Well, crank up the worry machine. (Or not! read on…)

What I find most interesting about using the Internet for finding news is how much of what the rest of the world sees never makes it into American media consciousness. For example, all but a rear guard of 800 Australian troops just came home from Iraq to a joyous welcome in Brisbane, and I’ve only found mention of this at UK sites. (Folks are happy the troops are coming home? No news here, move along.) On the financial front, at least three European banks have issued dire warnings about the U.S. economy over the last few weeks, and that’s also been ignored — one authority flatly predicts a complete collapse of our financial system over the next few days or weeks, and I’ll bet you haven’t read that anywhere in these United States. In fact, the level of “serious” discourse on just about any heavy topic you’d care to name is so craven and bereft of elementary reasoning, you’d have to be some sort of chemically-reinforced Pollyanna to believe we’ve actually evolved at all over the last few hundred years. (And watch out what you put in your garden!)

My wife and I have this conversation frequently. The bottom line is that while some people have definitely experienced a growing peace, maturity and spiritual expansion, life in general has become more difficult and anxiety-ridden in our lifetimes. When I first joined the workforce after graduating from the University of Texas, incomes and expenses were much more closely matched, so much so that one simply didn’t have to worry if one had a job. In 1968 my first wife and I rented a wonderful home for $75/mo. (that was considered expensive), my car payments were $36/mo., and a visit to the doctor cost $5. I took home less than $500/mo. in salary from my college teaching job, we bought everything we wanted, and the money just piled up in my checking account, month after month. There wasn’t any need to save, because it happened automatically.

Late afternoon sun illuminating aquatic plants in mountain stream

The way things are today just isn’t going to fly. It won’t be “fixed” either, none of it, not until we start all over at the bottom, treat everyone as brothers and sisters, look each other squarely in the eye, and say something like, “Okay, what CAN you give me for these eggs my hens just laid? How much for this house, this car, my services? What do you need from me, and how can we help each other? How can we help those people in the next town who have no food or water? Can you give this teacher (doctor, policeman, farmer) a place to live so he or she can stay in the community?”

That kind of trust and self-reliance may produce miracles, but first one has to have an honest sense of “self.” That’s where inner work comes in. When you know you’re part of everything and simultaneously whole, you don’t need a guide for acting properly. It just happens automatically, like when my paychecks piled up in the bank. It’s like the Golden Rule and “all you need is love,” all rolled into one.

I don’t know what they are, but there they are.

Meanwhile, would we really be worse off without high-definition TV, the Internet, computers, air-conditioned cars, and microwaves? Would it really hurt to talk to ancestors in our dreams and fly to distant lands by willing it so? Do you really believe the energy that fuels your thoughts just vanishes with your body? Is there some reason our bodies “have to” deteriorate? — why can’t we just live until we die? After all, SOME FOLKS ALREADY DO!

And on and on and on…

We’ve been sucking up the patriarchal bullshit and imbalance for the last few thousand years — doing the best we could, you understand — and now it looks like something’s gonna blow, only maybe not all at once. I hope not. Frankly, I think it must have started years ago, because I’ve felt this way since I was in my teens. I never wanted the brick house in the suburbs anyway, much less the station wagon in the drive. Not only was it silly (to me), it was also built on sand.

That’s one reason why I wanted to move to northern New Mexico, where things have always been “blown up.” Not that far to fall if things go bad, in other words. Fewer people, too, just 14 per square mile on the average in Taos County, which by the way is just a little smaller than Connecticut. But I mainly wanted to live the last half of my life in a place where Nature dominates man, and not the other way around. That’s why I go walking in the mountains when I get the chance: something happens to me in the high country that never even registers amidst the mini-marts and parking lots. I sense things one can’t put into words without diminishing the experience, although I give it my best shot because I want to share this stuff. I don’t know what’s happening, either, but a hit of what’s above 8,000 feet makes me want to go back for more, and I think this is related to the bigger question.

It could be that everything will be just fine, after all, only…um… different.

Ya know??