Our Trauma Culture has spread across the globe with terrifying speed and ghastly efficiency. But the tide is turning and people of good heart in many nations are beginning to understand that what we need now is a move towards a 21st Century Initiation Culture. The language is often different, but at heart, this is where we need to go.
How do we Outgrow the death cult of Modernity – opening the doors to a future we’d be proud to leave to the generations yet unborn?
How can we find a way through the obfuscations and extractive values and downright lies of predatory capitalism. Through to authenticity, and integrity and finding language for how we can be who we really are, what our souls yearn to be. And that language is not always English.
Here is a meditation for the shortest night of the year – the time when the sun stands still.
It doesn’t have to be at the moment of the solstice, it’s the connection that counts, the marking of the day. And you don’t have to limit yourself to one pass through – please feel free to explore this more deeply than one single iteration.
As we head into the solstice- that moment when the sun stands still—whether you’re in the northern hemisphere where we have the longest day, or the southern, where it’s the longest night—this solstice feels like a moment of transformation.
Our world is more magical than we know – more than we can know. Increasing numbers of us are realising that the ‘citadel theory of mind’ where we see ourselves as isolated units within the boundaries of our own skulls is not how the world works. But if it isn’t, then how do we engage with the web of life and all that’s around it in ways that are respect, reciprocal and generative?
How do we shift our conversations – and our mindsets – to heal the gaping wounds in our culture?
We grow up thinking we want to be happy (or at least, not-sad). But happiness isn’t enough. What we need is wellbeing, and as Dr Mark Fabian quotes in the dedication to his book, Beyond Happy, “Wellbeing is about wholeness, not happiness, and wholeness is so much more demanding than happiness.’
We are in the midst of the Great Derangement (thank you Amitav Ghosh) – so what tools will help us shape a system that is actually fit for purpose? Who are our elders and what can they teach us? How do we learn to listen to our heart’s (and hearts’) desire and shape the communities of place, passion and purpose that will allow us to emerge into a different culture?
What does an education system look like that’s fit for the twenty-first century? Where we put self care, people care, earth care at the heart of what we do?
In these turbulent times, what values most strongly underpin our humanity and how can we nurture our relationships with all parts of ourselves, with ourselves and other people and with ourselves and the web of life?
How do we shed the shackles of modernity and step into a new set of stories that could help us grow into the fullness of our potential?