When Our Illusions Collapse: Do they make a sound? (Part 1/3)

I grew up in the post-war, baby-booming  ‘golden days’ of cookie-cutter housing projects, rayon blouses, muscle cars and the infinite miracle of plastic.  That war-to-end-all-wars was over and it was time to build; to create and invent; to design high-consumption, mass-expression lives.  The feeding frenzy went on for decades… imbedding in two generations our first illusion: that regardless of consequence, the acquisition of ’stuff’ is a reliable measure to reflect back to us how valuable, meaningful and effective we are in the living of our lives.

Things have changed.  Wars aside (and there are now too many to count), we are more than challenged by climate change, GMO’s, transhumanism, geoengineering and pharmaceuticals; in addition to economic challenges, black budgets, breakaway civilization, secret space program… and on and on it goes.  Try as we might, it is becoming overwhelmingly evident that what has been no longer is; and what might be seems to be driven by someone else!   Long have we operated from believing that should problems seem overwhelming, we can simply ignore them and trust that tomorrow – tomorrow’s technology, tomorrow’s innovators, etc. – would make it all better.  It is becoming clear:  we are running out of tomorrows.   Having mortgaged the future of generations to come, we are pulled up short by the realization that something is happening… and it is speeding up.

Nonetheless, our cultural myths…. our historical fairy tales of ‘happily ever after’ and ‘anything’s possible’… continue to tug at our memories and our determination to hold on to boundless hopefulness and expectation.  Entitlement  leads as we stand impatiently in line, waiting for someone/something else to get on with it and make it all work, again.  At the same time, we’re bombarded with television images of violence and destruction, juxtapositioned with yet another sit-com that numbs our brains and soothes our tattered nerves.  Indeed, we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto!

Illusions are collapsing, despite our best and most determined efforts to hold on to them; to patch and revive them; and to pretend we don’t know what’s going on .  It leaves me wondering:  When our illusions collapse, do they make a sound?

Our illusions are deeply personal and intimate creations sourced by culture and held steady by the power of our own minds.  When these illusions begin to collapse, their sounds are equally deeply personal and intimate…. and can only be heard inside ourselves, where we live and where these illusions have taken root.   The smallest of evidences that our illusions are at risk will immediately call upon that voice inside our head to begin its reassurances:  “It’s ok!  You’re overreacting; you’ve misunderstood the signals/the message.”  Don’t worry – you’ll figure it out!”… and on and on it goes in the familiar and repetitive effort to stay the course and trust the myth.

But these sounds inside ourselves, are rapidly changing.  Now overwhelmed by the density, intensity and repetition of so many collapses, there are simply too many tattered ends to hold on to; too many frantic calls with too few internal resources to tend to them all.  We can no longer manage…. and we finally allow ourselves the opportunity to bear witness to their collapse.  As we do, we are uneasy… unsure…. often lost in the chaos of the moment of bifurcation.    In a great state of inner turmoil, we struggle to regain our footing; we seek to find a familiar, comfortable place to steady ourselves, as we haltingly dare to turn in to a different experience of ourselves in this increasingly unfamiliar terrain of our emerging reality.

We go on the hunt for that familiar voice, inside… where we live… that will make it all manageable.  But this time, the reassuring voice is pitched just a little too high…. shrill and strained in its struggle to lend its voice to the message… lingering just a little too long in the effort to talk ourselves into believing the story for one more day.

The script of the voice inside our head is changing…. moving from repetitive platitudes into subtle-yet-blaring inner enquiries that reflect our wondering:  Will we be ok?  Will the people we care about be ok?  Does anyone know where we’re going?  Is anyone in charge????

As our state of daily fatigue and overall exhaustion at the effort grows, we find ourselves in tears at the smallest act of human kindness; in the tiniest of moments of grace and generosity; and in witness of the flow of the great beauty that lives within each of us, awakening to itself and evoking the same in another.

We begin to consider the unthinkable.  We begin to tune in, instead of tuning out.

When our illusions begin to collapse, they do indeed, make a sound.  That sound comes to us from within; vibrating the cells of our being as a warning that life, as we have shaped it, is no longer sustainable.  The conversation we’re having with ourself is in a frantic press for us to just hold on as we recognize our desperate fear of letting go.  It’s the sound of an internal diagloue that lends itself to the discovery of new possibility if we’re wiling to stay in THAT conversation with ourselves…. and allow the collapse to take place. What we hear is a new conversation, inside ourselves.  Like falling dominoes, the collapse of each illusion pulls up within us the invitation for a different line of enquiry… each more imperative than the last; each a more distressing call to a deeper part within ourselves to explore whether we can get through this…. or not.

The sound of our illusions collapsing is the invitation to each of us to take response-ability for our own, unique and essential life; the clarion call for us to entertain new lines of enquiry within ourselves and dare to consider:  “Where is the Great Intelligence in this collapse?  Where are the opportunities?  How else might I choose to live MY life, today?”

The illusions of our lives and our loves are a by-product of the expectations that sit at the very core of habituated and deeply entrenched and repetitive myths.  And myths, like smoke, cannot sustain themselves in the great turmoil of the winds of change.

I don’t have your answers – and you don’t have mine.  Far more essential to our future, at this time in our lives, is not the closure that comes with an answer but the recognition of the imperative as it lives in our ability to create, direct and engage a new line of enquiry.   We are long overdue for a willingness and ability to see what we see, hear what we hear and know what we know.  For this, there is no substitute.

“The truth will set you free.  But first, it will piss you off…..”  (Gloria Steinem)