A collective spiritual emergency, and possibly dark night

Spiritual emergencies happen at individual and collective levels.

A spiritual emergency is a crisis with a spiritual component. It may stretch and open us up to new ways of perceiving and being in the world. It may also be experienced as deeply challenging, requiring more of us than we thought was possible. And it eventually requires us to act from insight and love instead of from our old fear based patterns.

A dark night is a particular form of spiritual emergency. It may involve loss in many forms…. of situations, roles, hopes, dreams, and even fears. Old identifications are seen through or worn off. Wounds and traumas surface to be healed. To our conscious mind, it may seem that grace is lost and everything is moving in the wrong direction.

We are now collectively headed into a spiritual emergency, a spiritual emergency shared by humanity as a whole. We may even be headed into a collective dark night.

The Earth is going through major changes. We are about to face the consequences of our western worldview and how we have seen ourselves in relationship to Earth.

Ecosystems unravel. Large number of species go extinct. Water, soil and air is poisoned. There will be more frequent and more serious regional, and possibly global, water and food shortages.

And all of that is because we have seen ourselves as separate from the Earth, and the Earth as unlimited for extracting resources and dumping waste and toxins. We have organized ourselves collectively, in all areas of society, without taking ecological realities into account.

Facing the increasingly obvious and tangible consequences of this is, in a very real way, a collective and shared spiritual crisis. It forces us to re-evaluate our priorities. It requires us to examine and profoundly change our worldview and how we see ourselves in relation to the Earth, and to current and future generations of all species. It requires us to reorganize ourselves in very practical ways, so that what’s easy and attractive to do also supports life in a deep sense.

This spiritual crisis has already taken the form of a dark night for some, and it may do so for many more in the near future.

The Earth is merciless. It mirrors back to us our relationship to it in a very tangible way. And as with any spiritual crisis, and any dark night, this is also grace and an invitation to find a new life, to find a new way of perceiving ourselves and the world, and a new way of being in the world.

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– spiritual emergency – what is it
– dark night – characteristics
— how appear at individual level
— how may appear at collective level
— the circumstances that brings us into collective spiritual emergency/dark night (ecology)

notes……

– individual spiritual emergency, dark night (a form of spiritual emergency)
— wearing off identifications, situations that don’t like (loss etc.), wounds and trauma surfacing, apparent absence of god and grace,
— invitation to meet with love, inquire into assumptions (beliefs, identities, hopes, fears), find a new life, align with the process, allow old identifications to wear off
– collective spiritual emergency, dark night – headed right into, ecologically (unravelling of ecosystems, mass extinctions, ecological bottleneck)
— invitation to (a) leave old identifications, hopes, wishes, dreams, (b) face our fears, wounds, trauma, (c) reorient, a new life, richer in a different way, more deeply life-centered in every way, create a new life
— very similar to an individual spiritual emergency or dark night, only collective, shared by many or most of us, find our way through it together
— find our way through it together, share insights/tools, support etc. (find love for what’s here in ourselves and others, and situations)

– is grace, even if doesn’t look that way at first

– spiritual emergency, a crisis, invited to stretch, find new ways of perceiving and being in the world
– dark night of the soul – loss, identifications seen through and worn off, wounds surfacing to be healed, maturing as a human being,

– individual and collective spiritual emergencies
— require us to stretch,

Individuals can go through spiritual emergencies, a crisis with a spiritual component, and also dark nights which is a type of spiritual emergency.

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draft…..

Spiritual emergencies happen at individual and collective levels.

A spiritual emergency is a crisis with a spiritual component. They tend to stretch and open us up to new ways of perceiving and being in the world. They may be experienced as deeply challenging, requiring more of us than we thought was possible. And they may require us to act from insight and love instead of from our old fear based patterns.

A dark night is a particular form of spiritual emergency. It may involve loss – of situations, roles, hopes, dreams, and even fears. Old identifications are seen through or worn off. Wounds and traumas surface to be healed. It may seem that grace is lost and everything is going in the wrong direction.

It seems that we are collectively headed into a spiritual emergency now, and possibly even a collective dark night. The Earth is going through major changes, these are created by us, and we are soon to face the consequences in a far more immediate and large scale way than we have so far. Ecosystems unravel (oceans etc.), a large number of species are going extinct, water and soil is poisoned, there will be more frequent and serious water and food shortages, and more. And it’s all because we have organized ourselves – and our economical systems – in a way that doesn’t take ecological realities into account. (These patterns were created more than a century ago, and made sense then.)

draft…..

Individuals sometimes go through spiritual emergencies, a crisis with a spiritual component. These tend to stretch and open us up to new ways of perceiving and being in the world, they may be experienced as deeply challenging, and they may require us to act from insight and love instead of from our old fear based patterns. Aspects of what we are (Big Mind/Heart) may be revealed to us, and we may mature and heal as who we are, as a human being in the world. One of the more challenging types of spiritual emergencies is a dark night, and perhaps especially a dark night of the soul. A dark night of the soul is a time of loss of what we held most dearly in terms of identities, hopes and dreams, and also roles and life situations. It is an invitation for identifications to be seen through and wear off, for healing of old wounds and trauma surfacing, to reorient to a new life, and to meet what’s here – whether “inside” or “outside” – with love and recognize it as love.

We can also collectively go through spiritual emergencies and dark nights. And it seems that we humans are rapidly heading into both a spiritual emergency and a dark night. We are heading into a spiritual emergency triggered by unravelling and changing ecosystems. We all know some of the forms this is taking, including mass extinctions, climate change, rising sea levels, toxins in food and water, regional water and food shortage, collapsing ecosystems (oceans etc.), and more. Similar to an individual spiritual emergency, we are required to reorient, find new ways of perceiving and living in the world, and – at least for many of us – live from clarity and love rather than our old fear based patterns. And similar to an individual dark night of the soul, we are required to (a) leave our old identifications, hopes, wishes and dreams, (b) face our fears, wounds and trauma, and (c) reorient and find a way of perceiving and living that’s more deeply life-centered. In a collective spiritual emergency, we are invited – or required – to find our way through it together, to share insights and tools, to support each other, life and the process, and – again, for some of us – to find love for what’s here in ourselves and others, and the situations we find ourselves in.

It’s a very humbling process, and it’s all grace, although it may not seem so at the time.