Freedom: Lose yourself to find yourself

The first in a series of meditations on the Benefits of Collapse Acceptance.

Karen Perry’s Fifteen Benefits of Collapse Acceptance give us a vocabulary to talk about something that’s very difficult to put into words. What is our state of mind when we have completed our Journey of Collapse Acceptance (or, at least, one cycle of the never-ending spiral of the journey)?

Karen offers the Benefits as “seeds,” to prompt people to think and talk about their lives. I accept the invitation! Here begins a series of meditations on the Benefits, to share what they mean to me.

Freedom

Freedom can be freedom from…, or freedom to…. Freedom from that which restricts or oppresses us. Freedom to participate fully in the life we are involved with. Collapse Acceptance breaks the strictures which hold us back, and opens the pathways to authentic engagement with the world we live in.

When we accept that collapse is real and happening now, we understand that a lot of our culture is false. We will not find satisfaction by collecting household goods. We will not achieve safety by hating other people. We are not separate, isolated creatures drifting in a purposeless universe.

These axioms of our global culture have driven us over the edge of a cliff, to crash into a chasm of disorder and misery. We have built a “constructed self” to fit in with our poisonous civilization, but that artificial selfhood is sick and dying. We were taught these ideas, we followed them, and the result is disaster. Our first task is to let go of the discredited ideas that have brought us to this terrible end.

When we let go of the artificial person we have built, it can be a bit scary, because: What remains? If I am not who the culture tells me I am, then who am I? If I cannot make a meaningful life by following the rules, then how am I to live? Where can I find direction, and meaning, and a connection to the truth?

There is a period of emptiness on the path of Collapse Acceptance. Like the caterpiller in the cocoon, we liquify and lose our structure. It is a time of darkness and pure potential. It can feel like death. But with patience and a reliance on our natural powers, we return to order. We grow again, into something new and different, with purpose and ability that we never could have imagined.

And then we take flight, with the freedom to follow the wind and inhabit a world where we truly belong.

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Photo by Gary Bendig on Unsplash.