Consciousness Change: Why Collapse Awareness is Myopic

Consciousness Change: Collapse Awareness is only the beginning.

Is consciousness change realistic? Can anyone think of an example of a meaningful form of consciousness change, one that in recent times perhaps spread fairly quickly globally?

What about collapse awareness? Isn’t that a personal example of consciousness change?

Can you think of another form of consciousness change that affected us all deeply and also fundamentally changed the world? What about modern reason? The development of science?

The age of reason, also called the enlightenment project, was a form of consciousness change that began in 17th and 18th century Europe. Over the centuries it has become so thoroughly dominant as a mindset that we can hardly conceive of anything else. This form of consciousness change, a major cognitive shift into left hemispheric dominance, hyper rationality, instrumentalism, has blinded us to other alternatives and has become devastatingly, overwhelmingly powerful. Cold instrumental reason is not an enlightened mindset—just a very powerful and violent, but effective one.

Collapse awareness spread much more quickly than did modern Reason, because it is in fact a much smaller project and also because of the foundation of modern technology and modern communication systems.

Are you sure that collapse awareness is the only possible form of consciousness change and dramatic shift in awareness that is possible today?

How do you know this? Before you were collapse aware weren’t you, like everyone else, in denial?

Do you think it’s wise to continue with that same kind of small mindedness even after you have learned the life changing lesson of collapse awareness? You were wrong once. We were all wrong weren’t we? Why are you so confident that collapse awareness is the only valid form of consciousness change that is possible today? When you were in denial of ecological collapse was it because you knew the truth and really researched and listened to all the experts or was it simply because you were in an emotional form of reactive denial?

Are you sure there is not another major breakthrough in awareness awaiting us, something that is as true and meaningful and as impactful as collapse awareness?

Isn’t it possible that we could unlearn the instrumentalist and destructive bias of modern science and modern reason? Isn’t it just a frame of mind, after all?

Does it not make sense that many, many people throughout history have been working on this very problem for centuries? Are you confident that you should dismiss this deep, rich and diverse tradition of contrarian thinking, found in philosophy, medicine, the arts, literature, religion, and even science? There are many Nobel Prize winners who make this very point.

When you rule out the possibility of meaningful and rapid consciousness change you are simply being arrogant. Don’t make the same mistake twice.

I became collapse aware in my own way over 10 years ago and since that time I’ve been working as a historian, social theorist, and a manual therapist, a healer, to understand collapse— the collapse of the beautifully coordinated and dynamic human body. Do you think only the earth is collapsing and somehow the human body is exempt? This collapse was suddenly occurring not in old age anymore but in the children I was teaching in school. Neck, shoulder, and back pain, depression, diabetes and obesity, all these things are happening in young children barely approaching puberty. It is an epidemiological crisis.

The human body is our animal self and is that part of us which is closest to the Earth. I do not have the tools to talk about ecological collapse but I am able to talk about physiological collapse, which happens as a result of developmental as well as chronic and overwhelming trauma. I call it postural collapse but our posture is intimately and inextricably related to our mood, overall health and vitality, and to our cognitive function.

Collapse never happens in an isolated way. Ecological collapse is reflected in and fundamentally affects culture, society, cognition, and our own bodies. You may believe that it doesn’t apply to you and you may project outward that it doesn’t really matter in the world either. However this is very shortsighted and goes against the warnings and predictions being made by clinicians and epidemiologists studying the problems of sedentarism, obesity, heart disease, and the other lifestyle diseases that we seem to be unable to cure and which are progressing rapidly as a form of global pandemic.. Are you a physical body collapse denier?

It is easier to see collapse outside of ourselves rather than within. Do you deny the collapse of the human body but accept the collapse of the planet earth? It doesn’t take much empathy and we don’t have to recognize the intimate enemy of suffering when we only focus on the Earth. Such a position suits us well in our isolated and individualistic lifestyles.

The truth is that we are in denial. Denial is a fundamental function of pain, which vetoes awareness and movement in the area that is painful. Denial of our own physical predicament is deeply rooted. We are not just in denial of the effects of our economic system and industrial pollution. We are emotionally and irrationally in denial of our own inner predicament.

Pain vetoes awareness. Pain makes denial of our own inner collapse seem natural and inevitable but it is still denial and we are not making wise choices about where to direct our attention when we neglect ourselves. We can compensate and accommodate for this neglect for quite a while, until the supporting systems also become fatigued, and we lose the brilliant holistic redundancy built into our structure. We lose vitality. We lose hope.

You may want to dismiss the effects of collapse that occur within our own bodies because you believe there are bigger problems. However is there really anything that is bigger than and more important than your own mind and your own body, when your body is in fact the first and often only part of the earth that fully belongs to you?

“The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.”Paul Farmer

Paul Farmer is a physician who worked in Haiti and a well known expert on social suffering.

Why not start with your own life and your own body, because it is where we could all accomplish the greatest consciousness change, a profound evolutionary shift into sensitivity and caring and intricate interdependence?