Introduction
Climate change, ecological devastation, economic and political instability, resource wars, rising violence and despite all of our reason and logic human beings are unable to stop this civilization from destroying the biosphere of the Earth. We are experiencing the collapse and death of the stories forming the ground of our present beliefs in human progress, justice and equality. Humanity and the natural world are poised at the edge of the abyss, the place where each of us is at the edge of things, the crumbling lip, where the ground is not so sure, at the transition zone between what is known and the great unknown. We associate the abyss with extremity, chaos, destruction and death, a nasty place, a place to be avoided at all costs, hellish. Our anxiety and fear want us to pull back from the edge, from the edge of uncertainty and deny that we are there, that it even exists.
Yet Mystery also lives in this place and calls to us, all of our lives.
Wait what is that? Leaning over the edge scared I might fall, I cup my hand to my ear to listen. There can you hear it? Yes, at the very bottom of the pitch black void is the faint bubbling of water. My imagination goes to work. A bubbling voice bringing new water from deep down, from the depths, a spring which sings new life into being, a new future. But way up here at the edge the voice can barely be heard. Something stirs in my heart. What? Ridiculous, you want to go down there?
To hear the voice more clearly is not for the faint of heart. A descent is required, one must go on a journey into the darkness to find this spring, to hear its song, to drink of its waters. This is a journey into the abyss of you. It is here that one finds their own unique soul song. Some die in the attempt and at bare minimum if the journey is undertaken with courage there will be death, of this I am certain. A death of old stories, the beginning of an end to ways of being that are like death to the heart of life, to your heart and to the tree of life within oneself and the world.
There are various possible paths in to the depths. I will describe one that is less known, walked less than others. It is here that our story begins. It begins with a message for you the reader.
Be content, at home, with the Mystery of what you read, “be” in the uncertainty, doubt and vulnerability the story evokes in you. With luck you might notice yourself analyzing what you are reading using our dying society’s stories and ways of understanding . Stop if you can; just be in the tale. And one other thing, listen for the sound of the tiny watery voice in yourself. That’s all I ask of you, the story will do the rest.
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