I realize the future now doesn’t seem to make sense, since the future is what happens after the present. Another way of thinking about time comes from the title of the book “How Soon is Now?” by Daniel Pinchbeck.

One reason I’ve been thinking about time relates to the recent claim that we only have twelve years to make absolutely massive cuts to our greenhouse gas emissions. If not, it is said, we will have reached the point where runaway burning of Mother Earth will be unstoppable. A growing number of us think we are already past that point. The intention was to try to stimulate action to reduce fossil fuel emissions, but it appears instead to give many people the false impression that we have 12 years until we really need to worry about climate change.

But along with the material, industrial aspects of this transition, we will need to undergo a shift in our values, beliefs and habits. In other words, we need to change our technical and industrial base, our political and economic system, as well as our consciousness and our culture – our way of relating to the world. I know this is no small feat, but it is possible. It could occur through a tipping point, where a small group discovers a new way of being that quickly spreads out to encompass the whole. And it could happen fast.

Pinchbeck, Daniel. How Soon is Now (p. 20). Watkins Media. Kindle Edition.

Of course there already is a small group that continues to live in the way Pinchbeck and many others are suggesting is needed now. Indigenous people the world over have a sacred bond with Mother Earth and have always lived within the ecological boundaries that ensure resources used are replenished. That is why I wanted to be part of the First Nation-Farmer Climate Unity March and am so blessed to have made friendships during those days of walking together.

Now we are working on how to implement an indigenous led Green New Deal.

After a lifetime of studying about our environment, and trying, and failing, to convince people of the urgent need for change, I finally realized logic and scientific data would not create change. What is needed is a change of heart, an attention to spiritual guidance. I’ve posted the following several times already, but it applies here.

What has risen to the surface at Standing Rock is a physical/spiritual movement. Learn how to quiet your mind. To find the silent receptive space to receive guidance. To learn to adapt and follow the pull of synchronicity to guide you to where you will find your greatest support and strength.
What I have found in my time praying in the indigenous earth based ways, is that it’s not about putting your hands together and talking to god…. It’s about quieting and connecting with the baseline of creation, of nature. Tuning into the frequency and vibration of the natural world, the nature spirits. The beings and entities that have been in existence, for all of existence, the examples and realities of sustainability and harmony.
It’s about becoming receptive to these things. Being open and flowing with them. The spirit guides us, but we have to make ourselves receptive to feel, sense, and respond to this guidance.

Joshua Taflinger

Well, things seem to have taken an unexpected turn this morning. I had intended to write more about James Allen’s essay. After yesterday’s discussion about community, the next is about how to build what is needed for the future.

I therefore take my task to be in finding the ways of living that preserve dignity throughout collapse and, more importantly, to create a lineage of ideas, traditions, rituals and institutions that might be useful after it. To that end, my job is to be attuned to the existing system, to work within it to the extent that I must, but to also work in parallel to it, experimenting in building the relationships, tools and structures that may be of use in reestablishing a good life when the centre begins to give way.

Pontoon Archipelago or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Collapse. By James Allen, Medium, May 24, 2019