7)Ask the question: “Is there something we are not talking about and if so what are the assumptions we hold that keep us from talking about it?”
With every passing day it becomes clearer to us that as civilization continues to self-destruct, we need to discern how we prefer to spend our time and energy, and with whom. What we least want to do is mimic the culture of empire by limiting our focus to logistics, thereby losing sight of our deep humanity. We know that we cannot survive alone. Even if we have learned every physical survival skill imaginable, we still need our fellow human earthlings in order to navigate collapse.
Moreover, if I and my companions in collapse cannot deeply listen to each other and speak our truths with compassion, even if we survive, it will be within an internally vacuous emotional domain that would render survival nothing less than absurd.
A William Stafford poem “A Ritual To Be Read To Each Other” illumines the subject at hand:
If you don’t know the kind of person I am?and I don’t know the kind of person you are,
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,?a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood?storming out to play through the broken dyke.
And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,?but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all crueltyto know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:though we could fool each other, we should consider--lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe--should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
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