Something Old, Something New

One of the driving forces which led me to embark on this new political blog is the strong sense that there is something deep and fundamental that is changing in the world. As some in the New Age community have long noted, there is a transformation occurring in the energy pattern of the earth during this time which cannot help but manifest in even the outer patterns of our culture and politics.

Normally I don't subscribe to many "New Age" ideas, but in this case I do, and even strongly endorse some of these descriptions of the earth's energy grid as undergoing lasting changes that are worth looking at and taking seriously. Without an understanding of what is occurring at this deeper level, it's difficult to comprehend what is going on in the world.

As an example, in my first post here yesterday I mentioned the phenomena of Wikileaks and the Arab uprisings, and how this has led to a sudden tipping point in which seemingly stable authoritarian regimes have sudden begun to fall like dominos across the middle east. While there are some obvious reasons why they have fallen, it's not as if they were obvious until this year. These regimes, and others like them, have dominated that part of the world for a very long time, and while changes have occurred from time to time, it's usually been more of the same. A cynic betting against the current series of uprisings producing lasting change might think it a wise position to take, since while there have been uprisings before, they usually return to the old pattern soon enough.

But what is going on in the world right now to me is quite different. And it's not because the people are different or the conditions on the ground are different or because the political world has suddenly decided to reform itself. No, the people in power are generally not going to change much at all. What has changed is the fundamental "energy environment" of the world, and it is simply the case that those who are not well-adapted to this "new energy" are not going to adapt and survive very well. The problem with these autocratic regimes is not entirely some internal failure to respond to dissidents and protestors. They know quite well how to suppress and imprison and torture and kill people to keep the general population at bay. They know how to play the propaganda games of intimidation that have served them so well in the past. They didn't suddenly become incompetent at playing those games.

What has changed is that the games they are playing simply don't work in the new energy environment that is transforming the world at its deeper levels. What used to work simply doesn't work anymore. People are not responding as they once did to the same tactics, the same forms of energy that dictators once used very effectively to maintain control and dominance. And so those regimes are falling, like old biplanes trying to fly in icy weather. Their wings are icing up, and so they are crashing to the ground. It's not really that protestors are doing something magical or unusually courageous (though it is that also). It's not really about Twitter and Facebook and Al Jazeera, though one could argue that such things have only arisen because of the new energy in the world. It's that these protestors are responding to an energy which demands that they replace the old regimes with something more suited to this new energy which is energizing them. And so they do, because they now have the power to replace the old energy, which is suddenly weak and almost hopelessly overmatched for reasons that seem otherwise inexplicable.

Everyone has heard the popular stories about 2012 and the Mayan Calender and the alleged "end of the world". Well, these stories are basically true, on the level of energy. The old world really is coming to an end, and a new world is coming into being. This may sound like naive bullshit, but I'm willing to stake a lot on it. And yes, the year 2012 has significance, in that it's an important moment, but it's really this whole time period, the decades leading up to this point and the decades that will follow, where the changes really occur. One basic rule of energy is that energy changes can occur quickly, but its manifestations in life, and particularly in politics, can take time.

So I don't expect massive and sudden political nirvana any time soon. It will take plenty of time for this sort of thing to sort itself out and find a new balance. It's a developmental process, and that can take time, and be very messy. And nothing that changes is every going to be terribly satisfying in any case, so we can't expect heaven on earth now or ever. But we can expect to see an ongoing transformation in the earth's life and culture and even the physical environment itself that will be largely positive and conducive to spiritual growth. These kinds of changes don't happen often, so it can be said that we are living in interesting times. Which is one of the reasons I just can't help blogging about it any more.

The basic pattern we can expect to see is that anything associated with "old energy" is going to weaken, fade, and even die out, while anything associated with this "new energy" is going to strengthen, grow, and eventually dominate. The question to ask is how do we identify and understand what this new energy is about, what the old energy is about, and learn how to see them in ourselves and the world, so that we can best ride this new wave and not get drowned in the process, but instead flourish in the new environment.

Not that I'm going to answer that in this post, of course. It's too large a subject for any one post to explore or explain. This blog will often be looking at various aspects of the current politics and culture, and doing "samyama" on them to see what is new and what is old and how the two relate to one another. Often, it's not as easy as one might think to differentiate between the two, or to understand how to make a peaceful and profitable hand-off between the two. Often, we have both in us, and it can be confusing to feel a part of us dying while at the same time another part of us is growing.

We all have attachments to old energy, and unfamiliarity with new energy, and there are parts of our minds and psyches and even our bodies which have adapted and grown accustomed to the old energy patterns, and don't quite know yet how to work with the new energy. So there's a significant process of adaptation that has to occur in us, and in the culture, and the world of politics, before we can function properly in the new energy environment. That's another part of what this blog is going to explore.

So I look forward to this being an interesting ride here. I hope others think similarly.