The world’s in a vast transition, a transition so vast it’s holy in its dimensions. It’s bigger than us, bigger than we can grasp or understand. Like the Tao it can’t be named. It’s like a birth process. A new kind of person is emerging, sometimes crawling, from the wreckage of the old. A new self is possible that’s not based on the isolating assumptions of the past. No one knows how to do this and no one can teach us how to do this, with Step 1, Step 2 . . .
But we can help each other.
Mutual exploration of our common situation is the future of, the evolution of, self-development and what it means to be human. It’s the evolution of human consciousness if there’s to be a future. People turn to each other after they’ve given up hoping that the various systems will provide for them. They sense that there’s something new possible with their peers, and become companions to each other. They connect for mutual benefit and extend generosity to each other. As they do they start to tumble forward into something no one expected.
Each step of mutual self-help depends on the consciousness and awareness of the participants. Although we’re peers not everybody is equally skilled and experienced. When something old is dying and something new’s being born like this, discernment and feeling in the dark are required. It takes a community to find a new way, a new way for itself.
As we stumble and tumble forward we start to see a scaffolding we didn’t imagine. It’s the inherent scalability of our mutual exploration.
In addition to mutual benefit and generosity within a group, mutual benefit extends naturally between groups too. When groups and communities connect into a network, they’re stronger than the sum of their parts, just as individuals become stronger when they connect into a group. And networks of networks are and will surely emerge as well. They’ll do it because it will increasingly become evident that this will be mutually beneficial. Joining together will increase the intellectual, emotional and practical intelligence of the all the members. The skills of each will be increasingly available to all.
This “vision” isn’t new. It’s the dream of a passionately united humanity. With our incredible powers of destruction now, our rivalrous ways are no longer compatible with survival. This awareness that this is so and the necessity it heralds already goes about in the world like a roaring lion, waking people up and turning them to mutual exploration. They bow to the greater force, the birth process at work here and align with it with gratitude for its gift, come what may. It just happens.