Transcript of a Q&A by Charles Eisenstein, before he and Patsy Eisenstein launched the Sanity project last year.
“I transcribed this talk to text for you readers because for me each of these words are gold and are very helpful to come back to. His talk is longer and the link is below if you wish to access it (or many of his other masterful downloads) Love Joanna”
by Charles Eisenstein:
In these turbulent times, we live amidst a breakdown of sense and meaning that leaves us susceptible to going crazy.
There were times during Covid actually where I felt like I was going crazy. I was holding a story that so contradicted what the culture overall was saying, thinking and appearing to believe that there were times where I thought “Well, maybe I’m the crazy one”. I had thoughts such as “maybe every single thing I’ve done in my entire career is simply coming from my reflexive opposition to my father and my discontent, and I just couldn’t hack it in the real world, so I became a dissident.”
When your truth is so different from what prevails that you are toppled from the seat of the Soul, the robbers get into the castle, the bandits get in and they run amok. And you become a fugitive in your own castle with your hidden truth, skulking around not daring even to say it to yourself, but on some level still knowing this can’t be right. And so, during those times, I always came back again and again to “what do I know for real from my direct experience?”. Then I found I had even started doubting my direct experience! I’d started gas lighting myself.
Every one of us has had direct experiences that contradict what we are being told. The economy tells us what is valuable. The economy says what society values and does not value. Yet so much of what we know in our bodies is valuable is not economically rewarded.
How do you stay sane if you don’t have other people to affirm what you know as the right choice? That is the key to maintaining sanity in coming times. Sanity is a group project. We cannot hold a story alone. We need a community to hold a reality because as I said reality is not an objective thing outside of ourselves. It’s not a given, neither present nor future, it is a relationship.
Our choice is whether to say yes or no to the future and the present that is offered to us and through our yes and no we create ourselves. “Who am I to be? I am also not a given.” That is the essence of what sovereignty is: who am I to be? Therefore, through that choice, through that acceptance of the offering, is who you can be. Through that acceptance, through that choice, we also create a world that is an intimate mirror of ourselves.
Part of why I am here and doing this work is to be part of that collective holding of sanity and to invoke realities and states of being that many of us are ready and willing to step into. We all need a little help from each other to do that. Many challenges lie ahead as the old structures break down and we are left alone in the gale. When we start gas lighting ourselves and when the truth that has touched us in the past blows away in the gusts, leaving us susceptible to predatory substitutes for the structures of sense, meaning and identity that have fallen away.
Because the story that that I grew up in anyway was a totalising story. It explained everything from the origin and purpose of humanity to why the birds sing. And when that breaks down, there comes a sense of vertigo and therefore an intense discomfort and a desperation to find some substitute, a new story of everything in which we can rest, and that’s what I call going insane. So, one way to hold it all together is to become even more entrenched and more orthodox in the story that is breaking down even though it’s not working. “I’m gonna double down and believe in it more” is actually a classic response to a challenge to a world view. In certain studies, they present people with evidence that contradicts their worldview and then they interview them about the result of that challenge. Most people become more convinced of their world view when it is challenged. Because it’s an assault on your identity. Opinions aren’t just opinions, they’re woven into everything and tear your self-worth. And so that’s one response: you get even more entrenched, which requires that you ignore more and more of what’s real in order to believe for example right now that civilisation is basically on the right track and that science and technology are ushering in a better and better world every year. In this mythos, you have to ignore more and more things to actually think that’s true, calling in more insanity…
Once you accept one lie you start to accept all the other lies that are required to maintain it and the result is that we live in a matrix of lies right now, where we take for granted being lied to. We’re not shocked when politicians lie to us, it’s normal advertising. It’s one lie after another. We automatically discount all speech, which is part of the reason for speech inflation, [with the use of superlatives], where everything’s “awesome” for example.
So, that’s one path to madness. Another path to madness is to jump to another totalizing discourse that explains everything. It could be religious fundamentalism; it could be a cult; it could be conspiracy theories… When I say conspiracy theories, I do not mean that in a derogatory sense because I do think that actual conspiracies happen and have a bigger influence on current affairs than most people think. Conspiracy theory can be used to dismiss any dissent or unorthodox opinion, or any protest. But when the conspiracy theory offers you an explanation for everything, be careful.
And then another form of madness is nihilism. It’s to become attached to the space between stories which is really supposed to be a transition. It’s a deprogramming time, it’s a letting go and it does take some time for a gentle falling away of what you thought was real and who you thought you were. That’s the empty space that allows something new to be born. It’s also why I like to take pauses in my speaking, so that I don’t go on autopilot, so something new can be born.
So yes, we are at a crossroads, indeed, a choice point, multiple timelines converge on the present moment and you can feel them sometimes. You maybe feel yourself moving from one to another to another which kind of explains how we can feel so much despondency at one moment and feel so much hope at another moment. It’s because you’re actually occupying a different timeline toward a different future. So, the task in front of us in the next five years is to: first recognize the choice that we are making and learn how to solidify the timeline that we actually want to experience for ourselves and the future generations. How do you actually make this choice? It’s not just to check a box, it’s to recognize the moments that we are choosing it. One way to do that is when facing a choice ask “What declaration am I making about human nature?”, ”What am I saying about the human being making this choice?”.
To watch the full Q&A you can access https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE7DXxE_q6o
You can also follow Charles on his networks and enroll in his new programme Turning of the Age here: https://charleseisenstein.org/
The Turning of the Age centers on monthly livestreams with Charles Eisenstein, who will report on Earth’s evolution toward “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.” Each monthly livestream will have a live Q&A session held in the week that follows. These reports each bring together some or all of the following elements:
- Meta-political commentary
- Off-the-radar events of global significance
- “Sign of the times” stories
- Developments in conventional and alternative science & technology
- Earth changes, ecological illness and healing
- Newly emerging and dying myths
- Insights from astrologers, channels, and mystics
- Short guided meditations and/or prayers
Gaia Speaking 