Go Deeper

In the everyday lives of ordinary people like us, the deep meaning behind these crazy days is to force us to grow, to evolve to become more aligned with what we know in our hearts to be true.

If the universe is in fact made of love, then the state of the world is the mess we had to have. The biodiversity crisis, Ukraine, Gaza, inequality, chemical toxicity, industrial medicine, industrial food, climate change, far-right fascists and their far-left woke comrades, to name just a notable few of our shared challenges. It’s the inevitable wake-up call for a species growing through our collective puberty, still aspiring to prove we are immortal and all-knowing, and only now noticing that if we keep going as we are, we will likely kill us all… or at best, trash the biosphere and make living a clean, healthy life hard as hell for all future generations.

Our collective mess can be seen as a loving context in the way a wise parent might allow the lofty dreams of a cocky teenager to follow their natural course over a cliff edge of fanciful thinking. When unsustainable practices inevitably crash and burn (as they are always fated to do), young folk everywhere see first-hand that choices have consequences, and that we are actually responsible for the future we encounter. Experience after all seems to be the only way we ever truly learn anything.

Like the cocky teenager, our clever little species has been at risk before and found a way to survive by growing up just enough just in time (notice we haven’t yet nuked the world). Chances are we will find a way out of this mess that does not doom our species to an untimely extinction. Hope has a place, the kind that is not blind but grounded and active and willing to risk all to fulfill its promise.

We need hope, because a few of our problems mess with the entire planet. If biodiversity crashes (from climate change, or over-exploitation of the natural world), so will our food production, and immune systems, and quite likely our capacity to procreate. That level of problem can take generations and possibly millennia to recover. If we fuck it up, our generation will be the eternal dumb teenager that didn’t grow up quick enough before burning his own house down. Let’s not do that. More fun to save the world.

To grow up from being a consumer of mass media who eats industrial food and takes industrial medicine, we start by learning to go deeper into our relationship with our own body and the world that supports it to survive and thrive, then go deeper into how to live well in sustainable ways.

Natural selection will dictate that those who make the transition will at least survive and maybe thrive, while the remainder … well, who knows? Hard to imagine being confronted by a world where you have to be responsible for your own well-being and you don’t know how. Can’t be good.

Intuition suggests to me that humanity will probably not go extinct, but we will likely reduce in number to a level that our wounded ecosystem can support to survive. By this logic, the quicker we make the transition, the more of Nature we will preserve, the more of us will be there to enjoy it. As for the rest of us, like with the petulant teenager, those who dig in and refuse to change will likely be the first to suffer the consequences of their choices. Everyone is free and ultimately obliged by natural forces to live in the consequences of your free choices.

It is self-evident that a fundamental aspect of all durable human ventures is sustainability. Without sustainability, whatever process is in motion is, by definition, unsustainable. There is so much about our modern world that is unsustainable that it boggles the mind with only a minute or two of serious thought.

If you’re new to this kind of thinking, here’s a few stand-outs… land clearing and the ever-growing loss of biodiversity (our health depends on it); continuing to manufacture chemicals that don’t break down and are forever toxic; fresh water depletion from overuse and pollution; the use of pharmaceutical drugs and surgery to fix medical problems without taking meaningful action about the causes like ultra-processed food with low nutritional value, dirty air laden with chemicals, low levels of exercise, and a built world oozing pesticides and other chemicals designed to kill life.

Sustainability is not a lifestyle choice, but a survival tactic.

Living in sustainable ways is not hard to do, but it can be tricky to see. In the life I have come from and in the world around me today, I see layers and layers of half-truths and self-righteous certainties that seduce us all to believe that our unsustainable ways are unavoidable, and not really so bad. Believe the narrative and you stay a part of the problem. To be part of the solution, you have to look and see for yourself what makes sense and is true for you.

All we need to change to a sustainable lifestyle model is already available and close at hand, but until we go deeper, it remains hidden behind the shiny surfaces of convenience, security and reassuring certainties. The folks selling the stories are experts in their craft, master manipulators with Ph.D’s in psychology and social sciences, working tirelessly and with infinite budgets to keep the wheels of profitability turning.

To see through the barrage of distractions, we need a reason to try. Often it’s because we get sicker, or become poorer, or more isolated, or less happy for what seem like really good reasons. At rock bottom, when there is only one way to go is when hope and faith do their magic.

In lucid moments like these, you and me and everyone knows what we have to do. When our face is in a furnace of hardship though, it’s more difficult to be clear. That’s why the posters on your wall or the knick-knacks on your bookshelf are good places to put reminders of what inspires you. The artform is in how you use them.

Little Buddha statues are not just there to collect dust. When seen deeply in some lucid moment, Buddha is a reminder of a state of being that is, by its nature, both peaceful and content. Some piss-ant trinket from a junk shop in Sydney can induce that state within us if we go deeply enough into it with our awareness.

Likewise a dreamcatcher is a repository for the vision you have of the life you want, a vision that is best consciously remembered every time you see that spidery thing. At first it takes time. We have to stop and stare at it while we remember, but with practice it becomes like remembering your name and where you live and what you love to do.

The activity of overlaying the material object of the dreamcatcher with your mental-emotional vision of the life you want is the activity of manifesting that vision in your lived reality. When you become the story you tell yourself about this amazing life you want, you’ll be able to look around and see that it’s already happening.

The more we remember the deeper and more lasting the change. When you see and know in your bones that the process of manifesting works in precisely that way, the ‘work’ of remembering is no work at all. It’s a pleasure to stop and remember the story of who we are becoming, someone you really like who is perhaps kind, loving, sustainable and an inspiration to all the most important people in your world.

The work of becoming awesome can be made much more pleasurable with a dose of childlike enthusiasm that wants to explore and learn, that gets a little excited by the abundance and beauty that is close at hand. A child unburdened by heavy tales of global drama, without regret or fear, still open to being with the world as it is, unencumbered by mental delusions. No discipline needed. No struggle. No blockages to clear or barriers to overcome or battles to be waged and won… just a fresh innocence that sees clearly what is right before them in that moment.

Being in the moment is a powerful and beautiful thing, however the activity of change is a process that unfolds in time, a coherent vision coming into being in some future moment that will be a result of past clarity and on-going effort. To sustain anything in time, we need an idea that is durable and strong enough to survive a few headwinds and the inevitable storm. A good idea can change the world. Your vision of your good life can sure as hell change your world.

The spark that lights the fire of change is crackling away inside the treasure chest of your values, the sacred stories you have about what is most important in your life. Stories like … protect your children or find true love or travel to India or run a marathon or write a book or start a company or get rich… or perhaps, make steady progress towards awakening. Whatever you truly value leads you to those fabled activities that you cannot not do. To be you, you just gotta give it your best shot.

The difference between a value and an obsession is that values lead you towards a better version of you, while obsessions do the opposite. The key to discerning the two is whether the goal or experience supports you to sustain progress towards your life’s vision, or distracts you from it.

There’s that sustainability thing again. It’s a core principle of the universe. What is not sustainable falls apart, but only 100% of the time. What is sustainable thrives and flourishes the longer it has life. The choice to make everything you do sustainable is one helluva of a powerful place to start the hero’s journey you came here to live.

Choose whatever reason best suits your worldview and unique life situation… decide to get manic about sustainable living because you are concerned for your own future and you want to sustain the pleasures you enjoy from your chosen lifestyle. Make the effort because you care about the world all the children will inherit and couldn’t bear the thought of dying knowing that you never bothered to try to make it a healthy one. Get passionate because you love the miracles of nature, the taste of fresh food and the feel of clean air. Surrender to it because your soul will not let you do nothing to protect all those you love.

Do it for the love of all life, especially yours, your family, your beloved, your friends and all the living things that depend on you to thrive. If you’re serious about living your best life, what better place to start than by filling your consciousness with a passion to make all your dreams sustainable, regardless of what happens in the world? Get excited about making the change then follow the juice to wherever that leads.

The whole drama might be a set-up by the universe to force us to grow up and get real about who you are and what you have to do to live the life you came here to live. As I alluded to earlier, it’s the same setup that teenagers face when forced to confront the consequences of their self-interested choices. Not always pretty but always necessary if they are to become healthy adults who take responsibility for their lives.

One thing is for sure. Whatever you vision as your best possible life is a vision unique to you, and if you don’t do it, it won’t get done. The passion you have for a better life and a better world is the focus and the fuel that will drive you to become the person who can make that happen. That’s the way manifestation works, but you gotta commit with all you got. Give half and you get half. Give it all and you change your world.

If your thing is protecting nature or averting climate change catastrophe or stemming the tide of toxic chemicals entering our world, it is not usually helpful or pleasant to become an evangelist who lectures and polices the behaviour of others. If we are to claim the right to decide for ourselves what is true and retain our own integrity, we have to accept the right of others to make their own choices, even if we believe they might be dangerous to them (explored more in another post).

If you want people around you to change faster, become a more happy and resilient example of the benefits of being healthy and wholesome in how you live. The age of leading through authority and decree is fading fast, giving way to the more inspired practice of leading by example. As Ghandi said, be the change you want to see.

Whatever stands in the way of meaningful action about the destruction of the natural world (evident as biodiversity loss and toxic chemical overwhelm) is the defining challenge of our age, and if we don’t fix it, the collapse of the natural world will turn the Garden of Eden that we inherited into the toxic, dying wasteland of our legacy that will haunt future generations for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Welcome to the greatest show on Earth … the hero’s journey of your very own life, the most compelling and emotionally charged tale you will ever hear. We all share that same invitation. We always have, only in our particular day and age, the stakes are about as high as they get. Is it time to get seriously into it then?