Notes on Apocalypse

Let’s call this the end of the beginning rather than the beginning of the end.

Apocalypse? Check.

In 2020, at the start of the pandemic, one of my favorite political commentators wrote:

“America has 99 problems and pandemic is just one. To be honest, even talking about recovery is a joke while you’re still going down and hitting the gas…. Americans don’t use this word on themselves, but your government is corrupt.…I’ve seen corruption, but never like America today.…What Americans call capitalism is literally just corruption now.”
~ Indi Samarajiva, Collapse Takes a Lifetime. America is Just Getting Started

In my circles, we get off on ranting about apocalypse: climate apocalypse, genocidal apocalypse, nuclear apocalypse, human, animal, and all living things apocalypse.

It soothes us to laugh self-ironically at our own apocalypse rants as if we’re being over-dramatic.

But in our blood and bones, we know that 50% of species have already gone extinct. And we’re just a species.

We know that the never-actual U.S. democracy is now not even a plausible fiction.

We know that all over the globe, hundreds of thousands of people are dying from things they wouldn’t die from in a more kind and just world: diseases that could be cured, wars that could be avoided, genocides, poverty, and neglect that didn’t need to happen except for who we are.

We know that we are on our own with no protection from governments or social structures as we experience what activist Imani Barbarin calls a “global disability event”: the comet trail of the ever-moving pandemic.

We know that many of us are experiencing physical and mental health problems at a scale that’s hard to fathom.

We know that many countries on Earth, but especially the most powerful, are ruled by an elite class that doesn’t care about rest of us or about the health of our planet.

Some of our overlords have passed way beyond not giving a shit into something we might call a kind of insanity, or which in previous times might have been recognized as possession.

This is A LOT. A lot to recognize. A lot to hold. A lot to digest.

And how is your digestion doing these days?

But let’s change our focus a little bit. Instead of focusing on the end, let’s pay some attention to the beginning.

The beginning of the end of the beginning

So-called Western cultures didn’t get off to a good start. We sprouted aggressively from seeds of empire and supremacy and grew into monstrous, planet-devouring versions of these.

We’re so monstrous now, even those who have been kept by the monster as pets are beginning to feel the existential threat.

We can bear a lot of destruction. We’ve been through many apocalypses, although never one so all-encompassing. Never one from which absolutely no one can hide.

I’ve been doing daily spiritual practice for more than forty years. My traditions—Trika Shaivism and Dzogchen—are about discovering for yourself the real nature of existence.

I’ve discovered, along with others who have walked these paths over thousands of years, that the basis of existence is devotion, tenderness, creativity, generosity, clarity, and kindness.

Spiritual practice destroys the limitations that prevent us from realizing and embodying these wisdom virtues.

Destruction is the method by which we rediscover our natural beneficence. Only destruction.

Through this lens, the many destructions we are experiencing, including the destruction of comforting and pernicious fantasies about ourselves, are the harbingers of the end of a very limited beginning.

We clearly are not done with this intense phase of destruction. More people need to recognize the havoc and horror that every empire-ist system and impulse has been wreaking on our world.

But as empire frantically pushes back, its false claims, cruelty, and manipulations are being nakedly revealed. As many commentators have noted, this is an unmasking on a global scale.

The end and then . . .

Poet: Mosab Abu Toha Artist: Rooted in Liberation a.k.a. Jo Macellaro

Destruction often brings greater access to wisdom, even for those who don’t want this schooling.

We can see the sprouts of increasing access to wisdom even as the bombs continue to drop and ever-more insistent madmen assume the reigns of the old powers.

I see the end of the old beginning in widening attempts by ordinary people to divest from many forms of supremacy and oppression.

I see it in networks of mutual aid and grassroots commerce that are sprouting precisely in places where atomization and domination have been the rule.

I see it in the reconnection to wisdom about our food systems and in movements to treat animals with greater respect and dignity.

I see it in younger people taking leadership to stop climate destruction.

I see it in the collapse of investment in narratives of exceptionalism, never-ending progress, and accumulation.

I see it in the inability of empire and empire’s legacy media to control global flows of direct communication, sharing, analysis, and protest.

I see it in the growing clarity in the U.S. about the brutal elitism, greed, violence, and corruption of our elected officials and corporations.

I see it in the global upsurge of outrage and grief at the ongoing genocide in Gaza and genocides happening elsewhere.

I see it in the outpouring of love and admiration for the people of Gaza.

And I see it in the truly wonderous emergence of daily, direct relationships between people experiencing genocide in Gaza and millions of caring fellow humans around the world.

Things are going to get worse, but. . .

We’ve set in motion a juggernaut of climate destruction that cannot be stopped in one or even several lifetimes.

The destructive power of supremacist retaliation is off the leash and unmasked.

But masses of people here on Earth are becoming wiser and kinder.

And we move in cycles.

The cruelty of this time can only result in the emergence of greater wisdom. The movement of the wheel of time is on our side.

So let’s all get together and do our best to welcome the wisdom emerging in our lives, to open to each other, and help each other to survive.

Let’s do this in every moment and in every circumstance from the smallest to the global.

Okay, people?

with infinite love,

Shambhavi

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