Disinvesting from the World Nightmare

On waking up when the dream gets dark

Photo by Linus Sandvide on Unsplash

Dear Living Dark reader,

Here’s a preliminary, provisional thesis that came to me this morning after I had sat quietly in something like meditation for half an hour and then started to read a couple of books (Peter Brown’s The Yoga of Radiant Presence and Joseph Jaworski’s Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership, for those who like to know such things):

Among the infinitude of potential configurations of the experiential field, not to mention the concomitant infinitude of its possible interpretations, the current configuration of what we call its political, social, and cultural aspects helpfully teaches or reinforces that, ultimately and absolutely speaking,

• there is no such thing as “progress,” and

• security, salvation, truth, or any final “perfect” order of things is not to be found within any of these appearances—that is, within the arena or theater of people, places, circumstances, ideas, relationships, conflicts and resolutions, cultures, societies, nations, continents, planets, galaxies, or even time and space.

Said differently: When everything appears to be going to hell, and when people everywhere, on all conceivable sides, are either bemoaning it, proffering plans to salvage or repair it, trying to escape it, or all of the above, this can be seen and received as a useful reminder to disinvest our spiritual eggs from the basket of the world and its hallucinatory offer to serve as the ground or locus of what we’re ultimately seeking. Unpleasant and even nightmarish configurations of appearance can jostle or jar us to self-remembrance and to question the very assumption that there is an “us,” or rather an “I,” to whom such a “world” appears. This can reveal or remind us that security isn’t in the appearance, peace isn’t in the appearance, and likewise truth, liberation, or any other final quality or condition that we might desire.

When the whole movie or dream blows up into seeming chaos and wrecks what we were fervently hoping was our progress toward some final beneficent outcome on a personal or societal level, the whispered wisdom from an infinitely wise and kind voice—which happens to be our own—is: What in the world were you thinking, anyway? Why would you seek those things in a phantasm to begin with? Turn around.

In a cosmic, or rather extra-cosmic, act of Self-help, such unpleasant conditions roll around regularly in the projected cycles of time, space, and history. Or rather, for many persons and populations, such difficult conditions are never absent. It’s just that sometimes discrete sets of them converge into a collective convulsion. These are moments of great opportunity if we wish to recognize and receive them as such.

Of course, it’s the same opportunity that’s always available under any apparent conditions, pleasant or otherwise.

Warm regards,

Wellspring update:

Textual corrections are essentially finished. The cover is fully designed. Front and back matter (preface, introduction, bibliography, index, acknowledgments, author bio) are all finished and added. A complete ARC (Advance Reader Copy) is now available and is being judiciously shared around. Uploads to relevant publishing services are in process. Everything is fully on track for publication on December 15. Preorders will become available in mid-November. Stay tuned.

The full cover spread.