It is quite normal to fear what one most desires. We desire to transcend the Story of the World that has come to enslave us, that indeed is killing the planet. We fear what the end of that story will bring: the demise of much that is familiar.Fear it or not, it is happening already.
Charles EisensteinSo much of our politics is stuck in patterns of response that aren't working. When student performance is declining in schools, we implement more controls, more testing, more "accountability," more rigor. We apply even more of those things, from security systems to control of students' behavior through pharmaceutical drugs. That's a situation in which doing is only making things worse. You may have to go through a phase of de-programming, letting go of old habits, coming to stillness, before you can even see what the pattern of action was, and what alternatives there might be.
Charles EisensteinEven if we profess to be non-judgmental, there's an inherent judgmentality and hierarchy in which the spiritual person, the conscious person, the mindful person, is more developed than the typical truck driver or waitress or heroin addict. This is a red flag, another problem built into the concept of spirituality. The truth is that every person you meet is in some way more developed than you are, and that the multiple modes of development that a human being can pursue require the whole of humanity to pursue. We're in this together. Enlightenment is a collective effort.
Charles EisensteinContemporaneous with the financial crisis we have an ecological crisis and a health crisis. They are intimately interlinked. We cannot convert much more of the earth into money, or much more of our health into money, before the basis of life itself is threatened.
Charles EisensteinI can't give a formula for how to spread joy, but I know that the source of the joy is one's own joy, and that that is not distinct from pleasure and fulfillment of desires. So I ask: What makes me feel alive? What is the expression of my inner wild? What would really feel good? What if what makes me feel alive leads me toward the deeper joys, which are found in generosity and service, in creating things that are beautiful to me? Maybe the world needs more of that. How many petroleum company executives are doing their work because it's beautiful to them? Not very many, I bet.
Charles Eisenstein