I felt a lot of anxiety reading this piece. I feel a lot of anxiety all the time, actually. Especially around our nakedly in-progress civilizational collapse.
Because of my upbringing, I tend to identify with villains, so I took your essay to be directed at me. The message I received is that I’m entitled. It’s my shadow that is responsible for the irreversible catastrophe we’re living through.
My instinct is to be defensive and dismissive, if I’m honest. Instead I’m going to try to actually feel the feelings.
Checking in with my body. I say “it is my fault my species is doomed. Because I think I’m special, the oceans are hot tubs, I have to learn several new names for severe weather events per season, and more species are going extinct every day than I am really able to conceptualize.”
The first thing that happens is that I get a blast of chilly prickles around my orbital bones. It’s a feeling that makes me want to hide my eyes with my hand, like that classic Picard meme. I think it’s probably shame.
Then I feel icy prickles on my scalp. This one I know to be dread.
Then I feel a dark heaviness in my heart. Despair. Like a fist sized black hole implosion.
I want to apologize for destroying the world. I did the best I could, I think. Even if it wasn’t very good.
I want to apologize for trying to like myself. For thinking I’m special. (I think that’s the real light that casts the shadow of entitlement—it’s rarely a polar opposite in my opinion. More like a positive and negative reframe). I want to apologize for not examining for so long that the things I was doing to feel like I’m worthy of love were things that made profits for the powerful and poisoned the planet.
Whew what a long comment. What’s your point, Geoffe??
I’m not sure, honestly. Sorry for rambling.
Hopefully I at least alchemized a little shadow my actually feeling those feelings.
I am very sorry my post evoked those feelings, Geoffe. That was not my intention. I am speaking directly to myself in the post. I think it's a predicament of our time, that we are all already complicit no matter how hard we try. And a first step is to acknowledge it, but not in order to blame, but to think about how we might do it differently.
I definitely wasn’t trying to guilt trip you with the feefees. No need to apologize.
At this point, I feel like the only service I can offer the planet is to fully feel the pain created by this collapse.
I’m having trouble remembering how woo we get around here, but if the purpose of incarnating is to collect experience and burn off karma, we really have to face, unflinchingly, the experience of the pain that is caused by our karmic complicity in disaster.
Turning away, bottling it up, or numbing out—in my estimation—deprive the soul field of the lesson it sent us here to learn.
I felt a lot of anxiety reading this piece. I feel a lot of anxiety all the time, actually. Especially around our nakedly in-progress civilizational collapse.
Because of my upbringing, I tend to identify with villains, so I took your essay to be directed at me. The message I received is that I’m entitled. It’s my shadow that is responsible for the irreversible catastrophe we’re living through.
My instinct is to be defensive and dismissive, if I’m honest. Instead I’m going to try to actually feel the feelings.
Checking in with my body. I say “it is my fault my species is doomed. Because I think I’m special, the oceans are hot tubs, I have to learn several new names for severe weather events per season, and more species are going extinct every day than I am really able to conceptualize.”
The first thing that happens is that I get a blast of chilly prickles around my orbital bones. It’s a feeling that makes me want to hide my eyes with my hand, like that classic Picard meme. I think it’s probably shame.
Then I feel icy prickles on my scalp. This one I know to be dread.
Then I feel a dark heaviness in my heart. Despair. Like a fist sized black hole implosion.
I want to apologize for destroying the world. I did the best I could, I think. Even if it wasn’t very good.
I want to apologize for trying to like myself. For thinking I’m special. (I think that’s the real light that casts the shadow of entitlement—it’s rarely a polar opposite in my opinion. More like a positive and negative reframe). I want to apologize for not examining for so long that the things I was doing to feel like I’m worthy of love were things that made profits for the powerful and poisoned the planet.
Whew what a long comment. What’s your point, Geoffe??
I’m not sure, honestly. Sorry for rambling.
Hopefully I at least alchemized a little shadow my actually feeling those feelings.
I am very sorry my post evoked those feelings, Geoffe. That was not my intention. I am speaking directly to myself in the post. I think it's a predicament of our time, that we are all already complicit no matter how hard we try. And a first step is to acknowledge it, but not in order to blame, but to think about how we might do it differently.
I definitely wasn’t trying to guilt trip you with the feefees. No need to apologize.
At this point, I feel like the only service I can offer the planet is to fully feel the pain created by this collapse.
I’m having trouble remembering how woo we get around here, but if the purpose of incarnating is to collect experience and burn off karma, we really have to face, unflinchingly, the experience of the pain that is caused by our karmic complicity in disaster.
Turning away, bottling it up, or numbing out—in my estimation—deprive the soul field of the lesson it sent us here to learn.