The Crazy Wisdom Community Journal • May through August 2022 • Page 60
Love Letter
FROM OUR FUTURE “You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”
— Rumi
By Rosina Newton
changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.
(Editor’s Note – Rosina Newton is a regular and valued contributing writer for the Crazy Wisdom Journal. We haven’t typically published futuristic essays, but we have made an exception for this utopian thought piece, and particularly so as we begin to emerge from two years of a worldwide pandemic.)
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives.
Dear Ancestors of the 2020’s,
If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
I am a young person studying our history, and I felt inspired to write to you — from your future! We are learning in our history about your era, and I feel so sad about your plight. We all do, really. How dark and scary those times must have felt for you! I decided to write you a letter (because we can do that now) to let you know how things have turned out.
“I am a young person studying our history, and I felt inspired to write to you — from your future! We are learning in our history about your era, and I feel so sad about your plight. We all do, really. How dark and scary those times must have felt for you!”
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." —Howard Zinn Between your time and the New Renaissance:: •
Organic agriculture, permaculture, regenerative agriculture, native habitat restoration, and other Land-healing practices became the mainstream, while toxic, destructive, and extractive Land-use practices fell by the wayside.
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Businesses that disrespected their employees – or sold toxic, extractive, or senseless products – either evolved into a more conscious mission and method or simply failed.
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In our Thanksgivings many of us include gratitude for our Ancestors. We give thanks for all actions taken throughout history that enabled us to be alive now in our beautiful Earth Home. I hope this helps you have more hope, and understanding of how your actions led to our point in history.
An infamous billionaire from your time – I won’t tell you who! – had a spiritual epiphany. For the rest of his life he used his money and power to support solutions that helped reverse the ills. Many people became inspired by this, supporting powerful solutions to our survival.
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There was a blossoming of Community Groups, such as Imagination Cafes, citizen groups, book clubs, altruist teams, and more. These communities collaborated, and became forces for positive change.
THE NEW RENAISSANCE
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Education expanded beyond the “school,” including internet classes and what you called podcasts. Wise teachers emerged – from these venues and Community Groups – and became Leaders during The New Renaissance.
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Self-care practices became more widespread across all communities. Massage, yoga, Qigong, psychotherapy, nutritional psychiatry, mindfulness meditation, and self-expression through the Arts flourished. Along with other changes, this expansion sparked a health revolution.
We know humans have been changing since the beginning of time. In our Learnings, we look at historical moments—the biggest turning points—that helped humans and all of Life to survive to today. One of those turning points in our Land is your era, the 2020’s. Because of the intense stress of your time, so many changes began to happen. Right where you are right now, things must seem dire, in chaos, and irreversible. But no! The collective evolution actually sped up because of all the hardships humans weathered together then. We call your era the Dark Times, but what happens afterwards we call the New Renaissance! If it hadn't been for all of those extreme stressors converging at the same time, we might not have made it as a society to survive and thrive to today.
The New Renaissance is a really exciting period in history for us to study. We learn that in human history we usually didn’t change unless we experienced drastic suffering that forced us to make changes. That is what you're going through right now. There were several false starts and dead ends in your efforts to resolve all of these simultaneous challenges. The ultimate result was that the most effective solutions won out, helping humanity not only to cope but to heal and eventually thrive, individually and collectively. Where you are right now is where we mark the very beginning of the burgeoning new culture that grew out of all those emergencies. That’s why, when we got this assignment, I wanted to write to someone in your time. It really was a sea change in human society on so many different levels. We know the original story of The Hundredth Monkey was fictional, but it’s still a metaphor for what actually happens in our collective consciousness. Simon Sinek’s Law of Diffusion of Innovation explains the idea also: that when a certain number of people in a society adopt a new belief, only then will the belief spread enough so that most people put that belief into practice. People were forced by the extreme circumstances of the Dark Times to create positive changes and new belief systems, and take action based on healthier beliefs. “There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment we will continue to see. We forget how often in this century we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary
There are so many shifts that happened during this time I can only begin to tell you! I’ll just continue by sharing how we live today and some stories of how we got here. Then you can understand how transformative your time really is. I realize that much of what I will describe to you will seem foreign to you, so bear with me.
LEARNING As I hinted before, the Education Revolution began with a profusion of podcasts, webinars, and community education. Also, learning systems of your time—Montessori, Waldorf, and others—merged with what you called “homeschooling.” This all evolved into what we have today. You could call it our Life School. Our “school”—what we call Learning—is such an ever-present, cyclical experience that it is a little hard to explain to you because it is not really separate from our “work” or “family” or “play” life. It starts when we’re born, at home with our parents. As John Holt says in How Children Learn, “Learning
