Shockwaves and fallout

I’ve been struggling since Saturday to write something to post about the crisis in Japan.  The scale of the human tragedy there is hard to fathom, and the risks now posed by the nuclear radiation fallout almost seem surreal.   The systemic damage is overwhelming, and its hard to imagine how long it will take the country to overcome their shock and despair, get everything cleaned up, repair whatever can be, and get back to any semblance of normal.  Having watched a number of videos online, I have to say that tsunamis amaze and baffle me, and its crazy how much more destruction is caused by that shockwave plowing through the water than from the earth shaking as hard as it did -- apparently, the quake was so big and strong that the whole coast of Japan moved as much as eight feet!   Yet the country might have remained in decent shape had the tsunami not swept through with its incredible destructive force.  Instead, we now face what is quickly turning into a global calamity.   I have a feeling this could well be the tipping point for the planet, and my best guess is that we should expect things to get crazier from here on out.  So I've decided to write about why it is that I think that way.

So let's start with a question:  how might we think differently about earthquakes and other natural disasters if we took seriously the idea that Gaia, Mother Earth, really is a living, breathing, conscious being?  A number of years ago scientist James Lovelock proposed what he called the Gaia hypothesis, the premise that the earth is indeed a single, interconnected living organism -- one big, self-regulating ecological system.  Of course, this is not an entirely new idea.  Before the god-religions came along and wiped out the old beliefs, most people on the planet worshiped the goddess, the life-giver, the earth mother, the mysterious and fickle provider.  Indigenous peoples around the world still tend to see the land, and the planet itself, as sacred, as a manifestation of spirit, worthy of respect if not worship, of admiration and care rather than disregard and abuse.  Many teachers from these cultures have been trying to point out for quite some time how problematic is the white man's way of thinking of the earth as just a mass of matter, a large source of resources for humans to use up as quickly as we can.  To a considerable extent, this one mistaken notion is at the heart of the problems confronting humankind.  And the nuclear disaster we now face in Japan and wherever else it spreads is just the latest and biggest lesson being given to us to help us recognize the folly of our ways and to teach us that a new and different path is necessary.

Maybe my own logic on this topic isn't readily apparent, so here's a brief version.  Why do we have nuclear reactors at all when we know that, if a big accident happens, they can produce widespread, long-term damage that essentially makes life untenable in the region of the worst fallout?  Back in the '70s, in the context of an oil embargo and concerns about energy security, the powers-that-be determined that nuclear energy was a cheaper, more efficient way of producing large amounts of energy than solar, wind, and whatever other cleaner alternatives were up for discussion at the time.  This valuing of short-term efficiency and discounting of long-term risks is built in to the world of finance, and economic thinking more generally, and financial/economic criteria dominate large-scale industrial decision-making such as this.  The power of economic ideology grew right alongside the process of industrialization, the hallmark activity of the modern era, reflecting older mercantilist ideas that international trade of regionally-produced goods was a primary factor influencing national well-being.  Mercantilism itself, and the interconnected system of powerful bankers and merchants it created, emerged shortly after the Catholic Church had managed to get rid of most of the remaining adherents of the older, earth-based "religions," the pagans who honored and celebrated nature and thus were tortured and killed as witches and heretics.  The ascendence of secular scientific thinking at the same time helped to instill the mindset that the earth is composed of essentially inert matter, comprised of chemicals that we learned to mix and match and separate and manipulate to create phenomena that don't exist in nature.  The technical advances enabled by greater scientific understanding spawned the significant increases in productivity brought about through modernization and industrialization, and led in turn to a corresponding emphasis on production and consumption as the primary activities of human life.  Producers had the possibility of getting rich, by utilizing cheap natural resources to manufacture products that people wanted to buy.  Consumers had the possibility of getting comfortable, by acquiring all sorts of products that made their lives easier, healthier, and more enjoyable.  With both sides of the logic encouraging increased production and consumption, economic growth became the primary goal for the nation-state.  Add population growth in to the mix, and the system somewhere along the line started to become untenable, with resource depletion becoming a problem in some areas and environmental destruction a problem in many others.  Despite these problems, the growth imperative led naturally to increasing demand for energy throughout modern civilization, to fuel the factories that make our stuff, to light the cities in which most of us live, to drive our cars wherever we feel like going, to run the computers that keep us all connected.  To make sure we have enough energy, the powers-that-be wage war in the Middle East to try to maintain control over the supply and distribution of oil and natural gas, and they build nuclear reactors around the world despite the fact that their waste product is extremely toxic and lasts for a long, long time.

So, if we don't care about the earth, and think of the planet only as a place filled with a bunch of resources that we can use for our own self-gratification, where minimizing cost and maximizing efficiency are the primary objectives, we end up doing stupid things that eventually can come back to bite us in the ass.  Environmentalists have been trying to point this out since the early 1960s, and here we are 50 years later, and they still tend to be thought of as a fringe group, with a perspective too radical to be taken too seriously in major government or corporate policy decisions.  I don't imagine any of the people who have protested nuclear power over the years would get much gratification at this point from saying I told you so.  But in the face of whatever radiation poisoning results from the explosions at the Fukushima reactors, we shouldn't deny the fact that we were warned, and we should acknowledge that environmentalists' concerns are legitimate and should be taken into account in national and corporate policy making.  Humanity's survival, or at least that of civilization as we know it, may well depend on some radical changes in the nature of our economic and industrial system.  Hopefully a lesson from Japan is that the time is now to shift to a more sustainable path of development.  It is an encouraging sign that 50,000 folks came out over the weekend in Germany to protest that country's nuclear energy policy, and governments around the world have announced that they are "taking a look" at their current or planned nuclear energy programs.  Some folks are already suggesting that Fukushima will essentially spell the death-knell for the nuclear power industry.  

The broader economic reverberations of this earthquake also seem fairly easy to predict.  Despite the optimism of some observers (actual quote from Larry Kudlow on CNBC:  "The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll and we can be grateful for that" -- what a great verbalization of the perverse economic mindset!), it's hard to imagine that the financial shockwave generated by the earthquake's destruction won't lead to the collapse of our house-of-cards global economy that is already reeling from all the madness of the last few years.  I mean, in a world where all the major countries and mega-banks are already hugely in debt to each other, where exactly will all the "money" come from to deal with the zillions of dollars of damage caused by this earthquake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown?  Some have suggested that this will surely lead to the bankruptcy of the insurance companies that are responsible for covering major portions of the damage.  And given the interconnectedness among the major financial institutions on the planet, one thing we've learned through the economic near-meltdown we've been going through is that some of them are "too big to fail" in the sense that, if one of them goes down, it could bring a whole lot of others with it, and thus a whole national economy.  So it's hard to imagine that the significant impact of this earthquake on the Japanese economy won't, over the next number of months, produce its own tsunami that will spread across the ocean of finance and slowly but powerfully wreak havoc on vulnerable economic shores around the world.  But if there is a global economic collapse, maybe the bright side is that it will force humanity to come up with a new and different kind of economic system that doesn't entail raping the planet and poisoning all of our critical life support systems (the water, air, and soil we need to stay alive).

While discontinuing our dysfunctional patterns is surely necessary for the future health and well-being of the human race, taking better care of the environment just to enhance life for humans doesn't necessarily reflect any awareness that Gaia is a living being who has some needs of her own that should be addressed in order for her to be happy and healthy.  What if we knew that spreading chemical fertilizers and pesticides over much of the arable land on the planet was giving Gaia a nasty skin disease?  Or that polluting all the rivers and streams around the world was tantamount to poisoning her bloodstream?  Or that pumping billions of barrels of oil from below ground was draining a life-critical fluid from her body?  Or that dumping tons of toxic emissions into the atmosphere was making it really hard for her to breathe?  Or that the fallout from a nuclear reactor meltdown shuts down part of her nervous system?  What if, like many good mothers anywhere, she's just bloody tired of being abused, and taken advantage of, and treated as though she didn't matter, or worse, as though she were not even alive?

A common metaphor for those who see the damage humans are doing to the planet is that we are like a cancer on the Earth body, or a tenacious parasite growing and spreading and destroying all the vital elements that keep that body functioning.  However, since living organisms readily display the capability to heal themselves, the Gaia hypothesis suggests the possibility that Mother Earth might have some ways of her own for dealing with the biggest threat she faces.  As I've heard it said, we need to remember that, in this contest of man versus nature, nature is the home team and gets to bat last!  So how do we know that earthquakes and floods and hurricanes and droughts and plagues and all sorts of other calamitous events aren't simply one of the means available to Gaia to, in a sense, fight back against the disease that has infected her system?  How would we know if the number of humans operating in all-take-and-no-give mode has finally surpassed her tolerance limits, her willingness and/or ability to take it any longer?  What if, for her own sake, Mother Earth needs to kill a bunch of us off?

While that may or may not be part of the story of what's going on here, I'm gonna take this one step further.  What if Gaia is not only alive, with natural survival instincts -- what if She is really a spiritual being, like all of us are?  What if she has a soul in the same way we have a soul?  What if her soul is engaged in a process of development just like ours are engaged in a process of development?  What if the earthquakes are a natural and inevitable part of a process Mother Earth is going through as she transitions from one phase of her life to another?  What if these are the contractions and pangs she -- and we -- have to go through in order to birth her new self?  What if the new paradigm is arriving along with some kind of "new earth"?  What if a lot more "earth changes" are on the way in order for the transformation to be completed?

I realize these questions sound way too crazy and/or way too scary to even think about, but the fact of the matter is that there is a lot of information out there that triangulates around the idea that some kind of major transition point is arriving, and lots of weird phenomena are being detected around the world that suggest changes at a macro level may be happening (e.g., a pole shift, changes in the magnetosphere), to an extent that we have no way of understanding their causes or predicting their consequences.  The whole 2012 phenomenon is rooted in information provided by an old Mayan calendar system based on a framework of interlocking, nested cycles of time that apparently include some long cycles of over 5000 years, one of which is now thought to be coming to an end, bringing with it the possibility of some kind of planetary transition as we begin a new cycle.  I suppose it's easy enough to dismiss all that as foolish pop culture folklore based on vague tribal mythology, but how would any of us know if there were actually some natural, inevitable consequences of reaching the end of one of those long cycles?  (Maybe that's kind of like a year in Gaia's life, so now she's doing a little housecleaning to get ready for her big birthday bash!)

There is a compelling storyline that can be found on the internet which suggests that the paradigm shift that humanity is going through, the change in consciousness that is waking people up all over the world, is all part of a process that we are in a sense "scheduled" to go through now -- and I suppose that timetable may have something to do with certain cycles that drive the evolution of the universe.  This shift is an event that has been foreseen in prophecies from lots of different wisdom traditions, and even if none of the prophets could predict precisely what it would look like when the time came, there are plenty of signs that the time is now for the prophecies to come true.  Some are inclined to put an apocalyptic spin on the whole drama, and might even refer to the coming trauma as the end times.  I'm betting on something different, and keeping my focus on the new beginning that I believe will emerge out of whatever collapse and destruction are set to occur.

One aspect of this storyline, which I will confess to taking seriously given everything else I've learned and come to believe in the last fifteen years of my life, is that humanity's shift to a higher level of consciousness goes hand in hand with an analogous shift in Gaia's consciousness, the she and we are "ascending" together.  And for all of us, we can only shift to higher consciousness if we remove the lower vibrations from our system, the negative energies, all those thoughts, feelings, words, and deeds that do not resonate with light and love but instead are derived from some fear provoked by the illusion of darkness.  In order for Gaia to make the shift that we are on the verge of, she too needs to release some of the negative energies she has been storing up for years, so that she can raise her vibration to the level she needs in order to make her own transformation.  (There are reports that the Schumann resonance, Earth's background base frequency, which used to be thought of as a constant frequency, has risen significantly in recent years, e.g., from 7.8 to 11 cycles per second.)  One way some of that energy is being released, the story goes, is through all the seismic and volcanic activity happening in the Pacific Rim's ring of fire as well as a few other hot spots around the world.

Those communicating this storyline indicate that there is more clearing left to do, more earth changes yet to come, that Gaia is now making the last, hardest push -- to use the birthing metaphor -- to bring a new life into being.  My understanding is that this clearing is essentially taking place at the energetic, spiritual, metaphysical level, but that it is going to play out in a very physical way here in the material plane.  In short, word is we need to expect more big earthquakes, probably more volcano eruptions, maybe more powerful storms, and who knows what else, all of which will look very destructive from the limited perspective of normal human consciousness, but when viewed from the higher levels are seen as a necessary part of the process of replacing the old with the new, of removing the darkness from the planet and enabling us to see clearly that we are light-beings taking the next big step in our evolutionary journey.  Ironically, each of the devastating events that have shocked the world in the last decade -- 9/11, Katrina, Banda Aceh, Haiti, and now Japan -- has evoked a huge outpouring of compassion by people around the world, and inspired uncountable acts of bravery, kindness, generosity, helpfulness, and other light-based reactions that have had the net effect of raising the vibration of our collective consciousness so as to facilitate this whole process of transformation.  If more disasters strike hard in coming months, at least part of the purpose is to get us to stop relying on our old destructive systems and to force us to develop more healthy ways of living grounded in such principles as caring and sharing.  Like an addict who won't/can't give up his bad habit even when he knows it's dysfunctional and counterproductive, maybe humanity is going to have to hit rock bottom before we take seriously the idea that we have to make some radical changes in our lifestyle.  

So I've been sitting here all week with a strange kind of ambivalence.  I can certainly empathize with the shock and dismay and deep sympathy that so many folks around the world have been feeling in response to the devastation suffered by the people of Japan.  And I can relate to the fear and concern people have about the possibility of radiation poisoning, as Taiwan isn't all that far away from Japan and questions were raised early in the week as to whether the winds might blow it in this direction and if we would be safe from the fallout.  And I can surely identify with the unsettling knowledge that, at any moment, the next "big one" could happen right below my feet.  Not only am I familiar with that notion as a resident of southern California, but I felt a little tremor here the other night that reminded me -- not that I had forgotten -- that Taiwan is on the ring of fire too and thus prone to earthquakes.  There was a strong one (7.6) here in 1999 that killed almost 2500 people, centered very near Yungnane's hometown in the middle of the island, where I had visited just the year before.  I don't live in fear of that happening, or worry about the possibility that it will, but after all the vivid images of the incredible destruction in Japan, I guess it's just more starkly clear how traumatic such an event would be if you're in the middle of it.  

All those reactions are balanced by my conviction that this is something we have to go through, as part of the divine plan, in order to clear out some negativity from the planet and to confront humanity with the need to develop new systems and structures, and adopt new processes and patterns, that will transform how we as a society live.  For so long I've been thinking about life on the other side of the paradigm shift, and trying to communicate to people what some of those new systems and processes could look like, that I haven't put much attention at all on the difficult transition period we almost inevitably have to go through to get to the other side.  In recent years, as predictions of coming earth changes have become more compelling, I have become more accustomed to the idea that many people, maybe most of us, are going to have to live through some difficult, chaotic circumstances that are not going to be easy or comfortable.  Each new disaster somewhere in the world that uprooted and displaced large numbers of people seemed to affirm the validity of this premise, and yet it still felt as though we were waiting for the other shoe to drop, as it were.  Now, with the magnitude of the destruction in Japan, the seriousness of the situation caused by the reactor meltdown, and the economic and political shockwaves that will almost inevitably reverberate through global society, it finally feels like major change is upon us. Maybe this will be followed by other cataclysmic events that make it difficult for the world to continue business as usual, or maybe this is enough to stimulate a turning point on the path of development of human civilization.  I really have no idea how it's all gonna play out, but I have to say, the story has got me on the edge of my seat.