A parable recounted by Ron Pevny
Once upon a time—very much like these times, on a beautiful life-supporting planet—very much like ours—that world’s people found themselves in profound crisis. Many of them felt that their most cherished values were being brutally assaulted by unconscious people with great political power, and by great numbers of their fellow humans who were in thrall to the beliefs and consciousness of those leaders. And they saw the life-sustaining dynamics of their planet being in great danger from these leaders, but even more so from a way of thinking and relating to their planet home that seemed to work in their past but was clearly no longer an option. Many began to realize that their own habitual attitudes and behaviors were contributing to the multiple crises.
Whether they had such realizations or not, most of the residents of that planet found their lives in turmoil as the world they used to know seemed to be crumbling around them. Fear, depression, and hopelessness were constant companions of a great number of the people.
The time of crisis they were living in had long been foretold by the Wisdom Keepers of their indigenous cultures, and more recently by many wise people widely acknowledged as their contemporary visionaries. The central message shared by all of these was that a new chapter in human evolution on their planet was seeking to emerge. The people were told that that these were the times when a long envisioned leap forward in consciousness was possible, but that this could happen only as non-life supporting structures and ways of thinking and being were dismantled, at the individual and collective levels.
Their visionaries told them that the next stage in their evolution required that the old order was necessarily and painfully breaking down, with them having to experience what felt like the slow death of the world and way of living they had known—the kind of world in which many of them had previously envisioned doing their work of growth and service. Now, rather than seeing their inner work as something to ft into a familiar and fairly predictable life, they were being forced to up the ante.
Many of them who were the Elders or aspiring elders in their communities were coming to realize that they had an especially important role to play. That their commitments to modeling wholeness in their communities were urgently necessary for their personal and collective wellbeing, but even more so for a future in which their descendants could thrive in healthy communities on a healthy planet.
Many of the wisest among them were recognizing that their commitments to wholeness supported strong evolutionary energies seeking to manifest on their planet at a pivotal time when crisis was heralding the transformation that was very possible, but not assured. They were indeed perched on a knife edge between collapse and transformation, and their choices could make all the difference.
Their visionaries reminded them of the importance of trusting that these transformative energies guided and strengthened them as they did their part to contribute to a renewed world for the generations that would follow them. While in their world the darkness of resistance to transformation was becoming increasingly powerful, also extraordinarily powerful at that time were spiritual energies that supported their commitments to their growth and to the giving of their gifts in service to community and planet. The message was strong and unequivocal. They were evolution’s agents of transformation. Amid growing darkness, both the shining of their light and their reluctance to do the work of growth and service were more significant than ever.
If they were going to tip the scales toward a transformed humanity, their Elder gifts, growth and deepened consciousness were necessities. And gifts given from wholeness—in attunement to the voice of Spirit within them–were more much more powerful and effective than reactions and responses to crises that carried their unhealed energies.
Humanity on that planet was living in the portal between two worlds. They were in the midst of individual and collective rites of passage. As many of them navigated their individual passages between their former lives and the life of an Elder or Sage, at the same their time collective humanity was seeking to pass through this evolutionary portal. More and more of them were remembering what their Wisdom Traditions had known—that growth happens only in such portals. That to pass through they must allow themselves to fully experience all the dynamics that occur in the difficult yet necessary journeys from endings to new beginnings. Only in this way could their hearts and minds be fully open to the vision and compassion needed for true renewal. A butterfly emerges only after the caterpillar’s life seems to come to an end. Small tweaks don’t transform the caterpillar.
Their Wisdom Traditions taught that for passing through such portals, the support of community is absolutely necessary. Many of their people had Sacred Gatherings to experience the support of conscious community, as they explored the dynamics that they, and now we, will experience to some degree or other in the portal.
In sacred circles, on the one hand, they shared with each other about:
Endings…Grief…Loss…. .Anger…..Numbness…. Hope and Hopelessness…Loneliness and Need for Community….. Overwhelm with toxic news and images…… Confusion about what it means to be an Elder and even questioning what is the point in doing often difficult inner work.
But on the other hand they shared how they were also are experiencing Visions of what a conscious world can be…..How they were getting in touch with deep Desire to make a
difference….. How they were focusing on becoming aware of the many emerging projects, structures and ways of thinking that reflected the life supporting qualities of the world seeking to be born. How they were focusing on Envisioning a world in which all the generations dreamed, gave their gifts, and grew toward wholeness together.
And they reminded each other of one of the biggest gifts of the grief they experienced and the losses they mourned in their passage between their old and new worlds—the Gift of being increasingly and acutely aware of what they hold most sacred and valuable and of their deep commitment to working to create a healed world that reflects these sacred qualities..
I don’t know how their story ended. That page is missing from the record. And I don’t know how ours will end. It is likely that none of us reading this will be alive to see that ending. But our descendants will be. They need us to shine our lights now more than ever. They need us to do the inner work of growth, to give the gifts our souls know are ours to give in these times, and to stand up for what is truly life-supporting in our current world as we pass through the Portal between today’s chaos and a more conscious world. They need us to become today’s Elders, and for our descendants, Ancestors who cared.
