Freedom in the Age of Collapse
From Deep Adaptation to Deep Awakening
It comes in waves.
We forget and then remember.
And every single time we really remember, we really let it all in, it’s there.
The jolt. The lurch. The shadow.
Our planet is burning and it is dying. Our life-support systems are rapidly collapsing. The future has never been darker.
Do you feel it? The drive to run away? To close this tab and stop reading?
Everybody feels it.
I invite you not to run, this particular time, and to stay with it. This is a post about the freedom beyond that shadow. It’s about facing it, living with it, working with it and growing from it. It’s about awakening through collapse into freedom. This is both possible and achievable for all of us. Walk with me…
We are living through an unprecedented historical moment in which the existence of our species — and all Life on Earth — is in question. You already know this, so I won’t elaborate. Naturally, the next question is: what are we going to do about it? On one level, we need to find material solutions to the material problems of a planet-wide system crash. Like how to feed 10 billion people when ecosystems collapse to a point where they can only support 1 billion. We’ve got mere tens of years to figure this one out — the obvious thing to do is to immediately pile immense human resources into building those solutions.
But there’s a problem. Our ability to arrive at the material solutions to collapse are blocked by layers of personal, social, political and economic barriers. The global elite have erected those barriers in order to further their own financial security, keeping our collective future on a track towards catastrophic collapse.
But these barriers can be broken. They can be climbed, and they can be torn down. A global community of people are already doing all they can to make that happen, while the exploited and sedated masses look on disapprovingly.
I personally feel that it is my task to join that global community and do everything I can to help it break through the barriers and chart the way to collective survival, and ultimately, freedom. But it’s the personal barriers that are right up there in my face, every day, when I go to do this work. It’s my existential fears and anxieties which define my relationship to life, death — and collapse. One of the toughest barriers here is the denial of death, which causes us to shut out the looming threat of human extinction.
In trying to break down these barriers, I’ve begun to glimpse a radical and beautiful realisation, as have so many other people around the world: if I can break through these barriers and arrive at a personal, existential freedom, then I can become free.
Free from all the imaginary limitations of human existence. Free from desires, delusions and preferences… like whether we arrive at the material solutions to collapse… or don’t. Whether society violently collapses or doesn’t. Whether we live or go extinct, suffer or flourish. If I am truly free, then none of these outcomes can affect that freedom. It’s unassailable, untouchable by any scenario that plays out here on Earth, in this human body.
This freedom is categorically not a state of inaction or not caring. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Arriving at existential freedom actually puts me in a place of being far more effective at breaking through the other barriers to helping the world (the social, political, economic and organisational barriers). Because doing so is no longer a struggle or a fight, or a desperate bid for personal survival. It’s meeting the sadness of a collapsing world with tireless energy, compassion and creativity. It’s being a light of love in a world of confusion.
I don’t claim to be at this point, not at all, but it’s a guiding star, a true North, that illuminates my path through the world. Once I really digested this possibility for freedom, I realised I should be pursuing it with all the dedication, perseverance and endurance I can muster. I point my life’s activity in the direction of collective freedom, and that’s all that seems to matter, to be honest.
Look at the people around you and ask: how can we lead the world to freedom?
How can I open to those who are already leading me there?
ADVERT | Wanted: awakened human beings for the collapse of civilisation.
The Path Ahead
The possibility of freedom in the age of collapse leads me to the conclusion that in order to address our global existential threats, we need:
- Personal existential development. Every single person on a path of awakening into existential freedom — allowing us to relate to a collapsing world with integrity, maturity, love, humour and energy. Practices that spur our existential development catapult us into real freedom — beyond fear, beyond denial — and massively increase our capacities for service.
- Existential politics. A politics where our existential issues are discussed and projects, policies and programmes are rolled out to address them — aiming to “support all people on their life’s journey and spur inner growth, mental health and strong moral integrity” (Hanzi Freinacht). Only by bringing our existential lives into everyday discussions — at home, in our workplaces, and in our political system — can we begin to help every member of society on their journey towards existential freedom. In an age of existential crisis, this should be a priority for all institutions (including governments).
Life After Fear
Our hearts are broken at the state of the world. We are innocent children who want only to love and be loved, thrust into a world of frustration, darkness and confusion. We are socialised to repress that basic human love and we are denied the love we crave from our fellow humans. We are taught to conform and obey. We are made to believe that death is wrong and unnatural. And so we live with unwelcome shadows on the edges of our awareness. We pursue immortality projects with desperation. We are anxious, depressed and despairing. We live in fear.
The future has never been harder to look at in the face. And yet we must, if we’re going to arrive at a vision for a brighter one (and then, against all the odds, to launch out on the wild and uncharted path of actually creating it).
As a Buddhist monk once related to a friend of mine: “your job is to be one fearless person amongst all the fear”. Those words have stayed with me. What if we take that in as a genuine possibility for our lives?
What if, every time fear arises, we say: “I see you, Fear. You are here with me. But you are not going to stop me. You are not going to stop us. Stay here if you like, but I am free from your chains.”
Beyond fear of death, fear of violence, fear of material scarcity and collapse — is the eternal and unassailable possibility of human freedom. It’s the freedom of acceptance, of non-attachment, of loving service to all life. Of play.
It cannot be reached by the the intellect, by reading books or articles like this one, but only by the heart, and practices that open and awaken it. By facing our existential fears, we begin to heal, to grow, to awaken through it all into a freedom beyond the dramas and stories of this world.
Collapse or no collapse, the doorway to awakening, to freedom, is wide open.
It always has been, and always will be.
The Open Door
I do not really believe in this idea of “deep adaptation to a world that is about to collapse”. I find greater freedom in the view of deep awakening to a society that has already collapsed, long ago, when humans started to consciously kill and exploit their family (the animals and plants), to destroy their living breathing body (the forests, the rivers, the swamps, the grasslands). When humans began to embark on their own self-destruction, and from there began to destroy one another. Our lives are built on a foundation of violence which we dare not look upon —on colonialism, racism, classism, and sexism, on rampant exploitation and psychological manipulation.
The age of collapse, the age of tragedy, is well underway. We’ve already gone insane. We are already killing each other. We are up on deck while there are slaves in the engine room. Some are children. Some are animals. We ignore their cries as we try to enjoy our cocktails. That ignoring and repressing of our complicity in violence is not without consequence. It damages us — it’s violence towards ourselves. It darkens our view of the world. It exhausts our empathy and blocks our capacity for compassion, leading to all manner of neuroses and delusions.
The majority of humanity has fallen into a warped reality, a state of imagined separation, continual self-destruction and self-repression. The pain of this process gives rise to a life of ongoing destruction, repression and exploitation of all which is believed to be other: people, animals, plants, and planet.
I find freedom in this view that social collapse is unfolding here and now because it allows me to drop this image of a looming apocalyptic shadow, somewhere off in the future, and allows me to tune into the shadow, the signs of collapse, that are right here in my present-moment experience.
These signs are everywhere.
They’re in my own mind, heart and body, in the traumas and injuries of being raised in a propaganda machine, a deeply repressive education system and deeply delusional society. And they’re playing out in every single person I meet in as many different ways. We all bear the scars of collapse and the confusion that has brought it about. It’s time to face them.
Drop the future and drop the stories. What do I feel, right now? What am I trying not to feel?
In doing this work, in sitting with unpleasant emotions, feelings and thoughts, I can bring them into awareness, integrate them, and work through my habitual reactivity to them (fear, aversion, anxiety, addictions, habits, coping mechanisms). It’s a process of healing the wounds of collapse in my own being. Holding the tragedy of the world in caring awareness.
It feels like remembering my humanity in a society that has spent decades trying to de-humanise me. I can begin to hold these repressed and forgotten parts of myself and others in compassion and love, and to see suffering as a golden thread leading to awakening. Meditation can be just that: feeling into the experience of suffering, the release of that contraction and grasping, and opening into freedom, moment by moment.
The perception of shadow “out there”, of the world appearing dark (due to collapse), is a result of unintegrated, unilluminated shadow “in here”… in me…
All darkness and imperfection
is a projection of unconscious darkness within ourselves.
Our task then
is to look within,
to make this darkness conscious
and see that
bathed in the light of awareness
all darkness dissolves.
This takes us beyond collapse. It helps us to see that other processes are unfolding.
Compassion. Awakening. Evolution. Art. Magic. Poetry. Mystery. Life.
Despite the darkness, we have our humanity, and every last droplet of it will brighten the path ahead. This is essential to realise, as it is becoming clear that we should be preparing ourselves for a descent into a hell-planet scenario. I’m not saying it’s certain. I am actually quite resistant to fatalistic interpretations of climate science and societal collapse (the word “inevitable” get’s thrown around a lot) but this is an exponentially accelerating planetary emergency. Revolutions and utopias are possible, even likely, but it’s not looking good. I’ve sketched elsewhere what might be up ahead; the spectrum of possible futures is mind-boggling, but I believe it’s only right that we’re preparing for the worst.
I take inspiration from Ksitigarbha (literally “Earth Womb”, called Jizo in Japan), a bodhisattva of Buddhist mythology who descends into the hell realms, into the depths of despair, insanity and violence, to serve and awaken the beings there. He lives in light amidst untold darkness. Because he knows that the darkness is not real, that it is simply the playing out of the hell-beings’ internal confusion and ignorance, which cannot affect him. Their violence, despair and insanity is a product of that ignorance — ignorance of the true nature of reality, self and world. The only relationship he can have to them, then, is compassion. And because he has undergone a process of awakening from ignorance, the path to freedom from this ignorance, which the hell beings are yearning for, is clear. This enables him to relate and communicate with the hell beings, lovingly guiding them to realise their own essential freedom. He actually isn’t “there” at all — without ego, without self, compassion just unfolds spontaneously, in harmony with all life. So the darkness doesn’t stain his calmness, love or freedom in the slightest.
Can we now step into this possibility for our own lives — becoming lights in the darkness? Perhaps we already are… and, luckier than lone Ksitigarbha, we are held in a community of millions of people on this path.
Onwards!
Freedom Within
People who have been surfing know that, when a great wave comes, the safest thing to do is to dive into it, descend, and come out the other side. They will also know the feeling when you burst up and out into air, light and dazzling visual beauty. You’ve been beaten about by underwater currents, you are gasping, but you have never been more alive.
Awakening in the age of collapse is, without question, an immensely unpleasant task. There is seemingly limitless ugliness in this world to face and to integrate. The great (heat)wave is already here, lapping at the edges of our awareness. It’s time to dive in. Into our shadow and existential fears — and to come out the other side into existential freedom.
The light of love, the pristine freedom of our true nature, is always here, illuminating these painful dreams of finite, separate and suffering selves. Of a dark and collapsing world. Illuminating them until they dissolve in transparent mystical awakening beyond all description. In realising that freedom, I am boundless, literally not bound by this world or body or any possible event or experience — including collapse. Another way to put this is that we move towards unconditional freedom — freedom is not conditional, i.e. does not depend on any worldly conditions.
“We become free. We do not give up society or rush off to a forest or cave. We remain where we are, only we shall understand the whole thing.” (Vivekenanda)
So this freedom is not a disappearing from the world. Paradoxically, our realisation of the unmanifest, of the transcendent, of the formless beyond, manifests in this world as art, poetry, humour, nonconformity, imagination, dedication, service, joy, abundance, praise, and compassion… it manifests as free human beings who do nothing but love and serve. Who live in a world that is infinitely richer, mystical and beautiful than the dreamworld of capitalism, confusion — and collapse.
So: what would happen if we drop this struggle
for mere biological survival
and instead work for the radical and compassionate sabotage of consensus reality
the welfare and liberation of all beings everywhere
and the re-instantiation of life as pure magic
pure play
pure art
pure love
pure freedom?
We’re up against the wall. But a moment often comes in hero stories when, tortured and choked by their enemy, when seemingly all is lost, the hero erupts into laughter. It is a laughter that says “You cannot touch me. Your every effort to harm me is futile. You are only harming yourself. I have nothing to lose. I do not fear death, like you do. My liberty and my morality are unassailable. I am free.”
In conclusion: freedom from the horrors and sorrows of collapse is both possible and achievable. This unconditional freedom is no other than unconditional love, the wellspring of unconditional altruism — compassionate service to all beings without condition, unaffected by whatever plays out here on Earth, in our momentary existence on a blossoming and collapsing world.
Meditate with patience and dedication.
“The way out is in”
- Thich Naht Hanh
One more thing. That global community breaking down the barriers? Yeah, they’re amazing. (Seriously) silly, playful, endlessly creative and dedicated like you wouldn’t believe. Above all, they’re fucking human, and there is nothing more refreshing, to me, than someone who really owns that and opens up about it. Working and playing and living with them, on this mad journey to try and build a beautiful future in the ashes of a collapsing world system, is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced. Unlike Ksitigarbha, who walks alone, there are thousands, even millions of people making this journey through darkness and into light. If you don’t feel you’re on that journey, reach out to those who are. They will be immensely glad to hear from you. And you will never, ever regret it. I can promise you that much. With Love, Will.
