This “Critical Mass” is the first chapter and it describes the awakening in human culture. The book came out in 1993 and at the time I can tell you that any regular talk at least in my experience about the true nature of reality was considered fringe to say the least, but things have changed. Once, in the nineties I saw a psychic who took my palm and smiled describing me as a “survivor.’ She told me there were many twists and turns ahead for humanity but that I and mine would be ok. At the time we were just emerging from The Cold War and the very fact that we have is in no small way a miracle in and of itself. When I really look at all the pitfalls and dangers humanity has escaped in my lifetime, I’m shocked that we are all still here. It would be no surprise to me at all if ever I learned beyond a shadow of a doubt that there were other timelines or realities where that is simply not the case. (More on that later too)!
2020 was for me the kind of year that traveling through felt like crossing some kind of a great divide. It started for me with a strange fascination that I couldn’t put down about Rick Gervasi’s Oscar hosting (as if I haven’t dropped enough random references thus far, but…). New Years has always caused me a kind of stress and Trump’s last year in office was no small burden to bear. Something about the mixture of Y2K trauma, the imposing countdown, and the chaos in Times Square, but I’m always a little braced for impact around that time. So when I saw Rick Gervasi cracking up at himself, shaking his head and muttering to people “It’s the last time” - I took it hard again. Beyond instincts that he seemed extra stressed and sad even it just struck me as a strange thing to keep repeating. I mean did “the last time” mean he won’t be in show biz anymore? Or the Oscars won’t survive the evolution of entertainment? Or we won’t all be here together anymore? (Maybe at least not in this capacity?)
Now, I looked into this. Turns out that mutter supposedly had something to do with Mr. Gervasi’s contention that he would not be hosting the Oscars ever again. At the same time however, I unearthed a bunch of Internet rumors about Gervasi’s “secret” membership to the Illuminati, and this did not in any way help quell my fears. No, it looked to me like Ricky knew something. And the events that followed seemed to confirm my suspicions. But maybe I was seeing what I wanted to see. The truth is none of this matters. It’s just the way it struck me. In hindsight, it matters simply because it mattered to me at that time. I don’t even care any longer what groups Ricky is a part of.
The first real fear that came up for me was Trump’s seemingly uninstigated bombing of General Qasem Soleimani. Iran is a nuclear power (at least they almost are) and why on Earth was he just starting with them? I literally cried and slept my entire family in our bed that night praying every second that no further harm would come from this. That morning I heard that bombs from Iran had been launched at a US base. WWI was started over the death of one man, and it seemed like WWIII could be sparked just as easily. My wife had already left for work and it was weighing so heavily on my mind, I decided to be honest with my oldest son and ask him to pray for these innocent soldiers now in harm’s way. (I didn’t reveal the true scope of all my fears) but we prayed together, and this isn’t an everyday routine for us. 20 minutes later cautiously driving my way to work I heard over the radio that the bombs had landed and that there had actually been zero casualties. Zero. I believe people were hurt and no doubt lives were altered. I don’t mean to trivialize that in any way. It was just that at the time, this seemed like a real miracle to me.
Soon after Australia was on fire. The virus shut down Wuhan, and a comet was feared to wipe us all out on Valentine’s Day. This unprecedented year quarantined New York City, appeared to unleash Murder Hornets in my Northeast, and swans of locusts in Africa. Equality Protests erupted all over the States as Trump nearly single-handedly disintegrated democracy. Now, there is a valid argument here to be considered about the propensity of people to attract the negative, the inclination of the press to prey upon that opportunity, a possible master plan in play of the dark elite to manipulate the masses as a means to boost or at least sustain their own wealth and greed in a calculated misguided effort to suspend insecurities. But nonetheless, it happened - it was happening. The world appeared to be in fast forward and nobody had the general blanketed assurances that they should be ok any longer.
Each Apocalypse required attention. And I believe each conveyed big lessons and bigger picture conundrums that need to be sorted out by each one of us individually. 2020 brought me back to honesty and trust. I took my time in quarantine to research and investigate sustainable products that I could use, afford, and get on subscription. I voted, even though I was still apprehensive about even touching anything outside of my house. I read current studies on Covid19 in the early months from primary sources on the Internet until I knew and understood the half life of the virus on different surfaces such as plastic and metal, and then I washed groceries I had delivered and adjusted my diet around the foods I could find. I trusted myself and worked hard with my wife and kids to draw boundaries we would staunchly protect no matter what the social cost. We made schedules for our children that considered the long term - school skill supplements, exercise and social time carved out as daily checklists, and structured independent studies. I drove near BLM protests and honked my horn in support. I talked to my neighbors, family and friends honestly and listened with an open heart about prejudice, privilege and justice. In hindsight I emerged with a tremendous new respect for the New York City Department of Education’s embrace of Critical Race Theory and decided White Fragility by Robin Dianeglo to be a must read for every white person in the “Taker world” (more on that when we discuss Ishmeal by Daniel Quinn).
In the end, 2020 was a transformative year. We’d collectively faced our fears. I faced my issues. I started writing this. But every single moment felt like a response to the way I’d handled the previous. I don’t feel responsible for all the chaos in 2020, but I feel like one feels after they pass a test. You carry the lessons learned, and the fear is easily forgivable. You emerge with pride. You emerge with empathy. But you never forget the experience.
So I’ve learned to trust coincidences as evidence that I’m doing the right thing. Likely in large part due to my upbringing (and despite the clumsiness of that blasé altar boy) that right thing often aligns with what Jesus would do. Jesus claimed to be sharing the “Way” which for me is really starting to look like that tightrope stretched out in front of me. I feel it’s by the grace of God that I’m ever able to recover from my falls, but who is God? What differentiates Jesus from other heroes of the underdogs? Does grace even differ very much from social and secular popularity? I’m aware that I’ve been both on and off this proverbial tightrope. I feel like I know the path now because I feel either on or off sometimes moment to moment, and I believe so can anybody who truly gives these thoughts and ideas a good college try. But perhaps there are other paths, other universes even. (More on that later too).
To this day these coincidences welcome me daily, hourly, back to my own higher self or my best path forward. It’s no coincidence that coincidences occur. They occur to all of us. A coincidence is an event with an ascribed meaning. Is one ascribing the meaning or deciphering it? Is the manuscript being revealed or manifested? (We’ll get back to that.) Is this statistically probable? Yes. Does that negate its value? Well that depends.
Do you value your own story? When you think of someone, do you attempt to reach out and let them know? When you chat with someone, are you honestly as present as you can be within yourself in the chat? Do you listen not only to what a person says but to the setting events around you both as they say it? What exactly moves you to speak? Do you make a concerted effort to communicate, honestly, and truly accept what results from that communication? Because if you do all or some - even one of these things, you may eventually find answers that seem directly correlated to your questions. Doors may begin opening after other doors to less desirable rooms close. It really gets fun when you are able to do this so often you literally come to expect these things. You’ll soon begin to trust the universe. There may be times when you are tested in this trust, but those are the moments of real growth, and opportunity. You may find yourself in situations that earlier seemed entirely hopeless, but now you know - you trust - that you can let go, and that you will be led to the next right thing. Some people appear to have this kind of relationship with their God. As an outsider it’s easy to dismiss that as either some lucky person’s privilege or naivete, but whether you are a God-fearing soul or not, it’s not likely your right to judge. It is somewhere between listening and judging that we find truth, meaning, presence, purpose and love. And that’s coming from a good place!
“The Longer Now” or the second insight in the book reveals that we are collectively realizing that each of our lives really do have a unique story. Collectively we have been searching and stepping outside our current paradigm to help us see the bigger picture, and that purpose has always been our collective endeavor. This perspective eludes many, but not generally for long. It is the story of humanity that is unfolding around us, but like our egos, we often don’t look at it objectively. We don’t often see that we’ve been climbing a kind of “Hierarchy of Needs” like Maslow purported, as we discover fire and invent the wheel. This perspective however, becomes erect upon fear, and insecurity as we control our food supply with agriculture (More on that when we discuss Ishmael by Daniel Quinn later), and attempt to conquer the world.
2020 was for me the kind of year that traveling through felt like crossing some kind of a great divide. It started for me with a strange fascination that I couldn’t put down about Rick Gervasi’s Oscar hosting (as if I haven’t dropped enough random references thus far, but…). New Years has always caused me a kind of stress and Trump’s last year in office was no small burden to bear. Something about the mixture of Y2K trauma, the imposing countdown, and the chaos in Times Square, but I’m always a little braced for impact around that time. So when I saw Rick Gervasi cracking up at himself, shaking his head and muttering to people “It’s the last time” - I took it hard again. Beyond instincts that he seemed extra stressed and sad even it just struck me as a strange thing to keep repeating. I mean did “the last time” mean he won’t be in show biz anymore? Or the Oscars won’t survive the evolution of entertainment? Or we won’t all be here together anymore? (Maybe at least not in this capacity?)
Now, I looked into this. Turns out that mutter supposedly had something to do with Mr. Gervasi’s contention that he would not be hosting the Oscars ever again. At the same time however, I unearthed a bunch of Internet rumors about Gervasi’s “secret” membership to the Illuminati, and this did not in any way help quell my fears. No, it looked to me like Ricky knew something. And the events that followed seemed to confirm my suspicions. But maybe I was seeing what I wanted to see. The truth is none of this matters. It’s just the way it struck me. In hindsight, it matters simply because it mattered to me at that time. I don’t even care any longer what groups Ricky is a part of.
The first real fear that came up for me was Trump’s seemingly uninstigated bombing of General Qasem Soleimani. Iran is a nuclear power (at least they almost are) and why on Earth was he just starting with them? I literally cried and slept my entire family in our bed that night praying every second that no further harm would come from this. That morning I heard that bombs from Iran had been launched at a US base. WWI was started over the death of one man, and it seemed like WWIII could be sparked just as easily. My wife had already left for work and it was weighing so heavily on my mind, I decided to be honest with my oldest son and ask him to pray for these innocent soldiers now in harm’s way. (I didn’t reveal the true scope of all my fears) but we prayed together, and this isn’t an everyday routine for us. 20 minutes later cautiously driving my way to work I heard over the radio that the bombs had landed and that there had actually been zero casualties. Zero. I believe people were hurt and no doubt lives were altered. I don’t mean to trivialize that in any way. It was just that at the time, this seemed like a real miracle to me.
Soon after Australia was on fire. The virus shut down Wuhan, and a comet was feared to wipe us all out on Valentine’s Day. This unprecedented year quarantined New York City, appeared to unleash Murder Hornets in my Northeast, and swans of locusts in Africa. Equality Protests erupted all over the States as Trump nearly single-handedly disintegrated democracy. Now, there is a valid argument here to be considered about the propensity of people to attract the negative, the inclination of the press to prey upon that opportunity, a possible master plan in play of the dark elite to manipulate the masses as a means to boost or at least sustain their own wealth and greed in a calculated misguided effort to suspend insecurities. But nonetheless, it happened - it was happening. The world appeared to be in fast forward and nobody had the general blanketed assurances that they should be ok any longer.
Each Apocalypse required attention. And I believe each conveyed big lessons and bigger picture conundrums that need to be sorted out by each one of us individually. 2020 brought me back to honesty and trust. I took my time in quarantine to research and investigate sustainable products that I could use, afford, and get on subscription. I voted, even though I was still apprehensive about even touching anything outside of my house. I read current studies on Covid19 in the early months from primary sources on the Internet until I knew and understood the half life of the virus on different surfaces such as plastic and metal, and then I washed groceries I had delivered and adjusted my diet around the foods I could find. I trusted myself and worked hard with my wife and kids to draw boundaries we would staunchly protect no matter what the social cost. We made schedules for our children that considered the long term - school skill supplements, exercise and social time carved out as daily checklists, and structured independent studies. I drove near BLM protests and honked my horn in support. I talked to my neighbors, family and friends honestly and listened with an open heart about prejudice, privilege and justice. In hindsight I emerged with a tremendous new respect for the New York City Department of Education’s embrace of Critical Race Theory and decided White Fragility by Robin Dianeglo to be a must read for every white person in the “Taker world” (more on that when we discuss Ishmeal by Daniel Quinn).
In the end, 2020 was a transformative year. We’d collectively faced our fears. I faced my issues. I started writing this. But every single moment felt like a response to the way I’d handled the previous. I don’t feel responsible for all the chaos in 2020, but I feel like one feels after they pass a test. You carry the lessons learned, and the fear is easily forgivable. You emerge with pride. You emerge with empathy. But you never forget the experience.
So I’ve learned to trust coincidences as evidence that I’m doing the right thing. Likely in large part due to my upbringing (and despite the clumsiness of that blasé altar boy) that right thing often aligns with what Jesus would do. Jesus claimed to be sharing the “Way” which for me is really starting to look like that tightrope stretched out in front of me. I feel it’s by the grace of God that I’m ever able to recover from my falls, but who is God? What differentiates Jesus from other heroes of the underdogs? Does grace even differ very much from social and secular popularity? I’m aware that I’ve been both on and off this proverbial tightrope. I feel like I know the path now because I feel either on or off sometimes moment to moment, and I believe so can anybody who truly gives these thoughts and ideas a good college try. But perhaps there are other paths, other universes even. (More on that later too).
To this day these coincidences welcome me daily, hourly, back to my own higher self or my best path forward. It’s no coincidence that coincidences occur. They occur to all of us. A coincidence is an event with an ascribed meaning. Is one ascribing the meaning or deciphering it? Is the manuscript being revealed or manifested? (We’ll get back to that.) Is this statistically probable? Yes. Does that negate its value? Well that depends.
Do you value your own story? When you think of someone, do you attempt to reach out and let them know? When you chat with someone, are you honestly as present as you can be within yourself in the chat? Do you listen not only to what a person says but to the setting events around you both as they say it? What exactly moves you to speak? Do you make a concerted effort to communicate, honestly, and truly accept what results from that communication? Because if you do all or some - even one of these things, you may eventually find answers that seem directly correlated to your questions. Doors may begin opening after other doors to less desirable rooms close. It really gets fun when you are able to do this so often you literally come to expect these things. You’ll soon begin to trust the universe. There may be times when you are tested in this trust, but those are the moments of real growth, and opportunity. You may find yourself in situations that earlier seemed entirely hopeless, but now you know - you trust - that you can let go, and that you will be led to the next right thing. Some people appear to have this kind of relationship with their God. As an outsider it’s easy to dismiss that as either some lucky person’s privilege or naivete, but whether you are a God-fearing soul or not, it’s not likely your right to judge. It is somewhere between listening and judging that we find truth, meaning, presence, purpose and love. And that’s coming from a good place!
“The Longer Now” or the second insight in the book reveals that we are collectively realizing that each of our lives really do have a unique story. Collectively we have been searching and stepping outside our current paradigm to help us see the bigger picture, and that purpose has always been our collective endeavor. This perspective eludes many, but not generally for long. It is the story of humanity that is unfolding around us, but like our egos, we often don’t look at it objectively. We don’t often see that we’ve been climbing a kind of “Hierarchy of Needs” like Maslow purported, as we discover fire and invent the wheel. This perspective however, becomes erect upon fear, and insecurity as we control our food supply with agriculture (More on that when we discuss Ishmael by Daniel Quinn later), and attempt to conquer the world.
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