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I heard a brilliant term recently, by fellow Substack writer, Rune Soup, which he calls, Apocalypse Medicine. It’s basically the idea that as looming global unrest seems to permeate our collective consciousness (yet again; see 2012, 2020), as the fragrance of impending doom and the mighty unraveling of Empire can be sniffed in the cosmic air, we are forced to face the inevitability of our own Death.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, whether we like it or not, we will all face Death.
The medicine of Apocalypse fever, is that it offers a gateway for deeper truths we hold, nurture or unconsciously preserve, beneath the surface of our every day ramblings and forgetfulness, to emerge. These otherwise avoided realities are forced into the forefront as we feel into the possibilities of global economic collapse, world war III, complete and utter natural disaster (if we haven’t already been in the living realities of these), and basically, life as we know it being shattered into something entirely unrecognizable, a mystery beyond mysteries.
Have you sat with the reality of your own Death?
What comes up for you when terms like “power outages”, “food shortages”, and “bomb shelters” enter your consciousness?
If your world ended tomorrow, what would you have wished you had done?
What have you done that makes your life feel like one well lived?
How comfortable are you with the Unknown?
I heard someone the other day speaking about how we are all so uncomfortable with the unknown, with living in the mystery of an unknowable future. And then it dawned on me, that we already live in an unknowable mystery, every single day of our lives.
Let me explain. Every minute of your life, your body accomplishes millions of actions that you are completely unaware of. Your skin grows hair, your eyes blink, moisten and compute visual information, the neurons in your brain fire hundreds of thousands of times, your heart continues beating, millions of blood cells are produced, you breathe! Beyond your body, hundreds of millions of natural miracles occur every moment, without your knowledge or control, that enable you to simply sit here, read these words and exist. The tilt of the earth, the proximity of the moon, the planetary water cycle, the existence and choices of your ancestors, ancient wars, tectonic plates, the very life of plant, animal and soil.
So while the anticipation of the unknown can be paralyzing to some, I want to assure us all, that we are already living in a mystery of unfathomable scale and consequence, one that could never and will never be under our control, and that it actually might serve each and every one of us to acknowledge and get comfortable with that reality. We don’t know what tomorrow brings, ever. It’s not a sudden apparition due to political and environmental unrest. It is a truth that permeates our lives every moment of every day. Nothing is guaranteed.
Peoples of Old lived and breathed this reality every day. I have recently been deep diving into the long and amazing history of the Inuit people of the Arctic. I am fascinated by their resiliency and ability to thrive in environments considered by the rest of the globe, as completely uninhabitable. Because of the enormous uncertainty of and dependence upon the natural world, the horizons of shifting ice and moving migrations of caribou and whale for example, the culture revolves around a continual reverence and consideration of the mysterious unfolding of events. Great observation, delicate care and considerable offerings were the path of survival for a people immersed in the mysterious pulsation of Life on earth.
Today, we feel sheltered from that mystery and aliveness, because we have gas stations and Walmarts and a grocery store down the road. Our culture has glazed our vital ability of resilience and ingenuity by engineering an illusory bubble of safety all around us. School, job, retirement, death. Vacations. Lukewarm predictability and safety for a culture, over time, create dullness, complacency and crime. Ingenuity is born from the unexpected. Community is born from the need to survive. Mystery is the birthing place of the Sacred. We, in America, have reached the 250 year Empire timeline.
Selfishness, on the other hand, is born from the illusion of “every man for himself”, as in a man hoarding resources inside this highly constructed bubble of safety, a bubble which, by the way, might pop at any moment. In stark contrast to Gaia’s living, changing, unknowable systems, “every man for himself” looks like immediate death: a man alone in the woods doesn’t last long. Selfishness is born of a constructed lie, the antithesis of Natural Law. Show me where in nature, a being’s aliveness doesn’t necessitate and encourage the flourishing of life around it.
It’s probably safe to say that in all ancestral cultures across the planet, Death was a very prominent and notable event in a village or community. Elaborate rituals, rites and ceremonies given to the deceased can be found virtually everywhere in antiquity. Proper care of remaining loved ones, homes and possessions were tended to, deliberately and delicately. Death wasn’t a hidden, non-event, as it has often become in our culture.
So we may be at a bit of a disadvantage, culturally, when it comes to Death, and facing it. Autumn, pruning, the quietude of winter, not producing. These things are all kind of taboos in our culture, while in nature they are the perfect and necessary balance to a blooming, fruiting summer. What goes up, must come down.
The bubble of safety called modernity is not just physical, but it is very much psychological as well, permeating our life trajectories, our mental landscapes, our sense of purpose, self, place and connection to the Divine. It is a thought wave as much as a railroad. There is a graveyard of unspeakable injustices buried beneath this bubble and the people have become disillusioned.
Someday each one of us will die. We face the completion of our sacred earth walk. The body will stop functioning. The blood will slow, stop. Our vision and our hearing will turn inward. We will let go. We will complete this life.
If that day were tomorrow, what would you do differently today?
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Much Love,
Leah
This is great! Such a powerful reframe to think of the Apocalypse not as another reason to fear, but as a reminder to treasure the Now and all we can do in this moment.
Thank you Dear One for you inspiring thought's of reflection✨️🙏✨️
Her dance was sooo wonderful!
Love you💓