…according to the Mayan elders, the sixty years after 2012 hold the key to this planet’s future; the world will go through such a dramatic transformation that it will be hardly recognizable by 2072. This will be for the great good of humankind.
Much of the time in between will be something like a construction zone, with chaos as old systems collapse and are replaced by better ones.
Jose Luis Stevens

The national US obsession of the moment is the 2016 election, while the unravelling of European unity in the face of an ongoing massive influx of refugees is downplayed here as not so directly affecting us (well, except by the Drumpf, of course, who sees apocalypse now in every non-white face). Then of course there’s ISIS, which is not ignorable, with its unspeakably barbaric destruction of life, obscene mistreatment of female captives and demolition of our ancient global heritage.

I still have a voice in my head that tells me it’s pollyannaish to stand present to this exceedingly challenged and turbulent world, yet declare that where we’re headed is gonna be – way, way better than where we are now.

But I no longer listen so much to that voice. I concluded a long time ago that doomsday thinking actually helps it come true, and that focusing on what can become, instead, starts to give shape and substance to radically other possibilities.

As Einstein said: “Imagination is everything. It’s the preview of life’s coming attractions.” Imagination… the mind’s ability to creatively form new ideas, images and concepts – despite the fact that the mind also likes to just keep doing what it’s always done, ie to keep us in the same old auto-pilot grooves.

So what can we do – individually and collectively – to bring new possibilities into manifest reality? How do we go about imagining discontinuous leaps into constructive (r)evolutionary change?

I suggest we need to have the courage to remain fiercely and unflinchingly affected by all contemporary chaos, despite sometimes longing to escape recurring horrors such as the one recently in Brussels. By actively doing the work of mourning that which needs to be mourned. And by daring to invest our very lives, in their totality, into what can become. As the Talmud says: “To save one life is like saving all mankind.”

Construction zone certainly seems like an apt metaphor, both for ourselves as well as for our damaged yet still – still! – magnificent world.

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Ruby Seastone PhD is a multimedia artist, long time creativity teacher, and holistic psychotherapist. You can find out more about her work at www.artlifecreation.com.

Aware that we’re enduring such initiations as the Drumpf Phenomenon as part of the dissolution of old paradigms, she chooses to invest her curiosity on the broader evolutionary potentials of, say, the next fifty six years.