When the Enemy is at the Gates
This is part two of a post from May of 2022. Read part one here.
I’ve spent much of my life fascinated and appalled by second world authoritarianism; with the way the destruction of economic liberty grinds people and cultures into gray shadows of former glory, clinging to the ragged remains of what used to be. Perhaps it is because the second world is the places where people built wealth and achieved some level of bourgeois comfort and social cohesion, and then saw it destroyed and debased by tyrannical forces of control, always in the name of false safety and phony justice.
Third world dictators don’t pretend very hard, or at least no one believes them. But the slide into second world status is often accepted willingly by people who don’t recognize the price to be paid.
I suppose I’ve looked for it around every corner, fearing it and aware of how close at our heels that wolf snaps and slavers.
Do people understand that right now, our great great great grandchildren’s (ad infinitum) futures have been mortgaged by tax claims against their earnings, and the only escape is the collapse of the dollar and the decline of the US, (which isn’t exactly a pleasing path to peace and prosperity)? I’m not hearing it.
Do people understand that if one shook down all the “1%” for everything they have, we’d each get a few hundred bucks once and then the world would basically descend into a dystopian battlefield as people scrabbled for what was left (if history of where this has been done is any indication)?
If things feel uncertain now, just imagine what it would be like to discover, as so many small business owners have, that the majority, or even a powerful minority, can just demand that you sacrifice everything you’ve worked for, all you’ve built for yourself and your family and your future, on basically a whim of fear? And then smear you with epithets for protesting?
“Celebrities spell out ‘we’re all in this together’ in yachts in Cayman”-the Babylon Bee nailed it.
Every single can of tomatoes on the shelf is an altar; a divine revelation of the human capacity for creativity. All real wealth is a manifestation of this trait made concrete. I want to fall on my face in gratitude every time I’m confronted with the bounty that all the humans of time immemorial, billions of them, living and dead, statistically all of them indifferent to my existence, have created for me.
They were not content to remain pelt-clad in damp caves, but struggled and strove for more; to see their young survive more winters, to feed their elders and infirm even in times of famine and strife, to trade, to plant, to build, to play.
To deliver unto me a can of tomatoes in Maine in April.
So when I go into the store, one microscopic point on the fractal of the ineffably complex and astounding web of human interaction over space and time, and the fabric is torn, I feel a great choking cry of fear and grief for the squandering of a sacred birthright.
I feel an existential loss. I feel a loss of things that will never be, for people who have not yet been born. I feel civilization on the brink, because it is ignorant of its responsibility. I weep for the venal and corrupt and self-aggrandizing pontificators, self-appointed masters of the universe in their banal evil, destroying themselves and bringing everyone else with them.
At least that’s what I perceive. I could be wrong. It could be that everyone really thinks they might die of COVID. It could be the feeling of steeping yourself in the energy of masked strangers walking around suspecting themselves and each other of being deadly Typhoid Marys.
But basically, it’s this deep surge of terror and it’s very, very in your face when your grocery store starts to look like whispers of Venezuela or Cuba.
Did I bring this on all of us with my fear? Did I invite this because I had to face it for myself?
“At least that’s what I perceive.” That’s the important line, isn’t it?
What’s happening is happening, regardless of the story I tell about it, but the story I tell about it is what determines how I navigate the experience.
Four years ago when I wrote this, I was in shock, grief, even, perhaps, denial, in the sense that I could feel we were already beyond the horizon, the known shore a memory forever, but I had not internalized that intellectually. Every day was a question of emotional survival, a Cold War of immense and immediate demands.
But now “the new normal” that the bleating parrots chatteringly were asserting is, in fact, the normal, the norm, the middle of the curve, and I can see with clear eyes. I can see what to do.
Tell the truth.
Always tell the truth.
If it looks like madness, if it feels like madness, if the crowds are lathered and aflame, trying to tell me that the absurd is sanity, and it feels impossible to overcome their massive inertia, I can always tell the truth.
Can I change what’s happening by doing so? Only for myself. Clearly, much of the world wishes to live in madness; who am I to tell them otherwise, even though they intend to drag me down with them. They have the numbers; they can certainly try.
But they can’t make me lie. I’m the only one who can commit that crime. The enemy may be at the gates, but I choose, with a lie, to let her in.
So expect the truth from me. I have no platitudes to offer.
But I have a sturdy vessel, and we can weather this storm.
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When I seek professional advice on how to present homeopathic practice and shamanic coaching out in the world, marketing coaches will ask me, “What is your client’s pain? And how do you fix it?” And the answer to that question, I really believe, is much deeper than “migraines, diarrhea, neuralgia.”
It’s “I want to understand why existence hurts so much sometimes. I want help to find a way to make sense of the senselessness in this pain. I want to catch a glimpse of freedom, and feel it in my body, and know that it’s my birthright, even if I lose the plot again and again and again.”
And everything, EVERYTHING, that I do in my practice, is towards that end. Pain is a gift and a portal, but damn, it’s brutal, and you don’t have to go it alone.
Click HERE for your FREE Embark on Healing call, if you’d like to learn more about my Navigating Your Healing Journey shamanic coaching program of homeopathy-driven healing, growth, and self-discovery, and how you can gain greater access to your intuition and true path. I am offering you the Irresistible Invitation to Surrender. Will you accept it?