Once upon a time, millions of idealists hopped onto the burgeoning New Age movement with the intention of saving the world.  

We saw that run-amuck materialism was a dire threat to our environment, as well as the driving force behind the disastrous economic disparity between nations. We recognized that the fearful side of fundamentalist dualism was destroying any chance of harmony among us, and fueling all manner of war and terrorism. We realized that our only real hope for a sustainable future lay in inspiring greater numbers of people to look at the world through different eyes, and approach our problems from a different angle.

Once upon a time, we idealists understood that we were on an important, lifesaving mission.  We understood that because we were the ones that knew what needed to be done, we were the ones meant to make it happen.  But not long after we began, the swell beneath us subsided, the movement foundered, and we simply -- hopped off.  We went our own separate ways.  We abandoned our mission, at least as an identifiable collective force, as if we had the perfect right to let it go.

It is surely no coincidence that at the same time as we idealists (about 24 percent of the population, remember) were rebuffing the New Age as well as all other attempts to identify us as a group, the conservative movement began gaining in power.  Conservatives (also about 24 percent of the population) had a mission of their own -- conservative rule of the land -- and they committed to it with true religious fervor, worked hard to make it happen. 

Lo and behold, their work paid off, handsomely.  As of 2008, conservatives have ruled the land and the airwaves for quite some time.  I wouldn’t begrudge them their turn if the consequences weren’t so horrifying. Corporations are now fatter than ever, the government is bankrupt, the economy is in recession, the country is still at war, and it is a toss up between nuclear terrorism or economic collapse or global warming over which will finish us off first.

At this point, it looks like we have plenty more destruction ahead of us.  And maybe destruction is indeed our destiny, as seen in the fevered visions of the apocalyptic prophets and prognosticators of old.   (When I wrote this in September 2008, hurricanes were devastating the Gulf Coast, terrorists just attacked the U.S. Embassy in Yemen, entire cities like Nashville and Atlanta were dry of gasoline, and “the worst financial crisis since the 1930s” had experts warning of the possibility of a “Great Depression II”).

Maybe we are meant for chaos and whatever lessons it has to teach us.  Maybe we do have to confront an end-time string of disasters in order to trigger the kind of inner change that will allow us to create harmony.

But before the skies turn dark with smoke and ash from bombs, and before the rising oceans begin seeping under our doors, we might do well to ask:  Do we have another choice?

The Millenium Myth

Most all spiritual mythologies feature some kind of “Millenium Myth,“ whether the Armageddon predicted in the Book of Revelations, or the Mayan’s famous 2012 end-of-time calendar, or the Hindu kalpas -- cycles of time in which the universe is continually destroyed and created anew.

Although these myths are often taken literally by those in Stage Two of spiritual growth, they are better understood as symbolic stories -- cautionary tales meant both to warn us of the danger of staying in the dark of ego-based paradigms, and to inspire us to reach for the light of a spirit-based worldview.  If we read the end-of-the-world myths in this way, they can help us understand that change happens through continuous cycles of contraction and expansion, death and rebirth.

Indeed, if we look back through the short history of our nation, we see that in the United States, cultural change has not been a steady march, but more of a surging back-and-forth of three steps forward, two steps back, in what is often called “the dialectic of progress.”  The colonization of America was fraught with many dark episodes of starvation and violence and witch hunts, but at the end of a long and grueling war for independence, a new nation, inspired by the idealistic premises of the Enlightenment, rose from the ashes to become the world’s first democratic nation. 

This relatively golden period of new, heady freedoms lasted through the 1830s with the flowering of Transcendentalism.  But shortly thereafter, the country lurched back into the dark with the aggressive defense of slavery, the Civil War, the corporate exploitation of workers and land, along with the tight social repression of the Victorian Era. The early 20th century saw another spurt of idealistic advances with the labor movement and women’s suffrage and the establishment of a social “safety net,” followed again by dark years, the rise of fascism and devastating war across the globe. 

Clearly, that deep, challenging darkness mid-century created the conditions for idealism and conscience to once again flourish in America, allowing great leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Kennedy brothers to emerge and inspire us to institute more social safety programs and win the fight for civil rights.

Social change accelerated through the 1970s at such a rapid rate that there was probably no way to avoid a conservative backlash toward dualism and materialism.  With so much change so fast, many Americans felt upset and off balance, and were soothed by voices calling for a return to the familiar “old-fashioned values.”  And so, we are once again suffering through dark years of fear and fundamentalism and war and corporate exploitation. 

If we take history as a guide, it would seem safe to assume that the pendulum will eventually swing back the other way, and we will at some point find ourselves riding a wave of idealism into a period of growth and healing.  Perhaps so.  (Thank you God, that Obama won the election). But just because the conditions are ripe for expansion doesn’t mean that it happens automatically.

Human beings, with all their potential for growth, are just as capable of sinking into mass apathy and helplessness, and history has shown us that dark ages can become entrenched and last many centuries.  Change in human society never happens on its own; change only happens when enough people stop accepting the status quo and step up to demand something better for themselves, and for their children.

But unlike the dark ages of the past, our window of opportunity for stepping up is rapidly closing. Each successive dark age has done ever more damage to the planet and now, with global warming and peak oil, our very survival is threatened.  If we sit and wait for the pendulum to swing back toward idealism on its own, it will certainly be too late.  The apocalyptic stories meant to be instructive myth will become horrific reality.

Turning the Tide

In their book, “Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations and Society,” the authors point out that when people “start to see themselves as the source of their problems, they invariably discover a new capacity to create results they truly desire.”

In other words, we will remain powerless to effect change until we ask the critical question, “What have we done to ourselves?”

We know the only way to transform society is to usher in a wave of spiritual growth up the spiral of development toward idealism.  But if all the idealists are stuck in flatland, and refusing on principle to join any wave at all -- then we instead form the wall that blocks this necessary wave from forming.

We idealists are literally standing in the way of progress, which cannot flow through us, closed off as we are in our individual universes, practicing our unnamed religions of one.  And every day we wake up and continue on our own little solitary path, and neglect to reach out to others in fellow spirit to connect or give aid or insist on peace and justice -- then we are thickening the wall that is blocking progress, and further sealing our own doom.

Either we figure out how to get over ourselves, writes Wilber, or we will continue to “actively contribute to the fragmentation and devastation that everywhere threaten tomorrow.” 

It is difficult – and painful -- to accept that we idealists, full of love and good intentions and goodwill toward all, can be the source of the problem.  It seems much more logical to blame the state of the world on them, the unaware hordes with all their unenlightened policies. But we cannot force others to see differently, or make them grow any faster than they can grow.  And if we shift the responsibility of generating change to them, then we make ourselves helpless.  

We are the ones who have to change, we are the ones that have to choose differently, we are the ones that have to construct the new paradigm.  The future has always depended on us, not on them. 

Yes, it is difficult -- and painful -- to accept the we are source of the problem.  But is also wonderful and joyous news.  Because if we are responsible for what’s broken, then we have the power to fix it.  We don’t have to wait for everyone else to somehow “get it” or change their ways. 

Whether you were ever part of the New Age or not, if you are an idealist, it is your mission to save the world.  And I don’t mean that in the egocentric, grandiose “we’re the chosen people” sense;  I mean it in the unglamorous “we’re the ones sitting in the emergency exit row” sense.  There’s no one else, no saintly folk with extra time on their hands waiting to swoop in and save us from ourselves.  

There are some idealists who may beg to differ. As we’ve noted before, so much of spiritual practice is designed to teach us detachment, and to drop judgment, and to see events as neither good or bad.  Eastern philosophies especially tell us that everything is a state of mutual arising, beyond our control, and no one thing is any more important than any other thing.  And often, the more we can detach, the more “spiritually evolved” we feel.

Yet, idealism also tells us that our purpose in being born into the world is not simply to recognize the world as maya, or illusion, but to engage the maya --  live it, struggle with it, heal it, love it, experience it fully.  True, one way to experience it is to sit on a cushion, completely unaffected.  But again, Wilber points that we humans cannot exist only in the nondual world of choiceless awareness and acceptance.  Neither is healthy detachment meant to absolve us of our moral obligations. We are creatures of the earth, set down on a relative path, and made responsible for each other.

It is your responsibility, and mine, to get up each day and do what we can to create order out of the chaos of the maya.  It is my responsibility, and yours, to revitalize the New Age and help build a strong spiral for the spiritual development of all.

It is your responsibility, and mine, to rescue our planet and heal our world. 

Go to Leap from Words to Action.