The Heroic Journey That Returns Alt-Right Extremist Thinking to the Margins
Tuesday, November 29, 2016 at 12:01PM
Lee Van Ham in From Egos to Eden, Trump presidency, eco-spirituality, heroic journey, heroic journey, spiritual consciousness

The world as seen by Alt-Right views depletes the life that the OneEarth worldview describes. So many rightwing, dehumanizing views have come through the media coverage of the 2016 election and its results, that OneEarth people could become exhausted in critique. So, here’s a suggestion: practice being a 20-80 person. That’s 20% energy and time in critique and 80% energy and time acting toward and speaking for OneEarth living.

Since it’s easier to speak about what’s bad than what’s good, does the following help with the 80%? It comes at the start of the last chapter in my next book, From Egos to Eden, where I describe arriving at the conclusion of a heroic journey—the heroic journey to keep Earth livable.

Is this heroic journey not even more important for us in a Trump presidency and in an era when Alt-Right extremism is crowned as a point of view to be considered alongside other points of view rather than treated as thinking that belongs on the margins of human choice?

What follows is where the heroic journey takes us. 

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Our heroic journey takes us home—our OneEarth home that is. It is a home of consciousness that feels deepen- ing love for our planetary home. It is the home a new, greater consciousness builds amid the unraveling of the civilization built by former, smaller consciousness. We arrive in what one of our maps (see Chapter Eight) calls Spiritual Consciousness. We could not have arrived in this topography without the changes that the heroic journey brought about in us; nor can we live in this topog- raphy without continuing to make real those changes. Important changes resulting from the journey include:

  •  Our minds have changed—we think and imagine primarily in a OneEarth paradigm.

  •  Our identities have changed—we’ve moved out of ego to Self as primary.

  •  We have capabilities for OneEarth living we didn’t have before.

  •  We have added imagination as a way of knowing alongside empirical observation and rational thinking; our ability to see through what is to what can be and must be is increased.

  •  Our hearts love what our imaginations tell us can be; we are drawn with all our hearts to make real the images ris- ing from the unconscious, embracing them as symbols and myths to live by.

  •  We live with a sense of the sacred in all that is and throughout our activities; we have a sense of transcending where we’ve been.

  •  We distrust ego’s and civilization’s rejection of the underworld, and respect it as a vast world that is home to resources we need for OneEarth living. We also respect it as a world of powers beyond what our ego can handle.

We live with a continuing sense of Call to our Great Work to keep Earth livable amid civilization’s advancing apocalyptic breakdown.

This chapter is about how we live these changes that have remade us into different people with greater capabilities. It is about living on Earth, our planetary home, a consciousness she’s been yearning for us to make real for her. Not to be overlooked is how the great power of love works, tough and tender, animating politics, economics, art, education, households—whatever activities of society and life that keep Earth’s community of life viable. 

Article originally appeared on OneEarth sustainability amid climate change (http://www.theoneearthproject.org/).
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