Mine to do

"Politics can't fix this."- Sen. Ben Sasse

The last two posts here have been focused on providing an overview of causes: The Perfect Storm, the Evolutionary Imperatives for our era. What do we do with this knowledge or maybe even understanding?

My first suggestion is simple: Stop looking for signs of hope in our culture and conduct, and (as Hugo The Dog points out) stop the doomscrolling. We’re not emerging from this because we finally figured out the uber conspiracy or because some great leader finally emerged. In the current struggle, there is only one leader deserving of focus: that’s the one you become.

This suggestion is not an easy “simple.” I catch myself wanting to get the latest from the Iran War, for instance, even though I “know” that a) I’m only going to get the Regime’s take, b) any “alternative take” arrives with questionable authenticity, and c) the sought-for information is personally un-actionable.

The Iran War is an urgency that needlessly occupies my precious attention. And as a wisdom teacher friend of mine is fond of saying, “where attention goes, energy flows.” So, not gonna do that, and will pull myself back from the brink if/when I do.

The current status quo is particularly thorny as a concept: this status has no “quo”, no place. We are living in a time of churning reality, as some seek to respond to the felt imperatives of evolutionary movement, and others seek to devolve, into a state they remember fondly and believe to be a more desirable environment. We pass one another, going in opposite directions, arguing about everything, especially the map we are trying to read, and whether it informs our journey. If Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is right, those who have a chance of surviving and thriving are are the ones who move into and through becoming.

These churning times require intention and attention that lead to loving presence. Any and all action we take, no matter how small, must proceed from that. It’s not easily done, but what evolutionary move for the human species would be?

Senator Ben Sasse, whose pancreatic cancer diagnosis informs us that he is dying soon, recently participated in a fascinating interview with his good friend Peter Robinson. During that heartfelt, confessional conversation, we hear the now-all-too-familiar refrain that we have gone astray from the values that have upheld our democratic republic in the past. Sasse points to a contemporary culture of greed, of intolerance and hatred, of economic and social isolation that has led to a USA that no longer accepts its place in the world, but insists on remaking the world in its own distorted understanding of the meaning of being human.

image courtesy Nano Banana

But.. how can I possibly correct that? I’m only one person who writes, and occasionally, does. Here’s where I have landed:

I start by setting my intention. For most of my life, I have not started there. If I began at all (as my family will attest), I began by paying attention. THEN I would set an intention to fix, adjust, or eliminate, based on my “acute” thought process. I now need to begin with intentionality, (and begin again with intentionality) until I can continue to my attention. I have 70+ years of experience. My past traumas and corresponding healings-in-progress sit on an accessible shelf, for immediate consultation. I’ve usually seen enough to know which intentions to set, adjust, and reset.

And yet:

My best learning comes from what I have yet to know. I have found that the unknown is more important than it is unsettling, but (I know my fellow elders will agree) it’s both.

Some big strategy, right? Intention and Attention? THAT’s how we get back on track?

Well, first of all, we’ve already jumped “the track.” If you don’t buy that, I’ll wait here while you consult world news and measure how much of that track is still passable for human beings.

We need to find another way to be human. We don’t need more equipment, we certainly don’t need to consult AI. It’s not like before, when we needed to walk on land with stubby legs, when swimming was all we knew.

It IS discovering how to use the equipment we ignored while we were busy thinking our way through everything, and using that cognitive process to make money, get and keep that career, and enable power. Here’s a short list of what we forget to use: the sensing equipment, the feeling equipment, the wondering equipment, the marveling equipment, the imagining equipment. All that and more is still sitting there, on the back shelf. At times, some of us haul out of one those or another for recreation, or to market some money-making project.

Now’s the time to get that neglected equipment to work for us, in the service of that marvelous and daunting vocation of human transformation. This is not a mass movement that one joins with a contribution and a membership card. There’s no slogan, no leader, no catch-phrased T-shirts or hats. There’s you and what you can do, what you will do, and what you must do. And— suddenly, there you are, with your intention and attention, doing what is yours to do.

In his book All In This Together, Jack Kornfield tells the story of the tree branch that finally broke under the snow. It took thousands of snowflakes, at first. Finally, it only took one. You and I are unlikely to be that one. But we can be one of the thousands that enable the breakthrough.

If Teilhard is right, Earth has a destination, an Omega point, where all converge.

I hope to meet you there.