Charles Eisenstein

(1/2) Surrender to dead materialism, or abandon materiality for an otherworldly realm of spirit? Today we have a way out of this dilemma...

Do not imagine that it will be the West that rescues humanity from the very civilization it has perpetrated. Our healing will come from the margins. How could it be otherwise, as the center falls apart?

How often have you felt like an alien in a world of people who don’t get it and don’t care? The irony is that nearly everyone feels that way, deep down.

Someone exiting a conventional worldview may feel alone in her rejection of it. New beliefs well up within her that she recognizes as ancient friends, intuitions from childhood. But without an articulation of them by someone else, those beliefs cannot stabilize.

Internal and external voices told us we were crazy, irresponsible, impractical, naive. We were like swimmers struggling through choppy seas, getting only an occasional desperate breath of air enough to allow us to keep swimming.

The silence, the stillness, the soil, the water, the body, the eyes, the voice, the song, birth, death, pain, loss. In all these places where we can find truth, what is really happening is that truth is finding us.

The sky starts where the ground ends; we need only look with different eyes to realize we are already there. Utopia is a collective shift of perception away.

That’s what a miracle is: not the intercession of an external divinity in worldly affairs that violates the laws of physics, but something that is impossible from within an old Story of the World and possible from a new one.

What do we really want? Is it to triumph over the bad guys and be the winners? Or is it to fundamentally change the system? You might think that these two goals may not be contradictory. I think they are.

Look at how consistently we frame any attempt to enact social or political change as a “fight,” a “struggle” or a “campaign.” All military metaphors. We speak of “mobilizing our allies” to exert political “pressure” in order to “force” our opponents to “surrender.”

In the old story, we overcome evil and leave our enemies in the dust, wailing and gnashing their teeth. No more. Everyone is coming along for this ride. In the new story, we understand that everyone left behind impoverishes the destination.

The Tao Te Ching says: “There is no greater misfortune than underestimating your enemy. Underestimating your enemy means thinking that he is evil. Thus you destroy your three treasures and become an enemy yourself” (verse 69, Mitchell translation).

Why does “cool” equal “good”? Why is it desirable to be cool in our emotions, to not feel very much, not care very much, not be in earnest about anything?

To aspire to be a “man of principle” is a kind of separation, part of the program of control. It attempts to override the gut, the instinct, and often the heart. How many atrocities in history have been justified on one or another principle?

When both sides of a controversy revel in the defeat and humiliation of the other side, in fact they are on the same side: the side of war.