Community

Consider what if:

• 95% of the world’s climate scientists are correct?
• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommendation to halve emissions by 2030 is both accurate and essential to protect Mother Earth?
• It is, indeed, impossible to have perpetual growth on a finite planet? After all, growth must stop when boundaries are met.
• Our institutions and politicians are systemically unable to make the changes that the scientific community, specifically the IPCC, say are necessary?
• When we consider Extinction Rebellion, we focus on the first word of their name, rather than the second?
• We really could live in a beautiful, joyful and harmonious relationship with each other?
• We learn to love living in peace with Mother Earth?

I can feel the change, as a boy I knew that change was coming, did you feel it too? Perhaps this explains my life choices of 4 careers, perhaps I chose a life of practicing change for the changes that I felt were coming. With computers and the IT world I implemented change; as a salesman, I initiated change; as a teacher, I instructed change. Now I advocate change. Change is that moment behind which is the old and before which is the new. It is a switch, the old dies and the new is born. If you dislike change then this planet and this decade will be very uncomfortable for you. For change is here and the time is now for change, can you feel it?

The pandemic has made us all change in some way, has your experience made you more compassionate or more fearful? Consider the changes you chose: those shoes you bought, that date you went on, the next job you took. Other changes are bigger and you contribute as part of a team: the sales proposal; your department’s or company’s budget; the last election. This change, the one that is here and now, is the biggest change in several millennia, for this change is not dictated by us, by humanity; this change has been decided upon by Mother Earth Herself. For me it is an exciting time because I have studied and practiced change all my life, I have even written a book about it. John F Kennedy said: “change is the law of life and those who look only to the past and present are certain to miss the future.” That wise old Greek, Socrates said: “the secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” I say, with Mother Earth calling out for change and Her voice becoming ever louder and more insistent it is best we listen and follow Her instructions! Some of us have become some caught up with their own cleverness that we cannot hear Her voice; we have become so disconnected that we do not understand Her message that is in the power of Her storms, Her wildfires, Her increased temperatures, Her shedding of ice and Her viruses. Like all good Mothers She will continue to inform and instruct us with ever stronger messages until we make the changes She is calling for.

Humanity’s rise to dominion over the planet is typically explained by our intelligence and opposable thumbs; these evolutionary advantages have suited us very well, for tool making is our trademark and perhaps our downfall if the Earth Changes continue. Perhaps our most significant evolutionary advantage, although rarely mentioned, has been our ability to work together, a social adaptation leading to our ability to live in community. The mutual support and learning has allowed us to grow and prosper; when threatened by much more deadly species we found that we could prevail simply by banding and bonding together. Tool making made us ever more dominant. We think of weapons when we consider this aspect of our evolution but the invention of writing was much more powerful. Writing allows communication and learning through the generations, our advances are never lost even when the civilisations who created them disappeared.

It is interesting to note that as humanity focused ever more on our ability to make increasingly complex tools our ability and desire to live in community has lessened, exacerbating the current Narrative of wetiko’s consumerist separation. Indeed, the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher famously stated “there is no such thing as society”. Perhaps it is easier to make tools rather than live in a community? Certainly, with enough tools and the power to use them then there is less need for community. Our communities now are many and tend to be transient: our neighbourhood, our work, our religion and our hobbies. These are communities that are together for a specific purpose and we move between them during our day; they are focused more on function rather than support.

Now we reflect on the possibility of our own civilisation failing. A world-wide civilisation, so if it fails then we run the risk of the whole world failing along with our last creations and, inevitably, ourselves. It is a bleak prospect to consider. Mother Earth understands this and she has gifted us the time to reflect on our behaviours with the recent Covid-19 pandemic. Lockdown has been used by many to pause and reflect upon what is important; a great many people have used their enforced idleness to take themselves back into nature, our true home after all, and reconnect with Her delights and gentle healing. Did you take this opportunity to reflect on what is important for yourself and your family? Did you find an opportunity to reconnect with Mother Earth? Did you notice how your own community changed over this time? Did your community become more supportive and inclusive? Did you find an opportunity to contribute? Change however is inevitable, especially now. Perhaps we should focus our mind’s eye on the new rather than scramble to protect as much as we can of the old. It is for certain that our systems’ failure will be because of aspects, perhaps many aspects of the old and it is foolish to keep hold of those things and ideas that caused the failure. Because change is inevitable, by focussing on the new you will have an opportunity to shape whatever new ideas we will follow; you will be able to add your own ideas into the mix about what the new will actually look like.

We at the Imaginal Collective are recommending we improve our resilience against the real possibility that our civilisation may collapse by investing into community. It is belonging to a community that we derive much of our comfort and security. In belonging to a community we also find a measure of identity and almost all of our purpose. If we have to walk away from all the power we generate at the moment then it is only in community that we will be secure and continue to survive.

This website has been designed to support those who are interested in creating a new way of living. The first community we are making is this online virtual community. We ask you to make yourself known to the other members of the community and where you are located so that smaller, geographical communities can emerge. We ask you also to state your skills and also your interests so that we can connect you to those people within the online community. The starting point are the Being States. We know that to live and interact successfully together we need to share a set of values, values we hold so closely and strongly that we start the process of embodying them. Your spiritual path is yours to choose because again, we know that true unity can only come through embracing diversity.

The purpose of this website and its members is to share ideas. Ideas about how to build the new. Ideas about how to improve our current communities and also how to build brand new ones, indeed a network of new communities. This is a place for new ideas and new ways of doing things. We expect strong views and opinions and as a result we expect disagreements. We welcome all these because it is only through robust discussion that we can all learn. We also insist upon your agreement and adherence to the Being States: there is no place in love, peace, beauty, unity and joy for us to disrespect each other. The Imaginal Collective Council itself will bring their own skills, especially around the Being States. We will provide guidance, education, healing and continuous development of this platform to meet what we expect to be a demand for ever increasing sophistication, so that all the ideas can be referenced and found with ease. We will also provide relevant courses both on this platform and various retreats, healing and meeting places. Our plan is to allow these activities to be shared and propagated around the country and around the world so that an ever-growing online community can be supported in the goal of building a new way of living that supports Mother Earth and reverses the damage that humanity has caused over the last few hundred years.