Category: spirituality

We live in a time when people are justifiably questioning everything, including the reality we thought we knew, and the legitimacy of what or whom we once listened to. Both the global data and news, as well as discussions with our nearest and dearest, tell us that humanity is experiencing more difficulties and disruptions in politics, economics, culture, health and the environment than in past decades. Our questioning is underlain with justifiable anxiety, whether explicit or suppressed. It is true that some fears are overblown or manufactured, but some of our fears are well-founded, such as the extent of ecological destruction and technological control. But questioning life from a state of fear, sometimes suppressed into either anger or paralysis, can lead to poor insight as well as our vulnerability to being manipulated in new ways. Instead of a defensive response, we can explore what personal qualities and approaches we would like to cultivate in ourselves, to live well and helpfully as societies are increasingly typified by limits, loss, and instability. With better ideas on that, we could then encourage positive change in the admired qualities in our societies – or at least in some of the educational and training activities that people experience. With this essay I will attempt to feed into such an agenda, by sharing ideas on positive personal orientations for these troubled times. 

Initial awakenings

In 2018 I became convinced that, because of ecological and related pressures, the collapse of modern industrial consumer societies is inevitable — and not in the distant future. After I went public about that, a lot of people reached out to me for advice. My main response was to connect them with each other, and so a ‘deep adaptation’ community and movement was born. I also provided some basic advice, in the form of 14 steps in the process of making sense of one’s life after being exposed to troubling analysis on environmental and societal futures. Immediately, I wanted to encourage more loving responses from people who were awakening to the situation, and warned against some of the ‘maladaptive responses’ I believed I had begun to witness. I also noticed and listed the main ways people were responding to news of impending or unfolding societal breakdowns:

• “Some people drop everything and change what they do and where they live. 
• Others postpone any decisions or life changes. 
• Others try to transition in a gradual way to a new way of life, not shaped by their previous assumptions and aspirations. 
• Others try to create options, perhaps a Plan B, while they continue with the Plan A of their lives, perhaps with a little less relish and some growing dissonance. 
• Others decide to make no changes and live the same way but with an added awareness, gratitude and sensitivity.”

Before taking a year away from my university job to study the latest climate science, my career over the previous 20 years had primarily been on environmental issues. After the shock of discovering the situation was worse than I’d known, my attention switched onto how this could have happened. What drove the destruction of our living home, numbed us to the consequences, and disabled our attempts to fix it? Answering those questions involved both a systemic focus and a personal one: I looked into how I’d been shaped by my culture to participate in the mess. The result was a summary of the deep assumptions in modern life that damage our way of relating to each other, wider nature and the sacred. For each habit of thought, I suggested a different approach. Over time, I began to regard this as liberation from systems of ‘Imperial Modernity’ (Box 1, at end). 

What has helped me over the years has been meeting people whose awareness of collapse meant they changed their lives significantly in ways they became grateful for. They aren’t being apathetic because they think modern societies are doomed. Instead, they seem to be brave, caring and creative people. Many awakened to the fragility of life and the redundancy of their past deference to dominant norms. I was moved to write a chapter in my book, celebrating such people  as masters, not victims, of ‘doom.’ I went on to produce a fledgling list of “Doomster Characteristics”.

Since sharing those previous reflections, I have noticed that being ‘collapse aware’ is becoming more widespread and mainstream, involving people from all walks of life, all personality types, and situations. In that context, it can be useful to explore positive personal approaches, or orientations, for anyone to adopt in this predicament, whatever their situation. That might help us help others as this way of looking at the world moves out of a sub-culture and into the mainstream. 

As part of that move into the mainstream, the terms ‘polycrisis’ and ‘metacrisis’ are increasingly being used by some commentators. I see the utility of the term ‘metacrisis’ in pointing to the interrelatedness of the troubles, and to an underlying crisis in the common assumptions, values, beliefs, norms and habits of our societies. Unfortunately, some social commentators avoid that deeper critique when they use the term ‘metacrisis’ to speak of a degradation of the traditional values and economic structures which privilege people like themselves. Such a defensive reaction can be welcomed by elites, as it avoids a deeper reckoning that could lead to global political movements that challenge existing power structures. I think that would be a massive missed opportunity. Instead, we can dive deeper into what to learn from the mess. Therefore, in recent months, I explored healthy forms of masculinity and authentic forms of feminism, in a world suffering from past patterns of behaviour. Now I want to add to the conversation with ideas on the beneficial orientations towards life, from any of us, anywhere, with any identity. Clearly my ideas emerge from my own cultural and biological context, so I hope they feed into a creative evolution of ideas and approaches. 

Orientations for reckoning with fragmenting worlds

Over the years, due to the kind of person I am, I have been attempting to make sense of what it is about some people I meet, which makes them able to face the shit and do something meaningful about it. I have done that as a scholar who is no longer an academic. Professionally trained in methodology, and aware of libraries-full of theories and evidence on what we work on, academics tend to hold ourselves back from sharing insights on what we learn through being reflective in life. And yet, if we are curious, well read, attuned to the nature and limits of any knowledge claims, and interested in systematising ideas, then we have some of what it takes to make sense of our everyday experience. In academia that is sometimes called autoethnography, or living theory, amongst other categories. Those methods involve significant requirements for documentation and analysis. That produces analyses which are too verbose for a non-academic reader. Yes, even more verbose than me. For the following list of personal approaches, or orientations, that I have been observing in many collapse-aware people, I don’t claim extensive systematic research. Instead, they can be treated as hypotheses. I encourage you to reflect on whether you can identify some of these orientations in yourself, whether consistent or not, and whether they feel aspirational for you. 

Reality-facing: the willingness to recognise and process difficult truths without denial or premature reframing into optimism. This matters because avoiding painful realities only deepens long-term harm, whereas facing them enables genuine response. Unlike the patriarchal habit of performing our invulnerable control, a personal orientation of reality-facing means we return to the courage to see clearly even when it is uncomfortable. This quality is widespread amongst the collapse-aware movement, which is why I previously described “courage” as a key characteristic.

Emotional literacy: developing our capacity to allow waves of feelings of anxiety, grief, or dread, without personal collapse or displacement. This arises from a sense of ‘compassion’ for self and others, that I have often witnessed and celebrated amongst the collapse aware. This is important because unprocessed emotions often leak into blame, denial, or paralysis; learning to feel without falling apart builds our resilience. It departs from the societal norm that equates emotional expression with weakness, instead treating the full range of feelings as a source of intelligence rather than shame.

Critical wisdom: the ability to let go of past assumptions while not becoming manipulated by factions of power, through integrating four key ways of knowing about oneself and the world. Those ways are logical reasoning, mindfulness, intuition and critical literacy. That last one involves our ability to see how language shapes our thoughts in ways that reproduce systems of domination and exploitation. This is important because modern societies typically privilege a single narrow form of rationality while dismissing intuition or embodied knowing as unreliable. This capability is so important for doing anything useful after awakening to collapse, that I wrote the whole of Chapter 7 on it in Breaking Together. Since then, it has become even more important as AI is used to create manipulative content.

Kinship responsibility: recognising our interdependence – with people, sentient creatures, ecosystems, natural forces and future generations – and acting accordingly. This is vital because no one survives or thrives alone, yet societal structures often reward individual dominance over connection. Replacing the pretence of autonomous mastery with a cherishing of our interbeing and mutual responsibility is a joyful invitation from these difficult times. This shift in understanding of the self, as non-separately interconnected with all, is something I pointed to in my articulation of liberation shifts in patterns of thought (Box 1). 

Organic meaning: releasing a personal identity based on assumptions of progress in favour of presence, service, self-expression, and participation in living systems. This matters because the modernist fiction of endless linear progress fuels burnout and exploitation, as well as the denial of our challenging reality. Instead, turning toward presence and participation frees us from the anxiety of always needing to become something else, whether as an individual or collective. That is why in my book I wrote about this as an actual freedom from the ideology of progress. 

Numinous adaptability: the capacity to adjust our identity, aims and behaviour in response to changing realities, without losing one’s ethical grounding, and welcoming the opportunities for spiritual transformation. This form of adaptability can include letting go of plans, roles, and expectations that no longer fit, while remaining responsive rather than reactive. What makes this adaptability ‘numinous’ is that it’s not about optimisation or survivalism, but one’s integrity and awakening under changing circumstances. This is important because rigid attachment to past roles, identities and aims can make matters worse when situations change. But it is more important than that, as the challenge of these times is a massive invitation to explore the deepest truths of being. That includes not just exploring ‘how do I wish to be in these times’, but what is the ‘who’ that is asking. The ultimate deep adaptation is therefore numinous, spiritual, adaptation. Something, I will return to in a moment. 

It is my hypothesis that these orientations are how we can ‘reckon’ better with metacrisis and collapse: Reality-facing, Emotional literacy, Critical wisdom, Kinship responsibility, Organic meaning, and Numinous adaptability. I want to offer these six orientations as part of the deep adaptation framework, to complement the six questions for reflection on personal and collective changes (the 6 Rs of deep adaptation). The 6Rs give us a way to talk about responding to collapse whereas the 6 orientations can give us pointers on how, and who, we seek to be as we respond. 

Heartfulness as the base

The list of orientations is not comprehensive, as other qualities and approaches to life are important. Various wisdom traditions have pointed to them for millennia. Those traditions ask us to explore a deeper source for positive ways of living in the world. That involves our state of consciousness, so we naturally live with a general ‘heartfulness’. How those heartful ways of experiencing life can occur more widely and consistently is an important question, especially as religions have a mixed record of cultivating positive behaviours in societies. 

It is no surprise that as concerns spread about the state and future of the world, more people are asking themselves the deepest questions: what is the nature or substance of my being, does the universe and my physical life have meaning, why do I yearn to know such things, and am I even able to comprehend them? What comes from such searching is not necessarily a new and powerful foundation for pro-social behaviour. In the confusion and rush of life, people can feel drawn to voices telling us to believe a particular story and try to be “good” according to that story. Instead of that, I have seen the truth and benefit of experiencing ourselves as part of the flow of life. 

Discussing this topic, as well as my previous essays on the healthy masculine and feminine, Reverend Stephen Wright wrote to me that: “The mystic-contemplative way awakens us to being free of our characters, even if those might be healthier versions of identities we have been given or chosen. Rather than trying to teach our characters to be more virtuous, in general or for these times, the mystic-contemplative way transforms the behaviour of the character through another means. It helps us remember and experience the depths of reality, which are made of love, which then leads naturally to compassionate action.”

Some people have concluded that belief in a divine being, or in all of life being divine, is key to inspiring a heartful approach to life. Such faith can be the way for them to experience universal love. Another way for heartfulness to arise in us is by coming to notice that the way the universe exists is demonstrating universal love. That involves reaching an acceptance and gratitude for who we are, our mortality, the mortality of our loved ones, and our lack of ultimate legacy, within a perpetually changing universe that is both wondrous and mysterious to us. It can take some time to reach gratitude, not just acceptance, for those aspects of reality I’ve just listed. Gratitude for mortality? For the mortality of our loved ones? For our lack of ultimate agency? For a perpetually changing universe? For a universe that is wondrous but by the fact of being beyond our comprehension? Gratitude for all of that? It can sound strange at first, but upon reflection, the way the universe exists, in cycles of life and death, with its joys and losses, contains the gift of vibrancy. If we regard (or experience) the world in that way, then everything about it has an underlying flavour of deep love, no matter how painful, awful, and seemingly unbearable, some moments and thoughts might be. 

A key insight from the contemplative strands of the world’s religions on the matter of ‘how to be good’ in these times is that we could focus less on striving to improve ourselves and more on letting go of our past concerns. With this in mind, any positive human qualities or approaches, such as the orientations I have outlined in this essay, relate to innate human qualities that have been suppressed in us by cultural influences. Therefore, our path is not one of augmentation but of liberation. This aspect of our ‘numinous adaptability’, is something I’ll explore further in future essays. Previously, I discussed it a little in interviews, for Buddha at the Gas Pump by Richard Archer, for Reskillience, by Catie Payne, and for WiserNow with Carlota Guedes. A television documentary on my journey also explored similar themes. 

Enabling positive orientations to collapse

Not everyone responds well to becoming aware of metacrisis and collapse. Unfortunately, many institutions and people who are taking collapse seriously are seeking their audiences’ allegiance to culturally-specific stories of good and bad in ways that affirm their own identity as good and thus numb their existential pain. With that in mind, our opportunity, if we choose to accept it, is to promote alternatives to such dynamics, at whatever scale, so that more of us can respond in the positive ways we know are possible. Some resources for that exist in mystic-contemplative traditions and persons today. More tools and networks could be developed to help people discover such ideas. 

These days, my effort to enable positive orientations to collapse is the design and launch of peer mentoring within the Metacrisis Initiative. For that, I am building on the benefits and limitations of the professional coaching and life coaching methods I am aware of (which I explored in some detail previously). 

In our next Metacrisis Salon we will discuss the six orientations I have outlined in this essay. Joining us will be Dr. Josie Mclean, who has recently been recognised among twelve global pioneers of “regenerative coaching.” I will also be asking her how, in general life, she invites herself and others into positivity, creativity, and service, beyond the paradigm of fixing things and progressing. Then we will discuss the implications of bringing such ideas into professional activity as a coach. You need to be a member to join our conversation (info follows at the end). But if you can’t join either the salons or the peer mentoring, please consider helping them to grow, by taking out a paid subscription. This work is entirely financed by people like you who decide to support it. 

Box 1: Shifting damaging assumptions: escape to cosmos 

The culture of ‘imperial modernity’ shapes the human experience of the world to maintain hierarchies and drive expansion. This culture involves deep assumptions which lead to habits of thought and behaviour. Our liberation is helped by recognising them and considering alternatives. The habit of entitlement involves thinking “I expect more of what I like and to be helped to feel fine…” Instead, a quality of compassion, in this context, involves sensing that “I feel an active responsibility for any of my contribution to your suffering, without expecting to feel right, better, or worse.” The habit of surety involves thinking “I will define you and everything in my experience so that I feel calmer…” Instead, a quality of openness wishes that “I will keep returning to be curious about as much as I can, however unnerving.” The habit of control involves thinking “I will try to impose on you and everything, including myself, so I feel safer…” Instead, a quality of serenity involves allowing the feeling that “I appreciate the dignity of you, myself and all life, however disturbing situations might seem.” The habit of autonomy involves thinking and feeling “I must be completely separate in my mind and being, because otherwise I would not exist…” Instead, a quality of mutuality involves remembering “as this world has produced me and societies have shaped me, I will question all my understandings and ways of relating with others.” The habit of progress involves thinking and feeling “the future must contain a legacy from me, or make sense to me now, because if not, then when I die, I would die even more…” Instead, a quality of oneness awareness involves sensing “what is important is how I live more lovingly right here and now, without needing to believe that I matter or am improving.” The habit of exceptionalism means assuming “I am annoyed in this world because much about it upsets me and so I believe I’m better and/or needed…” Instead, a quality of solidarity involves acting from the part of you that knows “our common sadness and frustration arises from our mutual love for all life and motivates us towards fairness, justice and healing.” Taken from: How do we disentangle from destructive ideology? The cosmos remedy – Jem Bendell (2020) 

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