4th Dimensional Rocket Ships Going Up

Anyone that's been paying attention to the fringes of the alternative press lately might be forgiven for suspecting that something BIG is attempting to go down geopolitically. Skyrocketing gas prices, Bush on a 2001-style summer vacation, China and Russia running war games, escalating drama in the Middle East -- no one should be surprised if things get very different in this country in the near future. Sadly, Home From Nowhere author James Howard Kunstler may be prescient as usual in his new book "The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century", as summarized here.

This, though, is no time to court dark visions nor panic and worry about biological survival. If you are reading this, you are fortunate enough to have something of an education and at least a smidgen of cultural/social/economic capital at your disposal, and at least a glimmer of metaphysical curiosity. Meaning: you are in some sort of position to help ease some of the suffering in people should the worst (an idea we need not extrapolate further upon at this time) occur.

What to do? First, establish a material platform, that is, put a small amount of energy into grounding yourself. Get some food. Second, develop a carrier, a means by which your presence in the noosphere may be felt by a larger number of people than in your local friend-cluster. Write a book, post some mp3s, slip stories into the word-of-mouth jetstream, whatever. Thirdly, get the juice. Sit calmly and abide, and observe, and bare witness. Practice sci-fi tonglen... transmute your dark visions into imagined/felt scenarios of human beings in positions of great tension and strife acting in a surprisingly worldcentric/compassionate manner. Rehearse miracles within the temple of You.

Each of these trajectories leads, of course, to the development of your rocket ship. Both "escape pod" (passive) and "stategic small vessel" (active), the rocket ship exists not in your backyard, nor on your roof but in your mind, in your chest, heart, and throat. As you meditate, perceive, or see through things, as you abide calmly and resist emotional explosions, as you see that all beings, from the biggest jock ass-holes in custom shirts talking on cell phones to the lowliest of reddish-brown roaches crushed to a slimey pulp in the bottom of a subway stairwell, are composed of the same spirit-matter nondual "stuff" that is not other than You, you are building this rocket ship.

And as you translate these insights into noospheric form, as you make art and writing and communication and music, you are building this rocket ship. And as you stand on this earth, walking slowly and attentively, picking up those who fall, being patient with those who bully, breathing in the suffering and breathing out the Lightness-of-Touch-HUMOR, you are building this rocket ship. But it is not a rocket ship of escape, far from it: it seeks to lift off, true, but it is also forever chained to this planet, and it will pull the planet with it.

Invisible, patient, powerful, high-tech: imagine it into existence with care, and get ready to fly when the time is appropriate....

[Relevant post from the archive: "Apolitical Times"]

Technorati Tags: Bush China Oil mysticism