What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire

Just open your eyes,
And realize, the way it’s always been.
The Moody Blues, The Balance

I notice, back home now, having spent two and a half weeks in dialogue and interview with Sally and Rocco, that I have a feeling of deep wariness. This is what plays in my head: I fear that Rocco will walk away with the journey only just begun.

Rocco himself has given no overt sign that this is the case.  He seems eager for and receptive to our continuing support from afar as he goes about the process of creating for himself some basic stability on the ground in NC (a job and a place to live). He appreciates the work we did together, the insights and breakthroughs he had, and looks forward to more. And he recognizes that the process of unraveling his ego structure, shedding his armor, and stepping out as his true self, will take some time. Kate describes Rocco as “excited and happy”. I’m glad to hear it.

And still I am wary. Because we’ve been down this road before.

It seems that Sally and I were both born onto this planet knowing that 1) healing is possible and 2) humans are able to discover and drop into deep levels of intimacy and connectedness with each other, living transparent and undefended lives of creativity, wisdom, service and spiritual evolution in a community of committed souls. Both of us, having been beaten up and beaten down in our own unique ways by the cultural prisons into which we were born, have journeyed long and with intention to get to the place where we can say this. And both of us have tried, in various places, with various groups of people, to make manifest what we knew to be so.

It’s been a process. Marriages and partnerships. Intentional communities. Unintentional communities. Workshops and trainings and therapy and coaching and support groups. Dialogue circles. With diligence and commitment, we’ve tried to clarify and create our vision, always seeking healing and intimacy with others. With each attempt we did our best, with the knowledge we had and the tools we’d acquired. We’ve made mistakes, and then used those mistakes as an opportunity to learn and grow and stretch and get stronger. And we’ve had to feel our way through this, stepping more and more fully into our gifts, our power, and our clarity. There was so much to learn, and we had to learn it through experience. In the dominant culture, this business of intimate community is mostly lost knowledge, gone the way of pyramid building and the Library of Alexandria.

It’s not like we’ve been alone with this. There have been plenty of people, all around the Earth, who’ve been doing the same work, attempting to create healing and intimate communities with others, trying out one physical or organizational structure after another, working with various techniques and practices and theories and bodies of experience, trying to recapture that which civilization obliterated. And it’s not like there haven’t been successes. And it’s not like these people have been shy about sharing what has worked and what has not. There are books and articles and workshops and seminars aplenty, all working to gain clarity about this thing called community. It’s just that the people working hardest to create community seem thinly spread around the planet, and the work remains incomplete. We’ve seen many “failed experiments”. And we have found, in our lives on the ground, very few people who share our vision, who want what we want so much that they’ll do what it takes to get there.

Because to live a life of healing and intimate connection, we will be required to surrender our damaged, twisted, delusional, civilized ego structures at the door. And that is a spiritual path. And there’s no way there but through.

And you know what? It’s really, really hard.

Except for the fact that it’s not.

In attempting to create intimate and healing community, we’re pushing on one of the most deeply held entitlements of the dominant culture: the unacknowledged notion that we are entitled to hold onto our wounded egos as tightly as we can, the rest of you be damned. At our best, we can see that we want and need community and healing and spiritual growth. We can throw ourselves into the processes of community building, trying to make manifest something real and beautiful and satisfying on the ground. We can acknowledge our woundedness, and the difficulty of the path that lies before us, in the matter of sharing our lives with other wounded souls. And we can make commitments to doing the work, to sticking with each other, to keeping our butts in the chair as we confront and step beyond our damaged egos.

But you know what? Wounded egos fight like hell for their continued existence. It’s a matter of life and death for them. And intimate community reveals them for exactly what they are. Wounded egos can and do destroy community if they are not identified and brought out into the light. There is no hiding in circle. At least not for long. So the wounded ego has a choice. It can surrender to the light and be diminished. Or it can run.

And run they have, trampling over the desires expressed and commitments made in their mad dash back into shadow. And often, when they’ve run, they’ve lobbed poison arrows of projection and blame and make-wrong to keep themselves intact until they could find a cave in which to lick their wounds and recover.

And so I remain wary. Because I know the power and resolve of the “civilized” human ego. I know its limitations and blind spots. I know its wily creativity, its ability to use anything and everything it encounters in self-preservation, even twisting spiritual growth to its own ends. I know ego’s terror, and its pain. I know its need. I know, because I have one myself, and we are old, dear friends now. In fact, it is my own ego that is wary.

My deeper self can and will take Rocco at his word. He’s tired of the ways in which his own wounded ego has shaped his life, in ways that do not honor the true and beautiful self he is. I know he wants something else. I know he wants to get on with what he came here to do. And I know he’s smart and strong and willing and able and ready. But I also know that there’s no way to know how this will go. I know that it’s not up to me. I know that I am not in control. And I know that ego might grab him at any moment and walk him away. It’s what ego does, in the face of its apocalypse.

I leave this in the hands of powers far greater than I, and ask simply for the greatest good to be served for all involved. While I can hope that Rocco sticks with the process, I have to admit that he must walk a path of his own choosing.

I guess maybe I’d just rather do without another round of heartbreak…

Another Dialogue workshop approaches, in which we’ll do the work we’re engaged in with Rocco with a full circle of souls. Suspending assumptions. Revealing the workings of ego and identity and attachment. Hanging on and gripping tighter and then letting go and sinking into the sweet bliss of connection. It really is an Othello process… “a minute to learn and a lifetime to master”. It’s one of the hardest things we can ever hope to do.  And once we slip into it, we can look back and wonder what the fuss was all about. You mean all I have to do is show up and be the real me? That’s what I’ve always wanted!

Another circle. And who knows where that will take us?

Legend has it that Ernest Shackleton, the “invincible Antarctic explorer”, placed an ad in London newspapers before his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914.

The story continues that Shackleton received over five thousand applications to join the expedition, a mission that proved just as hazardous, dark and dangerous as he predicted it would be.  His ship, the Endurance, got trapped in the ice and eventually sank, and it took most of the next two years to rescue the crew. Amazingly, all hands were saved. And in time, honor and recognition were duly granted.

We who live today face our own hazardous journeys, both outer and inner. Climate destabilization, economic turmoil, environmental destruction, and the end of cheap and easy energy are converging in “a perfect storm” that threatens to pull our own small boats right to the bottom of the sea. The storm is already upon us. And here we are, we who must face it, our evolved skills and wisdoms largely lost to the jackboots of Empire, bereft of our birthright to sanity and connection, encumbered with millennia of unhealed pain and the twisted stories of a culture gone mad.

Here’s the good news I see: Everything we want and need is right here, inside of us all, ready to burst forth anew. The disconnection is an illusion. The wisdom can be re-membered. The wounds can be healed, the pain eased. The stories can be re-written. Imagine how we could meet the outer journey through the end of Empire if we but take the inner journey first.

And so we place our own ad. Call it The Anti-Imperial Trans-Ego Expedition of October, 2009.

If this expedition calls to you, read more here. It may just be that you are right for this crew. The ship is at the dock, ready to depart. We’re heading out to sea, to see if we can find our way back to the community of life on this beautiful planet, and back to our own true selves.

Honor and recognition to us all, if we reach that distant shore.

 Email This Post To A Friend
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 20th, 2009 at 1:25 pm and is filed under Touching the Ground. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.