Will You Be Diagnosed With Mysticism In 2021? By Carolyn Baker

Will You Be Diagnosed With Mysticism In 2021? By Carolyn Baker

Many people live contentedly with mysticism for decades, and if you have the condition, it is not recommended that you do anything differently going forward. People can live with mysticism, but only by surrendering to it daily. Resistance to your mystical impulses is contraindicated.

Collapsing Into The New Administration Amid Pandemic Lunacy, By Carolyn Baker

Collapsing Into The New Administration Amid Pandemic Lunacy, By Carolyn Baker

  At least once a day I hear someone say, “You can’t make this stuff up” which is yet another way of expressing the incredulity so many of us feel as we witness the cultural madness in which we seem to be suffocating. We have just weathered the most turbulent...
The Death Of Certainty In A Torrent Of Trauma, By Carolyn Baker

The Death Of Certainty In A Torrent Of Trauma, By Carolyn Baker

Among other things, we may want to simply sign up to become students of uncertainty, or as the Buddhists say, “When you’re falling, dive.” This will require intention and practice. It does not require us to become news anorexics, but it does require us to temper our projections into the future as we practice staying present. This also gives us an opportunity to observe how attached we are to outcomes.

A World Upended: Who Are We Going To Be? By Carolyn Baker

A World Upended: Who Are We Going To Be? By Carolyn Baker

Have you been saying it as long as I have? “I wish collapse would just begin so that people would wake up, and we could just get on with it.” Well, here we are. Is this what you were hoping for? Or are you among the “collapsitarians” who have been studying collapse for years and are now saying, “But I didn’t think it was going to look like this.”

Authoritarianism And The Lost Nobility Of Soul, By Carolyn Baker, Part 2 In The Series: “Reclaiming Inner Authority In An Authoritarian Age”

Authoritarianism And The Lost Nobility Of Soul, By Carolyn Baker, Part 2 In The Series: “Reclaiming Inner Authority In An Authoritarian Age”

Our nobility of soul often erodes as we under-value or ignore our own self-care. A toxic culture does not value physical, emotional, or spiritual health because it is a culture of death. In that milieu, our “health” either becomes equated with status, youthfulness, sexual attraction, and control, or it becomes yet another avenue for cultivating and feeding narcissism. However, as we increasingly value life and our deepest humanity—our nobility of soul, we find ourselves taking better care of ourselves through diet, exercise, adequate sleep and rest, and space for reflection, solitude, and spiritual practice. Not only is self-care “good for us,” it flies in the face of a culture of death.

Reclaiming Inner Authority In An Authoritarian Age: An Essay Series By Carolyn Baker: Walking And Chewing Gum Simultaneously

Reclaiming Inner Authority In An Authoritarian Age: An Essay Series By Carolyn Baker: Walking And Chewing Gum Simultaneously

While the milieu of industrial civilization with its worship of technology, has always sent us engraved invitations to regard external forces as the final authority and minimize or disparage our inner authority, I believe that not since the 1930s in Europe have we seen such blatant burgeoning of capitulation to external authority as we are currently witnessing.

Blithely Ignoring The Heart Of The Matter, By Carolyn Baker

Blithely Ignoring The Heart Of The Matter, By Carolyn Baker

As I have said many times, for me it matters because how collapse unfolds is just as important as the fact that it unfolds. A fascist dictatorship in any country will cause collapse to unfold in unique ways. My work has always been about educating and fortifying others emotionally and spiritually to cope with collapse more resiliently than we might without specific psycho-spiritual tools. The tools we need to navigate the protracted degradation and destruction of the natural environment where there is little authoritarian repression are different than the tools we need to live in a society where food and water might be rationed or we are imprisoned in a work camp or we are living in a constant state of domestic terror.

Idle And Blessed On A Summer Day, By Carolyn Baker

Idle And Blessed On A Summer Day, By Carolyn Baker

On Summer Solstice I always come back to this poem, and if I begin reading it aloud, I’m already crying at the end of the first sentence: “Who made the world?” Why the tears—particularly on that question? Strangely, the most important word in that question is not “who,” but “made.” It is a question of “pure amazement” which is another phrase Oliver uses in other places. It is brimming with innocence and awe. It is the sigh of speechless reverence—pure worship as she declares that “I know how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass.” And then, “how to be idle and blessed.”

Grieve, Play, And What? By Carolyn Baker

Grieve, Play, And What? By Carolyn Baker

We easily associate empathy, compassion, an open heart, support, cooperation, honesty, integrity, and gratitude with love, but how about boundaries, limits, grief, anger, discernment, comfort with not knowing, and a commitment to working on our personal and cultural shadow?