Steve Morningthunder
The contraction of traditional fossil energy supplies I do not see as catastrophic, rather as a very fortuitous design in the Evolution of conscious being, much like the new world that was discovered with the Americas, only the other side of the pulse. Even if someday in the future we do unleash greater energies, the immediate challenge will be in the adaptation to the finitude of the earth, and it should build much needed character in the human species. Far worse would our evolution be if with the present hubris and disharmony more ample energies were to now become available.
Now, we are incapable of intelligently resolving so many hurdles, such as building a world where our energies are not diverted into the foolishness of armament and war against one another, such as removing from society those evils and inefficiencies which endure because of profit seeking, those which are now obvious as well as those which will only become appreciable after we have a cultural distance from our total immersion in the endeavor and acquiescence as to its sacredness.
Our ignorance is primarily that of the nature of Being and Becoming. We have turned away from an understanding of the universe that is approached through knowledge of the Self in our infatuation with the scientifically verifiable, and have thus closed the window on that which exists nearest to the Divine and at the visible peak of the evolutionary effort. We are urged to believe that manipulation of the material world is the end all of knowledge, and there is none other; we do not imagine that in better knowing the Self, therein reside hidden the greater knowledges that may one day enable us to encompass the stars, the powers of creation that mock the mightiest armies of man.
It is often said that we cannot solve our problems with the same consciousness that led to their becoming. The usage of money has in a natural outgrowth of its inherent characteristics, become the most formative factor in our consciousness, particularly in this primary battlefield of profit seeking, the U.S.—understanding consciousness as the ways of thinking and behavior that are impelled by the circumscribing realities of our economic, and thus social interactions. The focus upon self as ego has been strongly accentuated, and has served us well enough in drawing out this individualized dimension of potential being from the animal inconscient. But it is not the culmination of our potential evolution, nor does the faculty of reason represent our highest access to knowledge.
The building of a social interaction beyond the separating power of money would require the greatest leap of consciousness that we might now imagine, and seems hopelessly utopian. We cannot picture a world where money is not the medium between almost everything we do and seek, so has it come to be the foundation of our behavior. Its transcendence would necessitate distancing from the identification of self with our private properties and private wealths, from the self-image of our private vehicles: ultimately, the demise of governments and militaries based upon the power of taxation, and interest bearing economies dependant upon growth. It would necessitate a true globalization of consciousness, where the earth is shared and not owned, where the seeing of the Self as the many would replace the competitive threat of the other to the self as ego, where the far future of humankind is also ours. It would open the door to the comprehension of the world in terms of emergy or its successor, and the ecological harmonies that could potentially be evolved with such a comprehension, when upon a global scale and amplified by cybernetic interlinking.
I have no doubt that the Way exists, that the Divine will increasingly manifest through conscious being. What I cannot perceive is how difficult the learning will be: if we proceed as the Department of Energy projects, globally increasing oil exhaustion until the peak of production is brutally and suddenly imposed with a 7% annual decline thereafter, will we have adequately anticipated the peak by using the ample supply of fuel for creating a sustainable world or will we be largely surprised and stupid with new highways still being built for the presumed gasoline powered vehicles? We do not know when the peak will occur, but we do know that the momentum of our current reality is contrary to the sustainable. All the energy scenarios for the future become most dubious when they attempt to envision private vehicular transportation prevailing upon the globe, and few dare to contemplate the more energy efficient means of mass and human powered transportation as a direction to globally and unequivocally turn toward, so contrary to everything in this economy of exacerbated individualism and exponential growth.
While it is only through knowledge of Self that we can know the Will of God, a Will that can turn from within as well as from without against that which must change, we can be certain that it Wills for the sustainability of the human endeavor, for the entirety of conscious being with no nations or individuals lesser than another, and that privilege is merited only for as long as it serves the dynamics of the Manifestation.
This virtual community we share is but the faintest scent of the rose, unable to see the green foliage against the red red petals, feel the thorns, see the buds awaiting their time. Alone, I struggle to find the strength even to write these words.