Foundations for a New Era

The final podcast in this second series is the shortest, but in many ways the most essential. One morning I awoke long before dawn with the clear knowing of the seven foundational qualities that belong to the next era. I describe them in the way they came to me.

Transcript

Foundations for a New Era

Transcript from Stories for a Living Future, Series Two: At the Edge of the World, a Podcast with Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Over the last year in Stories for a Living Future I have described how the present story of humanity—one of material progress and exploitation—is in direct conflict with the story of the living Earth and its more than human inhabitants, its patterns of interdependence and cycles of regeneration. This conflict has escalated in recent years, creating the environmental catastrophe we are beginning to experience in fires, floods, droughts, and a dangerous destruction of the biodiversity that supports us all. How we respond to this cascading crisis is the existential question of the present time: whether we continue in this self-destructive death-spiral, or look to a way of being in harmony with the living Earth. In order to make this shift I believe we need to fundamentally change our quality of consciousness, reconnecting or returning to what I have called a deep ecology of consciousness, in which we rejoin the great conversation with the natural world. In these podcasts I have told stories about this quality of consciousness, long forgotten and yet present all around us.

There is much work to be done in this present time—limiting carbon emissions and loss of biodiversity, restoring the world’s wild places, as well as working towards social justice and earth justice. There are also those drawn to look to models of transition beyond our present carbon-intensive, energy-intensive way of life, as in the transition town movement, which works for a low-carbon, socially just future with resilient communities, a caring culture focused on supporting each other. Or the global ecovillage network that looks towards a sustainable future and regenerative human presence. Others are developing the tools of resilience we will need in this time of transition, a time that also includes the possibility of social breakdown as our present civilization fractures and the old patterns of life collapse around us.

But there is also another dimension to this time of change. Over the last twenty years I have been drawn to look to a future seven generations or more, to the dawn of a new era for humanity and the Earth, for our shared journey together. I believe that this time of change is more primal, fundamental, than most would imagine—a future born not from our present patterns, but a deeper dimension of consciousness that belongs both to the Earth and to humanity, based upon the oneness, the living unity that is our true nature. In these more recent podcasts I have hinted at this primal shift, how the dream of the Earth is changing, how a new note is present in the axis of love that runs through creation. 

At this present time it is essential that we limit our self-destructive behavior, the wasteland it is creating, but it is also vital that we begin to weave into the tapestry of life these new threads, this new way of being. That we begin to include the qualities we need for the future to be seeded around us.

One morning late last Summer, I awoke long before dawn with the clear knowing of the foundational qualities that belong to the next era. I express them here simply, with only a little amplification, in order to convey the way they came to me. 

The next era will have seven foundational qualities: 

Respect for women and feminine principles, such as receptivity, patience, nurturing, listening (with the senses, the soul, and the heart). This does not mean that we will be returning to a matriarchal era, but that patriarchal oppression in all its forms will no longer be part of our culture. Without the return of the feminine nothing new can be born, nor will we be able to nurture a new way of being with the Earth.

Respecting the land as sacred and developing different new and old ways of working with the Earth in harmony with life’s biodiversity and interdependence.

Time no longer seen as linear, but a return to the rhythms and patterns of nature, the seasons—how Spring follows Winter—but also our place in other patterns of time, within our bodies and the world around us, for example the waxing and waning of the moon and the seasons of our human lives. Through this quality human life will no longer be seen as part of a linear image of progress, instead we will return to living in harmony with the many different rhythms of time, recognizing our place within nature and the cosmos. This will also help us to live more fully in the present moment.

The coming era will be non-hierarchical. How the present hierarchies—their dynamics of power and patterns of control—fall apart will be one of the defining experiences of the coming decades, even as new, non-hierarchical ways of living and working together emerge, often experimental, like seed nurseries for the coming era.

There will be a focus on forming communities of all types, which can connect together in an organic way, be interconnected and interdependent as in nature.

Oneness will be a foundational principle. No one will be excluded, everything and everyone will have their own place and be intrinsically recognized for their own nature, their note in the symphony of creation. This will be the most simple and the most difficult, because it is counter to so many of the patterns of human behavior of the present time. But with this principle, life and humanity will reorganize itself, reconstellate into new ways, new patterns and connections, that reflect the unity that belongs to all of life. 

Love, love and care for each other and for the Earth will be the central spiritual principle. This will reawaken the Divine in a new way, returning us to an experience of divine presence. 

These seven qualities will be held together in a new way of being, a new space, which is connected to the cosmos. Through it all will run the axis of love, from the center of the Earth to the center of the cosmos, present in every cell of creation. 

Through these foundational qualities life will regenerate in ways at present we cannot even imagine. For example, there will be new sources of non-polluting energy which will be freely accessible. How long it will take before this new civilization fully emerges is not known, but it is my understanding that within two centuries it will become visible. The next 100 to 130 years will be a time of increasing insecurity, disturbance, chaos, and then out of this will gradually emerge a new civilization, quite different to now.

© 2023 GSC