds will take flight may be predictable. But how the alert is detected and transmitted, which birds lead, which direction they go and how the flock organizes in flight are all subject to ongoing refinement.

The intrinsic nature of emergence is a spontaneous self-organizing interactive expression of intrinsic intelligence. Its most elemental stirrings may not be conscious, but there is no superseding intelligence, no memory, no sense of past or future, no sense of ‘other’ in its application. What we see at all scales of life are creative responses arising from creation knowing itself, acting as itself because it cannot do otherwise. It is the most intimate character of life, a constant flow of resilience, independent of rationality, beyond any specific identifiable cause. Emergence is a spontaneous, natural creative phenomenon. We may identify it in any number of situations involving living entities of all types, from the hot crushing pressures of deep ocean trenches to the rarified atmospheres of icy peaks. Life exhibits all manner of adaptive strategies. But we also empirically understand that unpredictability is inherent to all of it. We may imagine or even sense that whatever we call ‘emergence’ among our fellow humans is a phenomenon beyond reckoning, beyond comprehending, until sometime after the fact. We expend mental energy, emotional or psychic energy responding to the incomprehensible or to gain insight into the ineffable.

Greg Fisher elaborates the meaning of emergence this way: Physics or chemistry can determine the properties of a single hydrogen or oxygen molecule, but the properties of water cannot be predicted from that knowledge because water is more than the sum of its parts. All living complex systems are more than the sum of their parts. That’s why emergence is even possible. In most cases, ‘reasoning upward’ (predicting the properties of water knowing only the properties of its components) is not possible. Water organizes itself under radically different circumstances in ways that are not predictable merely from the knowledge of its component molecules. As water is central to how all species organize themselves and express adaptive capacities, its presence (or absence) has highly variable long-term effects on social organization and culture as well.

All living systems must adapt to changing conditions of life, from system-level to subsystems, to the microscopic and even the molecular or the atomic level. For many, those adaptations occur at a rate slower than the pace of change. But regardless of the scale, living systems possess a natural ‘computational capacity,’ a self-reflective capacity to absorb environmental information and determine what is the most advantageous response. In the case of climate change, we may run any number of computational simulations, but the ability of science to predict how humans will adapt to the empirical impacts of climate change or the long-term ingestion of pollutants or micro-toxicities remains rather shallow. Those changes are only now appearing on a mass scale, haunting us with their monstrous portent.

Stay tuned for part II of this post.

Emergence

Whatever else it might mean, emergence implies the most intimate character of life, a constant unfolding of arising and disappearing, creation and destruction, beyond rationality, transcending origins, judgment, intent or outcome. Tuning our view and receptive experience to this level of phenomena requires us to slow down, measuring and matching its pace, to align more intimately with an effervescent ebb and flow, to the way things really are, adjusting consciousness to the most elemental nature of nature.

That true nature, if we were to look more closely into it, is an ongoing process of life and death, each releasing into its opposite, arising and ceasing, appearing and disappearing. Nothing is fixed. Everything is less encumbered, simultaneously more connected and never still.

Emergence, at the innermost sanctuary of biological essence, lies at the neurochemical ground of being, in the transition of form to formlessness and vice versa, the nexus of conception and realization. It is the most delicate and easily injured wrapping of our existence, the pia mater, the ‘tender mother’ holding everything. It is the truest and deepest home of connection, compassion and forgiveness, where we are always alone, never lonely and in full communion with all life. In the most subtle recess where true belonging resides, the absolute belonging of no body and no-self, we give ourselves up to Inter-Being with no agenda, no grasping, no past and no future.

Unceasing change is the driving and dominant principle of emergence. Radical Impermanence is the Law. This is also a core principle of Dzogchen Buddhism. There is no true substance to anything, nor, ultimately, is there anything other than materiality. At this level, there are no values to be assigned to phenomena. Everything is simultaneously real and also apparition, including, of course, you and me in every moment.

Beneath the continuous and tenuous dynamic of birth and death is a deeper reality of unceasing stillness in which nothing is gained or lost. Everything is apparent and also continuously shifting. Any possible source or cause is beyond definition, beyond being teased out for identification or examination. There is no linearity, no progression nor any apparent reason, only an equality of opposites bound together in unceasing change. Only a self-propelled consciousness exists, a spontaneous internal intelligence based on impossibly complex systems processing information directly and immediately derived from ongoing performance, having no goal, no direction and no imperative other than to continue.

Right and wrong are less certain in this realm as the unceasing momentum of emergence cannot be definitively assigned to any single event. In fact, in absolute terms, all phenomena exist beyond any meaningful polarity and are regarded as equal. This is very difficult to grasp rationally, but every value we place on thought and action, all form, is entirely projection.  Hovering at this nexus of appearance and apparition gives rise to a quality of freedom, which can only be defined as compassionate intent, the ethical and moral engine for all action. To withdraw from the imperative of compassionate intent is to violate the mandate of life and to descend into meaninglessness, nihilism.

In the realm of emergence, nothing is containable, especially imagining a  fixed presence, such as a Self, expressing a principle of radical impermanence. Paradoxically, emergence becomes a sanctuary of birth and decay, of rapid and unending change, where safety is upended, where all reification goes to die.

At the emergent level of life, we belong to ourselves, to each other and to something vastly greater, beyond imagination. We do not belong to each other as mere ripples on the surface of life. That is the extent of the limited realm of psychology. The reason we can do to the earth and to each other what we do on a routine basis is because we do not fully belong to ourselves, and are not sufficiently mindful of how we belong to each other. What the totality of earth systems are doing now, because they cannot do otherwise, is reflect back to us what we have lost.

We are made and remade in realms of spirit and myth. In emergence, we realize our mutual dependence. In healing the rifts that separate us, we become more available to a greater sphere of belonging. If we dwelt only on the surface, we would miss the vast ocean sustaining all and to which all belongs. The internal healing process overcoming fragmentation, the dominance of subjectivity to the exclusion of full communion, is crucial to our maturation into eco-beings, cosmic citizens.

As for somatic experience itself, we are more than feelings and sensations. We are earth bodies, even though we may default to conceptual reflection–because that’s what (western) humans do. That’s what distinguishes humans from the rest of the non-human world. But this comes at great cost. The transition under way is not strictly about feelings or heart opening. It is about erotic embodiment, re-inhabiting our earth bodies, recovering the vocabulary for different ways of knowing, communicating, assessing and restoring the languages for relationship and community.

The somatic experience of emergence is happening so fast now we can’t process all of it in our bodies. Trauma, at its heart, is elementally expressed as opposing muscular action within the human system, the repression of expression contained by opposing neuromuscular conditions, the conflicting influence of opposing hormones, neurotransmitters at the fundamental level of physical mediation of incoming stimuli: the autonomic nervous system, the lizard brain. Over time, unaddressed, the sensitivity of the system increases, rendering us increasingly reactive to triggering stimuli, with all the attending memory and feelings. In emergent mind, the material of conflict becomes more accessible; the resolution of this conflict is a return to a lower baseline of sensitivity.

We can all sense the acceleration of change, making the processing of deliverance from social and historical and environmental trauma fast upon us more difficult. The depth of multiple traumas such as racism, privilege, complicity and the extractive economy are opening into full awareness. The violence at the center of the Growth Imperative, the colonization of peoples and our very capacity for critical thought are ever more apparent. The tools and pathways redefining our relationships, many though there are, are still under construction.

The vestiges of feeling ourselves as solitary are tenacious. Isolation and alienation are routine features of post-modern life. In our narrow self-oriented explorations, most of us carry memories of exclusion or marginalization. These are primal wounds of feeling excluded and separate, striking deeply into the psyche, particularly in these unsteady times.

Beneath that we cling to our identities, as if such a thing as a separate self exists in any ultimate sense. We each have varying skillsets for seeking and creating connection, the fields of intimacy meeting our needs. But due to our continued immaturity in relation to the world, many do not routinely experience union at all. Our attachment to a separate self is a fundamental source of suffering. Loneliness, the deepest wound of all, is dependent on this very principle.

One could spend all day detailing the minutiae of the typical persistently depressive longing for belonging, the pandemic of modern alienation, dislocation and dissociation from the natural world, the creeping and equally persistent solastalgia arising with the daily degradation of our common home. The effect is deep, subtle, pervasive and increasingly corrosive. All of which makes it increasingly important to decelerate and find refuge in the pace of emergence.

But when one drops beneath the conventional, asking again what we belong to or how we experience belonging, the easy definitions dissolve. The boundaries disappear and the reality of belonging simultaneously on multiple levels takes shape. While belonging may imply gaining something, part of the greater process requires we continuously acknowledge loss. It has been said that if we do not grieve properly, then that which we have lost was never truly alive. So we grieve. We grieve for what was alive in us, with us and for us. If we grieve properly, then we must also praise what is alive right now.

Resolving trauma, integrating feeling and restoring fully expressive neuromuscular function restores our pure creative impulse: eros. Emergence is the raw, un-nameable realm in which we contact this primal principle, where possibility expands beyond measure, where we meet the timeless wisdom of compassionate intent.

The Super-Imagery of Wildness

Normal consciousness of form, time, body, the world of interaction, is all cracked. That is, there are cracks in these and every world, where something breaks through the certainty of belief in the self. The crack is there; we don’t always notice. The light is not blaring into one’s mental space like a high-volume commercial on the screen of your life; but more subtly, in the after-images of that world, into which leaks the light beyond the curtain of coming attractions, where the bacteria of non-conceptual reality live, quietly digesting the superstructure of cerebral certainty.

Mortality is the universe remaking itself. The mistakes and corrections we commit daily, the slights we commit, the differences between self-centered decisions and purely selfish decisions are recorded in the tabernacles of the infinite. The wiring constantly undergoing revision is the earth-brain interacting with itself, assessing, revising and instantaneously forming the next iteration, the next imperative, the natural shifting turbulent void where information interacts with action, dancing toward another version of our ongoing attempts to define the indefinable.

Getting underneath the automaticity of describing what’s happening with a partner, another human being, in terms of behavior down into how the ‘other’s’ behavior is a mirror of our own attitudes and behavior is a difficult and revealing process. Taking responsibility. It may seem that my sense of responsibility for events that occur with a partner is thin. It might be impossible to discern how to interact with it. If so, that’s perfectly OK and right. Events work their strange magic in unexpected ways.

Recent messages may contain too much information- or not enough of the sort we can use, i.e. interact with. Dropping all the pictures and expectations and needs and projections of what any relationship is beyond the time of co-habitation is difficult enough. It is, to a degree, because we have already been hooked into thinking in terms of beginnings and endings. Stepping instead into an ever-changing unruly river that is constantly overflowing its banks does finally invite a genuine loving friendship to reveal itself. But owning all of it as a reflection of one’s personal truth is another level of difficult.

It’s a freight train, relationship. Especially with anyone who’s along for more than the ride—who’s looking at the scenery, examining the accommodations, the company, the angle of the sun, every emotional nuance. I have constructed a self-contained life. It’s a defense and a skill and necessary and chosen and a last resort for feeling inadequate, not quite permitting someone else to effect me. Which is to say, I will at times fall out of interaction into solitary. And ultimately, as we age, one never knows what events may arise that will throw the entire façade of independence down hard, into dust.

Yet regardless of how much experience one might have in negotiating the terms of relationship, being able to describe one’s flaws and needs and preferences accurately and still permit the influence, needs and preferences of another to soften you out of your private structure, your personal sanctuary, all this while everything is also constantly changing, that’s the freight train of being.

Sometimes I just want to get off. Either I am weak, exhausted, resigned, depleted or temporarily inadequate, though setting any ultimate limit, deciding when to get off the freight train remains a total crapshoot. That’s because interaction never ceases.

The wildness quality, the unpredictability that destroys the human-centered view, is created not only by ego-driven self-centered reactivity, but by the value-free random nature of change. The antidote, the other truth of reality is the One-ness level, a release into infinite interactivity, in which I can sincerely hold a much larger and inclusive view of our personal circumstances, in which I could see myself as a mere servant prepared to adjust to whatever comes, respond in whatever way might be helpful and let go of a specific view of how this is supposed to unfold.

Along with that One-ness view, I see how embedded I am in ego-driven reactivity so much of the time, how far I am sometimes from an open-hearted, loving perspective that holds us in a positive light with all of our histories, wounds, pain, abilities and commitments; invoking the mercy of the unseen into every moment. In other words, I do at times seek refuge in limited interactivity.

Yes, I am attached to the world of form. At the very least, I am dependable in that way. Yet, alas, not quite so dependable in terms of being able to make deliberate unequivocal commitments. I feel incomplete in this way, as if I am supposed to be able to do that. Yet I am also ambivalent about accepting the other Truth, balancing my need for independence with the desire to interact in the living truth of aloneness we all share. Seeing myself this way is not merely an escape from love. I’m just being realistic. And compassionate, by the way. I am riddled with paradox–which also limits my capacity for unwavering commitment to the One-ness view. The territory yet to be traveled is revealed.

In the dense and aged stand of bamboo outside my window, there are beginnings and endings happening in every moment. There is decline, death and decay always amidst the new growth, the maturation and fruition of maturity. Other creatures find refuge in the deep safety of its inner reaches; they live and die as well. It provides shade, mulch to the earth, stability to the soil and becomes a soundscape as the breezes blow through it. In its steadfast silence, in its interactive turmoil, it is also a muse of love.

 

 

Hope, Faith & Radical Presence

What are we called to do in this time of collapse? Work harder? Think faster? Compartmentalize and multitask better?

No. None of the above. In fact, we are called to do the opposite. According to Yoruba wisdom, we are called to slow down. We are called to settle into the present, to soften and loosen our grip on whoever we imagine we are, or were, wherein we assimilate the world as it is, changing so rapidly as it is, and watch our responses, our default habits and self-serving diversions happening in the microseconds between apprehension and response.

Among other things, we discover our hyper-dependency on time. We discover the difference between its relative and absolute nature. We also discover hope is a diversion from this softening.

Time is a conception arising within our limited view of reality. Normally, we are not capable of another view. When we interrupt that dependency, a different possibility opens and we are reintroduced to timeless matters: connection, curiosity, gratitude, courage, love and grief. We discover what we seek has never been gone. It is always at hand, everywhere we look.

What enters our space in liminal moments we share with another person—or even in a group? Resonance, a timeless quality, gently arrests us. What arises in the space  between vision and execution as a quiet presence is Inter-Being. This space is filled with knowledge, yet is neither yours nor mine. We become present in such knowledge–or it becomes present in us.

There is no such thing as a unit of time in any absolute sense. Since that is so, we could even define “presence” as something more like absence. The absolute nature of time is a vastly spacious awareness no longer held in the tight grip of someone who ‘hopes’; one so expansive that even “embodiment” implies a limitation, so permeable that emotional states and the ambient phenomena of group process no longer impede the flow of connection.

Temporarily at least, one is so completely ‘here’ that time stands still. At the same time, the ego has been rendered quiescent, if only for a moment. Since there is no future, there is nothing to hope for. One may even enter a non-conceptual state in which there is only feeling, a seamless realm of knowing. There is nothing to grasp here, nothing to cling to and no one to cling to it.

From the relative (dualistic) view in which subject and object exist, we imagine events follow an order, stretched along a continuum without beginning or end. In the timeless space, discrete events exist without order, arising in random fashion, crowding each other out, competing for ‘space’ and attention, arising and disappearing in a chaotic flow.

This competition appears as sense perception and feeling, which we evaluate and then choose according to our preferences and motivations. The awakened state, the timeless space we occupy when we downshift to an imperceptible crawl is not just another unconventional and unfamiliar form of time in which ‘events’ occur.

Awakened mind lives outside of time. It permeates the construction we call time yet is not time-bound. Then again, neither is it other than time. The true nature of emergence (consciousness and biology) is the opposite of our habitual hyperactivity. It is a tsunami of perpetual stillness, an infinite evenness subsuming everything, a continuous tidal wave of creative interdependent unfolding that has no beginning, no end, no boundaries, no center and no limits.

In this realm the very idea of a separate self is an inexplicable accident; in which we realize our movement and intention within a unique place in the web of life also holds all others, informs and is informed by all others. We are so completely and fully at home there is nothing left to ‘do.’

In the context of collapse, hope has no place in such presence. It simply cannot be. It is foreign, as it is entirely incompatible with the pervasive dynamic evenness of radical presence in a timeless state. Ultimately, hope relies on causal relationships in a universe without cause. It is a condition we put on our commitment to the present, as if we need a future reward as a prerequisite for undertaking the task at hand. If we hope long enough or hard enough for a particular outcome, perhaps something will happen. Perhaps not. But ultimately, in hope we seek our own continued well-being. In that sense, hope keeps us stuck in denial of our unfolding relationship with grief. It allows us to run away from our direct experience. Hope does nothing to interrupt Business As Usual.

As Stephen Jenkinson says, “Hope is what allows us to continue [what we’re doing]; instead of stopping, we are waiting to be stopped.” If that ever happens, it will be too late. Unfortunately, such thinking exists in a narrow linearity that conflates intention with faith. Being neither intention nor faith, hope lies between the possible and the impossible, between what we know is within and what we imagine is beyond our capacity.

Vaclav Havel once remarked, “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that it’s worth doing regardless of how it comes out.” That certainty is faith, knowing we are doing the right thing now and being committed to what matters most, not regardless of some future outcome, but because we already know what the long-term outcome is likely to be. Hope becomes a defense against despair.

Of course we cannot control the future.  But faith is an absolute belief in our agency in the present. Hope lies at the opposite pole of fear and despair, a duality in which we oscillate from one extreme to the other. Without hope, there can be no despair. By creating and clinging to hope, we create space for fear.

Evaluating our decisions based on an obligation to future generations, even seven generations hence, as is customary among some indigenous communities, does not require a reliance on hope. We do what we know is right. A nebulous disempowering wish about the future dies a quiet death as we rise to our obligations and clarify our responsibilities in the moment.

Again, Stephen Jenkinson:

The question is not ‘Are we going to fail?’ The question is how. The question is What shall be the manner of our inability to care for what was entrusted to us? The question is What is our manner of failing?……

Grief requires us to know the times we are in. The great enemy of grief is hope. Hope is a four-letter word for people unwilling to know things for what they are. Our time requires us to be hope-free, to burn through the false choice of being hopeful or hopeless. These are two sides of the same con-job. Grief is required to proceed.

Reverse engineering the next hundred years to determine how we must act now puts hope in a different light. We may not be able to shift the course of the entire human  enterprise, but at least we have taken a long view and fully exercised our capacities in the service of Inter-Being.

We immerse our selves in our immediate experience, in the feeling level of our responses to our senses, without regard for their source. Such immersion attains without labeling experience, becoming neither attracted nor repulsed by any of it, without analyzing, meditating upon it or turning away.

In other words, without turning it into an object of interest or adding it to a collection of memories, neither categorizing, discarding,…..nor even believing it. In so doing, we are both immersed and freed simultaneously, watching from a vast view, yet also noticing, feeling and burning in the fires of the moment. Our principle acts must be to reduce suffering, which only becomes clear as we allow ourselves to suffer. Rumi said, “In suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.” There is no place for hope in this equation.

All of this may appear to be highly idealistic because mainstream thought and the pursuit of happiness is a relatively closed orbit, exerting immense inertia on moments of awakening that come from a full descent onto our grief, lest that awakening threaten the grip of consensus (relative) reality. And yes, regardless of how the expression of presence may appear, since it must co-exist with material reality, it is nevertheless a condition worthy of cultivation.

No matter what arises, even if heaven and earth change places, there is a bare state of relaxed openness [available], without any underlying basis. Without any reference point–nebulous, ephemeral, and evanescent–this is the mode of a lunatic, free from the duality of hope and fear.

—Chöying Dzod (pt. IX) Longchenpa

Let’s all become lunatics! Our resilient future depends on it.