What Now?

For those who arrive at Stage 5 there is a real risk that depression will set in. After all, we’ve learned throughout our lives that our hope for tomorrow lies in our ability to solve problems today. When no amount of human cleverness appears able to solve our predicament the possibility of hope can vanish like a the light of a candle flame, to be replaced by the suffocating darkness of despair.

How people cope with despair is of course deeply personal, but it seems to me there are two general routes people take to reconcile themselves with the situation. These are not mutually exclusive, and most of us will operate out of some mix of the two. I identify them here as general tendencies, because people seem to be drawn more to one or the other. I call them the outer path and the inner path.

If one is inclined to choose the outer path, concerns about adaptation and local resilience move into the foreground, as exemplified by the Transition Network and Permaculture Movement. To those on the outer path, community-building and local sustainability initiatives will have great appeal. Organized party politics seems to be less attractive to people at this stage, however. Perhaps politics is seen as part of the problem, or perhaps it’s just seen as a waste of effort when the real action will take place at the local level.

If one is disinclined to choose the outer path either because of temperament or circumstance, the inner path offers its own set of attractions.

Choosing the inner path involves re-framing the whole thing in terms of consciousness, self-awareness and/or some form of transcendent perception. For someone on this path it is seen as an attempt to manifest Gandhi’s message, “Become the change you wish to see in the world,” on the most profoundly personal level. This message is similarly expressed in the ancient Hermetic saying, “As above, so below.” Or in plain language, “In order to heal the world, first begin by healing yourself.”

However, the inner path does not imply a “retreat into religion”. Most of the people I’ve met who have chosen an inner path have as little use for traditional religion as their counterparts on the outer path have for traditional politics. Organized religion is usually seen as part of the predicament rather than a valid response to it. Those who have arrived at this point have no interest in hiding from or easing the painful truth, rather they wish to create a coherent personal context for it. Personal spirituality of one sort or another often works for this, but organized religion rarely does.

It’s worth mentioning that there is also the possibility of a serious personal difficulty at this point. If someone cannot choose an outer path for whatever reasons, and is also resistant to the idea of inner growth or spirituality as a response the the crisis of an entire planet, then they are truly in a bind. There are few other doorways out of this depth of despair. If one remains stuck here for an extended period of time, life can begin to seem awfully bleak, and violence against either the world or oneself may begin to seem like a reasonable option. Please keep a watchful eye on your own progress, and if you encounter someone else who may be in this state, please offer them a supportive ear.

From my observations, each successive stage contains roughly a tenth of the number people as the one before it. So while perhaps 90% of humanity is in Stage 1, less than one person in ten thousand will be at Stage 5 (and none of them are likely to be politicians). The number of those who have chosen the inner path in Stage 5 also seems to be an order of magnitude smaller than the number who are on the outer path.

I happen to have chosen an inner path as my response to a Stage 5 awareness. It works well for me, but navigating this imminent (transition, shift, metamorphosis – call it what you will), will require all of us – no matter what our chosen paths – to cooperate on making wise decisions in difficult times.

Best wishes for a long, exciting and fulfilling journey.

Paul Chefurka

For our western mind, the most common answer to a threat on our ability to have access to food, water and shelter is .... "let's pack up as much food, water, and money that we can".

How much food and water can you store for the years- decades - to come?

When economic system go down, money (USD, Euros and Rupies), will become as useful as cowry shell are today. You might want to put them in a frame in memory of 'the good old days' but it won't show more use than any art piece on your wall when it comes to surviving - maybe thrive! - in a collapsed ecosystem.

And this is if you still have a wall to frame it on... billions of people will be immigrants and not just the poorer countries, the Sahara is already knocking on the door or Southern Spain, Italy and Greece.

One way to grow this treasure is to get more of it for yourself.

Read books.

Watch films.

Participate and collaborate in other transformational and initiatory gameworlds.

Keep trying new experiments.

One way to grow this treasure is by giving it away.

One way to give this treasure away is by giving public talks.

One way to give this treasure away is through creating an open weekly Possibility Team.

One way to give this treasure away is through using what you learned at Expand The Box training and a couple of Possibility Labs to deliver Possibility Coaching.

wholepermaculture.org

Tim Bennet, in his blog post Bambi vs. the Collapse of Civilization, wraps up in a few sentences the reason (if you need one) to start the work now:

"Some of us need to do this work, because most will not. Refusing to feel their fear now, they will be forced to feel it upon impact, when the trauma is greatest, the losses so hard to bear. They will need our help."

What is Inner Permaculture? What is the inner work?

Inner Permaculture + Outer Permaculture = Whole Permaculture

1. Find your network of like-minded people: you found ONE: startover.xyz - the massively multi-real-player on and offline personal development game.

We have made list of lists of projects, movements, centers, gameworlds, adults, initiators ... Find them at

- Go Explore

- Archearchy

- Initiations

- Possibility Managers

- Adults

Find one that you have resonance with, one that attracts you, feeds your Being, makes your belly become warmer and your skin tingle. Go meet them personally, talk to them, join with them.

When joining a project, do not ask what they can do for you, figure out what you can do for them: it can be tp reinforce a project they have already started or create a new project within their organisation. Talk to them and ask: "What can I do for you?" 

You will suddenly be in service.

The Universe notices your commitment to serve a conscious gameworld. Going through the first door might be the most difficult one to cross, if you keep paying attention, the Universe will keep opening doors for you. Your job is to keep being a practical-action, move-things-forward, staying-connected, High-Level-Fun, "Yes."

Caution! This does not include being naive. Saying, "Yes" means being a responsible adult as you go through the next universal door. You can only say "Yes" responsibly if you can first say "No" and "Stop" responsibly.

2. Create your own community of practice (CoP): create your own home-made Possibility Team. Your Possibility Team - or however you want to call it - is your community. The simple act of meeting every week and experimenting on what is possible makes you a bridge builder to next culture gameworlds.

3. Be part of the system of influences:

Pioneering efforts that hovered at the periphery suddenly become the norm. The practices developed by courageous communities become the accepted standard. People no longer hesitate about adopting these approaches and methods and they learn them easily. Policy and funding debates now include the perspectives and experiences of these pioneers. They become leaders in the field and are acknowledged as the wisdom keepers for their particular issue.

What if you stop denying that the conflageration has already begun?

At your next Possibility Team, slowly read through the article: Slaying The Jabberwock by Clinton Callahan.

What is not true about the article? What seems rather accurate? How can you check it out?

And more importantly, what are you going to do about it? Come up with specific answers, then begin.

In his article Will Any Humans By Post-Carbon? Clinton Callahan writes:

"A war is required now if there is to be a human presence on planet Earth in the next century: an urgent war against the status quo and all its institutions and laws, a war that causes immediately changed political and corporate behaviors, a war of action-oriented responsibility for consequences, a war of instantaneously enforceable restrictions, a war of internationally-coordinated engineering efforts to pull down atmospheric CO2 and methane (CH4) concentrations.

"The United Nations will either convert scientifically founded imperatives into immediate and enforceable actions, or become guilty by complicity of ending human civilization on Earth. Those individuals, special interests and organizations spouting adolescent non-negotiable stances need to be sent to their room without dinner by a United Peoples authority with more 'guns' than the teenagers have."

Who are the United People?

The United People are the delegates from 100 million nanonations, each nanonation being its own radically-responsible sovereign.

Create an in-the-flesh WECONFEST - based on not knowing. In the center is the void of nothingness.

Avoid the standard conference activities - paid guest speakers, panel discussions, entertainment, planned activities...

Instead hold the entire space for emergence, chaos, evolution, death and resurrection, transformation, initiation. Let people meet other people and spontaneously combust. Let human fusion reactions ignite.

Let the new energy combinations sparkle awareness and force something different to happen in everyone's future actions. Prepare people to depart from their previous lives and gameworlds and create Phase 3 human cultures - from matriarchy to patriarchy to archearchy! We don't know how the next thing goes, but we do know how what we're doing now can't keep going.

NOTE: This website is a Bubble in the Bubble Map of the free-to-play, massively-multiplayer, online-and-offline, thoughtware-upgrade, matrix-building, personal-transformation, adventure-game called StartOver.xyz. It is a doorway to experiments that upgrade your thoughtware so you can relocate your point of origin and create more possibility. Your knowledge is what you think about. Your thoughtware is what you use to think with. When you change your thoughtware, you go through a liquid state as your mind reorganizes itself. Liquid states can bring up transformational feelings and emotions. By upgrading your thoughtware you build matrix to hold more consciousness and leave behind a low drama life of reactivity. No one can upgrade your thoughtware for you. More interestingly, no one can stop you from upgrading your thoughtware. Our theory is that when we collectively build 1,000,000 new Matrix Points we will change the morphogenetic field of the human race for the better. Please choose responsibly to read this website. Reading this whole website is worth 1 Matrix Point. Doing any of the experiments earns you additional Matrix Points. Please use Matrix Code WHATNOWx.00 to log your Matrix Point for reading this website on StartOver.xyz. Thank you for playing full out!