Surreal

I feel a surreal feeling many times during the day.  I want to explain to you why I think this is important to you.  If you are not having this feeling then I am afraid you are caught up in the narrative of lies.  This is not the same thing as the political polarization feeling many have.  It is not the same thing as the economic dread either.  These are the outcomes of the surreal I am talking about.  Those who have these other feeling are actually often feeling cognitive dissonance and channeling it to politics and economic positions. 

Surreal is when you have been awakened.  When you have walked through the valley of death of a narrative that is false on so many planes.  A narrative that does not add up with physics nor metaphysics of spirituality.  This is about those who honestly embrace science and common sense.  These people become awakened and this leads to a transformation.  This transformation can only be two things.  One reaction is resignation.  The other is like I do which is green prepping.

The resignation is pessimism of collpase of the only world we know.  This is helplessness of screw it what can I do!  Green prepping that I do is still very pessimistic but the difference is the optimism of action.  This action is creating a constructive zone of growth in niches freed up by destructive growth.  This is ecology 101 and as a green prepper you take your cue from nature.  Your spirituality becomes a green spirituality.  This is not a rejection of your existing spirituality but a greening up of it.

I speak of spirituality so often here.  It makes many people uncomfortable.  This is mainly because of scientism.  Science has intruded into spirituality.  Life has secularized and now spiritualism is treated as superstitious and uneducated.  Worse than this, science has itself assumed religious dimensions.  We now have transhumanism of the techno optimist who see the merger of man and machine in incredible power of tech and concentrated knowledge.  There is also the secularization of life where normal religions are corrupted by the comforts of affluence.

I have written about this destruction of proper spirituality often in previous posts so I am not going to elaborate.  The main point is because of the dying narrative of techno optimism that is based upon ever increasing comforts and affluence people are experiencing the anxiety that comes with the cognitive dissonance of things not adding up.  They are reacting with improper behavior of the anger of the blame game.  They remain in denial that man through this narrative of exceptionalism has systematic driven human civilization to a breaking point.  Man has forced the natural world into an extinction process where ecosystem are in general decline and localized failure.

I am speaking to you as a green shaman not as someone peddling a religion.  Keep your religion.  If you are not religious keep your spirituality.  Your higher power is your private meaning and I am not here to destroy that.  I am here to say as someone who has retreated to nature in green shamanism green up your life.  This is not techno green.  This is not the modern delusional green of fake social justice and the covering the earth with dirty renewables.  This is a personal message of localism and permaculture.

If you are an atheist, I will give you warning.  Atheism is a luxury of techno optimism.  It is directly related to the creep of scientism where science and its idols of knowledge and tech has become the new spirtual of the affluent human.  Atheism and transhumanism of modern affluence is anti-life.  It is not green.  Greens that are atheist and techno optimists are not green.  The only true green is those who degrowth and dematerialize into humility and acceptance that man is not exceptional as our dominant narrative portrays.

If you are the traditional brown, I would give you a similar message of warning.  Many are conservatives and see a God as a giver of this affluence as a reward for a just life.  I say to these people too you are delusional and your narrative is going to come under increasing pressure.  If you claim God is angry with you and modern life then you have also have misplaced feelings.  This is about a way of life that is anti-life and that life system is reacting. 

So, you see both sides of this science and spiritual modernism are delusional.  Scientism says we need more tech, knowledge, and its combination in controls.  Modern religions say we need more religious morality to combat the ills of secularism.  Both are satisfied that affluence is the proper way forward when this is what is killing us.  This is because there is a disconnect between spirtual affluence and material affluence.  This is a product of a progressive world given meaning by a narrative this is human exceptionalism and humans have a manifest destiny in an image of the divine.

What is really needed is acceptance and humility from the understanding the current way of life is not sustainable.  It is the understanding we are trapped physically in a world in decline on all planes both physical and abstract.  I talk about this decline in many previous posts so I will not elaborate.  My point is you are trapped in a world of decline without options.  This is a physical trap with no possibility of avoiding.  Rich and poor will be impacted.  If a few escapes this is not the point.  In the macro sense all classes of people will be impacted.  This is about elites bringing down a civilization through hubris of false gods of affluence.

Where you are not trapped is metaphysically and this is why I preach green shamanism which is little more than asking you to realistically and relatively green up your life.  Go back to nature by declining into place with a permaculture localism.  This means less affluence and more hard work.  This also means continuing your status quo life of making a living.  It is just instead of banking your surpluses for more affluent living you embrace voluntary simplicity.  You use what surplus you have to build a localism that is grounded in simplicity.  You will find dignity in this humility because it is the way of life now.

This is the transformation that comes from an awakening.  You know you are awakened if you experience a surreal feeling with modern life.  When you go to the grocery store you feel it.  I feel dirty when I go to these places with so many products to choose from.  I know the damage these stores do.  We can’t leave them now without a collpase but we didn’t need them and instead opened the door to something that has left us insecure. 

I purchase good products like anyone else but I reflect on how unreal this is.  Products from as far away with so much energy intensive processes.  The refrigeration, lighting, and amount of labor to get all these products to our refrigerators.  These bogles my mind not because I don’t understand it but because I know it will end soon.  I know it will end and yet I continue to buy.  The difference is I am accepting it will end and trying in a small way to prepare for this.

The car culture is likewise something that boggles my mind.  I drive down the road and feel the surreal of being in a machine that is almost like a mini spacecraft.  People of 200 years ago would feel us to be UFOs if we could go back in time.  These machines are fantastic.  I love my truck because of all it can do but I still do not feel comfortable about it.  In fact, I feel dirty and unclean.  I know I am trapped so my green prepping spirituality knows this is just part of the surreal of a narrative trap.  I can’t live how I would like so I live the best I can even if this is fantastic in comfort and affluence.

This is the strange feelings I have of reacting to comforts from affluence.  There are so many more than grocery stores and cars.  I am right now punching out this post on a computer that allows me the fantastic ability to access vast stores of knowledge.  I can control my life so powerfully with efficiency and performance.  I have the ability right here right now of becoming a billionaire just by cranking out a few key punches.  I can also loose everything.  Just with this laptop I can go so many places or become so many different people.  Yet, this is not the true web of life.  Waterways are what is the web of life.

It is this power of affluence that is killing the world.  It has allowed an order of magnitude growth in population and consumption.  Yes, we should be at 700MIL people and living at the lifestyle level of someone in 1780s.  This is the truth I have experienced from honesty and commonsense and why I feel surreal.  I feel dirty because I do not feel worthy of all these comforts when it is these comforts that are killing life.  Yet, as a green shaman I am asking my tribe to embrace green prepping as the proper reaction.  This accepts this dirtiness as inevitable.  Instead of feeling bad about this convert it to good actions in your local.

I am not talking to the poor.  I am not worthy to talk to the poor.  I am talking to the middle class of the world that have the basics of affluence.  A car, house, and stuff that inhabits our lives.  I in fact am learning from the poor.  I like to spend time with the poor and prefer them to the rich.  This is not so much a judgment of either it is more about attitudes and dispositions that come with less affluence.  I like to see people happy with less things.  I like natural humility.  I also understand the trap the rich are in with affluence.  I despise arrogant rich people I guess because I once lived in that world and felt dirty because of it.

I am not talking to the rich either except to say I had the opportunity to be very rich and rejected this way of life because it did not offer me a proper spirituality.  I was honest enough to see through the lies of affluence to see that a different way of life appealed to me.  At that time which was 20 years ago I didn’t realize what green prepping was.  I did not realize the full meaning of an age tipping over but I had the surreal feeling then things didn’t add up.  I saw through the facade of this life that is not resilient and not sustainable.  I saw the wonton destruction of life and it made me sad.

You should green prep because life is tipping over into decline.  Collpase is here soon for many networks and systems that make your life what it is.  This is the systematics of a collapsing civilization resulting in so much irrational outcomes in our lives.  I am also speaking about the age of anxiety and how to embrace this. 

My green prepping spirituality says embrace the wisdom of insecurity to find the proper disposition to negotiate the pain and suffering ahead.  It is like agreeing to go to a hospice to die.  It is a kind of death because it is about humility and acceptance for loss.  It is about sacrifice and embracing hard living.  If you embrace these virtues one of the most important becomes possible.  This is courage.  Courage gives the strength to master the other virtues.  Courage comes from faith and faith is acceptance and humility to a higher power.

Courage is what will power you through the pain and suffering ahead.  You will embrace decline as the way of the world instead of denying and fighting it that things can be better if and only if we would do this or that.  Instead of drowning your spirituality in a failure that is not understood you will use this destructive change to grow.  You do this by flowing with the current and making proper choices in this new age of decline.  This is no longer an age of human manifest destiny so a different thinking is required. 

This is late-stage civilization tipping over into destructive decline along with a planet forced into abrupt change.  This is about growing into decline where you can.  This is locally with people and place where man properly scales.  It is about embracing nature and permaculture.  Most of all it is new spirituality to turbo charge your existing one.  It is a spirituality that rejects anti-life behavior and embraces the basics of life that has evolved over billions of years.

If you are not feeling surreal feeling then you are not there yet.  You are still in denial.  If you are on this blog then you are searching.  So many people are lost in our modern digital consumeristic world leaving them adrift.  They may be a pissed off political person looking to kick ass and take names.  You may be a happy person in a rich life with everything going your way. 

There is a wide variety of people who are not capable of understanding what I am talking about because they get in the way of themselves.  There are so many who are not even capable of knowing what I speak about.  They are maybe too young or too old.  There are many never given the opportunity because of lack of educational opportunities or bad luck.  There are so many in deep conflict for so many reasons. 

I am not to scold or judge these people.  In fact, I am their servant and want to help them.  Yes, I must be a man for others because of this.  This is why I reject mainstream prepping that seeks a lone wolf mentality of Mad Max wars.  I am preaching a return to nature in love.  It is here man finds meaning.  Keep in mind security is a proper part of prepping but it is only one aspect.  You must be ready to protect you family and tribe but this can’t be the delusional idea of security.  Real security is embracing the wisdom of insecurity.  Life will or will not save you so embrace that.

I am speaking to very few here who can make a difference for the coming age that will be the dawning of a new human type.  You will be like the monestary of old that retains the wisdom of a previous age that collapsed.  You will live a way of life that will be an example for many when the cities depopulate.  You will have answers on how to live.  You will be treated like a nutter now but one day you will have a following.  You are the prophets of the dawning of a new planetary age and human type.  It may not be you who see this world but I feel certain the young will.  Do this for them.  Make your effort for the innocent who are born into this mess we are leaving them.

You may not survive this decline that is a collapsing world.  That is not the point of pessimistic optimism.  The point is through the wisdom of insecurity you will embrace the way of things.  This force way will support you in the here and now.  You will find meaning in this.  Dignity will power you through voluntary simplicity and declining in places.  Many of you could be more but instead you will be less.  This is the simplicity of what I speak about.  You will triage out the deadwood.  You will salvage the best of modernity and combine it with the old ways that were biomass related.

Most of all you will go through a spirtual transformation that is an awakening to this new age.  This will give you the optimism of action because you will know why and what is needed.  You won’t have all the knowledge of the great minds we admire so much.  You instead influence people in your little local of people and place by making proper choices that are properly scaled.  Your simplicity in localism is where the real power is.  This power will give your courage to face the pain and suffering ahead. 

You will know you are near meaning when you experience paradoxes and incongruous juxtapositions.  This is what creates the surreal feelings and imageries I see daily.  If you see these throughout your day and know why, then you have found the way.  This is why I say trust your feelings of insecurity and apply its wisdom.  Be honest and relatively and realistically negotiate this surreal world of change.

It is the simple and the humble that will make you strong.  This is why the meek will inherit the earth.  What is really meant by this is you will inherit meaning.  Meaning is the approaching to the truth.  The truth is sacred and can never be known.  Yet it is the approach to the sacred that is what ultimately matter to a fully human being.  A real human is drawn to connecting with the sacred despite his disabilities of being an isolated ego.