It is a lot closer than it seems. On a superficial level, it might look like the world situation is worsening in every way. And through 2023 it will probably continue to do so. War, poverty, inequality, ecological breakdown, crime, sickness, addiction, and other forms of misery will not subside, not yet, not outwardly. They may even grow— like a soap bubble, expanding in volume even as its membrane thins. Then one day it pops, and a tiny drop of soapy water falls to the ground. So big a structure from such little substance.
Yes, yes, yes, Charles. It’s all hollowing out. I feel that really acutely in contemplating what iChristmas is all about for my son, aged seven. He sees right through all of the trappings, thankfully. And what he expects, almost demands of me, is for something more sacred. Something divine and real. He has mostly enjoyed our small rituals, our offerings to nature and community. He has been especially interested in giving and being in service, rather than receiving. In fact he is quite bewildered by the gifts he receives. He has wholeheartedly confirmed to me what I’ve felt and known all along, this is all crumbling - the consumerist idea of Christmas - I’ve been keenly aware of that since my childhood. And now I see it.
All of my inherited celebrations seem hollow, I’m rebuilding something from the ashes. I’ve been picking around in the debris for a while. Even New Year seems meaningless, although I’ve been contemplating on the old traditions of new year : cleaning your house out of all the clutter and unnecessary baggage, welcoming in community, and in Scotland making sure the1st ‘footer’ (1st person to enter your home in the New Year) brings symbols of abundance and health. We can also learn from the old rituals, they hold meaning.
I’m glad to hear the young adults are seeing through the veneer and the tinsel. And that you bring this to light.
Thank you for these reflections, as usual I resonate with your thoughts and I’m grateful for your ability to convey them in a lovely way 🙏🙏
I know you have nuanced views on forgiveness, amnesty, and justice as well as the role (or lack thereof) of planning in the crimes against humanity that have been committed in the name of COVID. I would be curious to hear your thoughts on the poem I just published:
Ever since 2016, US society has been awash in what I would characterize as demonic energy, in character at least if not literally. My hope is that this message is saying that this malevolent energy, which I have referred to as "the black oobleck" on other forums, will start to abate instead of just getting stronger and stronger the way it has been for especially the past three years. Because I really don't think I could stand it becoming any stronger than it already has. I just really feel like I'm at the end of my rope, here.
Oh thank the stars for this writing, it's like a balm on a raging sore! I can't tell you how it gives me comfort and affirms what I see around me. In reference to Christmas, we have celebrated the solstice in preference for about 20 years, since my daughter wanted to do so at the age of 10, and we have grown to love this meaningful ritual in our house, and we build on it every year. The last couple of years I have noticed the 'You're a bit potty aren't you?' turn into a 'What is it that you actually do?' and this year friends were acknowledging the arrival of our Solstice like an old friend, someone even brought me a solstice candle! A soap bubble! Things are changing. People are sick of the status quo, they want more authentic meaning and I have to hold on to that. Thank you so much for your writing.
The first time I read the title "The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible", it reached something deep within. I started using the phrase all the time in conversations, well before ever reading the book. It actually took me quite a few years to come around to actually reading it. It felt like there was no point, that I was already intimate with the work -- a feeling that was confirmed when I did go through the book.
I was touched deeply by this post, which I received with some sense of relief. Your work -- especially your work focused on building the new story -- has been a tremendous source of inspiration for me, and I'm excited to see what this new year brings.
You probably don't need any reassurance that the awakening you describe is indeed happening everywhere at every moment, but I did want to share a story, as one more tiny example of small people in small places slowly learning, through trial and error, to inhabit the More Beautiful World.
Yesterday, January 1st, I felt called to bring some sacredness to these holidays. The feeling of emptiness you described was very much alive, and a call to do something about it came over me. I gathered the tools I have been picking up along the way, and organized a small fire ceremony, just with my partner and our daughter. To let go of the old, make space for the new in the new year. It felt awkward. I had to fight a sense of ridicule, of being an imposter -- I mean, I am no shaman, just a regular man who for some reason is feeling a need for something greater. But we went through it, opened the ceremony, built the fire, dialogued with it, made offerings. It was clunky, and never stopped feeling a bit awkward, but it all helped infuse some sense of holy back into the day, and I know that as a family we'll keep building on this practice.
Thank you, for the synchronicity, the insights, the guidance. Thanks for putting words on what already is. Thank you for the fuel that keeps us all going!
On a particularly bad day, your words quench my deep thirst within. You remind me, there are others travelling through these time of dismantling, not only our external systems but also our internal. It's been a long road and when you are on your own, at times it can feel overwhelming. Thank you Charles for everything you and others are "being" and "doing" to forge "The Most Beautiful World Our Heart Knows". I also love in 2023 that we raise the bar into the creation of this world by communicating our natural tune so other "notes" can harmonise into the orchestra of truth.
The caterpillar has dissolved into quantum soup, knowing it is dying, and amongst the imaginal cells of this soup, the butterfly is birthing.
The Human Metamorphosis is unstoppable, so is The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible.
You have beautifully enunciated Charles, why we should not force, fight or coerce the butterfly's opportunity to fly free and shine it's beauty upon our world.
thank you Charles - your 18 yr old son is the future and he is right - energetically we are moving away from the old co-opted lies of Santa Claus the tooth fairy and the easter bunny which have over shadowed the true stories behind them the more sacred stories - this base culture this lower bandwidth culture does that to everything and people are waking up to it on so many levels - the sacred has been sacralised replaced withi a commercial superficiality that many have felt for a long time
while I am not an astrology I read energy and astrology is pointing to an energetic shifting - its planetary alignments are empire busting and have been for about 5 years now
The covid response was the catalyst necessary to shake the world out of its coma that last stage before death sent to us by our future selves in a sense - a bitch slap from the universe saying do you really want this authoritarian control matrix to continue
2023 is the year of accountability its going to be exciting especially to watch how those caught in the biggest lie of all time or one of them will spin the evidence we are all now swimming in
this world is beautiful its nature Beauty is breathtaking even as its being destroyed by those who tell us to eat insects another of natures beautiful creatures
the word that comes to me is that humanity is maturing - tick tock the clock has been ticking for a millennia - we are not in just another century now we are in a new millennia and with it comes a whole new harmonic which nothing can be hidden - notice they can't hide much without someone finding out and exposing it
compassion is the key to our way through the unwinding narrative officials spun - justice is needed for sure but compassion is the key moving forward other wise we just repeat the old heavy dense energy
I am excited to watch what unfolds in the next year or three as things begin to shift towards the new harmonic already there are peoples health alliance's forming globally which can change the way we see health. all eyes are now focused on the regulators of big pharma and how much damage they have done and thats so very needed - change has been needed for such a long time but so few knew the extent of the rot now its being exposed - change cannot happen until one first sees the need for it and this is what the past years have been revealing
Jan 2, 2023·edited Jan 2, 2023Liked by Charles Eisenstein
"How do we walk each other into the unknown?" (Ladha and Murphy) is a phrase I heard recently, for me it resonates with this space between stories...
How do we allow ourselves to walk into the unknown space between stories that will take us towards the more beautiful world? How do we take those who are fearful of letting go of what they know (despite its inability to nourish) into this unknown? How do we keep on the unclear path when so much in the current system dismisses what you think and feel as irrelevant? (I have spent most of my life separate from the world in order not to feel that hurt.)
While we can never 'know' the answers to these questions one thing is certain, especially in relation the last enquiry: Charles, your essays help - a LOT! They remind me that what I think and feel and try to put out in the world are not irrelevant, that they are spidery threads of light cast towards me by the more beautiful world... and that being the place that life comes back from* is all we can do/be, and our very action creates the space into which the more beautiful world can flow... I sense that may be what you will speak of regards causation??
* "the place that life comes back from" this idea/phrase came out of something my husband said to me one day when looking at the devastation created by the east coast Australian bushfires of 2019/20 (around where I live). He asked in desperation 'where does life come back from?' Yet it does and has - it comes back from small islands of life within the devastation... I realized that being surrounded by (and painfully aware of how dependent I am on way too much of it) a system that brings only devastation and slavery, being the place where life comes back from is all I can be... it is what I must do... the ancient flowing into the new... And like all life, it knows how to become vibrant again - it is within each of us, we just have to learn how to see it again, to honor it, to trust it...
Jan 2, 2023·edited Jan 2, 2023Liked by Charles Eisenstein
Dear Charles, (excuse for my faults and bad english) in the endless chaos of my hundreds and thousands of emails your text found the way to me. Your words reached me directly into my heart and touched me so deeply, I did not experience for years. The confidence and light and the future you are forming with your words explode to a tremendous puzzle in my head. So many positive thoughts are floating through me know and I am in a hurry to keep them and to write them down.
One idea keeps me thinking further: "Causality does not operate as we have been told." For me, this leads to a whole different level of lurking doubt. What if we have to question the whole structure of regulars, laws and other themes. If they don't operate as we have been told, either? This contains so much possibilitys and opportunities for positive changements ,,,
I'll try to organize my thoughts and return with a clearer view. So much to think of!!!
Beautiful work Charles. Many of us feel it. My intuition tells me an understanding is coming, that we suffer not from faulty institutions, but from a lack of integrity. If we have and unwaveringly demonstrate integrity, any framework would work. Capitalism would only consist of mutually beneficial exchanges (win/win), not profiteering at other’s expense. Socialism would work because people would only take what they actually needed, never thinking to take more. Those who lust for power and control would be recognized and simply never be allowed power and control. With no order-followers to commit violence for them they would be rendered impotent. Nationalism would remain for structure/organization, but not something one would murder fellow humans over. It’s coming.
I feel happy reading this latest sharing, hearing of your adjusting focus and expression - I love the current alignment of our personal wisdoms and support you/us wholeheartedly.
I concur with your vision and would add the suggestion that "we" become vigilant, dedicated, certain to ongoingly include and abide in essential knowing of "me", as “I AM being”, lest we get ahead of ourselves, distracted by a refreshed sense of "collective" thus refueling our "othering" software to continue its reign, as it appears to have done for at least several millenia. I'm highlighting this, noting that when we get lost in "we-ing" by ignoring "me-ing, expressing “being”, as we seem to have done for 10,000 years of "recorded" history, we lose hope and have to circle back to our evolutionary roots of being. I note; our history has been ruled and recorded by a ruthless me-centred elite, scamming the name of "we" and certainly pillaging the name of “be”) and that we are at serious risk of being proffered and buying into, more similar rotten ice cream with a new attractive glam topping
My working life hypothesis is simple: "being" is what IS, true, immutable, indefinable, infinite, indivisible ONE, knowable while not perceivable (even as we are able to perceive its magnificent, mysterious reality in every expression of life), with localised "me-ing" as the first level subset (including soul/heart/god-spark as you wish), and "we-ing" as the next subset, like twin. This means “I AM” must rule (as if it doesn’t or cant!), and I must find "you", in and as "me", which with prayer, hope and diligence, I always can, even as I frequently resist and feel discomfort doing so. I believe we are at our essence and share with all of life, "BEING"! I suggest less-than-humbly, this hypothesis can hardly be deemed a theory any more, with current leading-edge science, the core of religions over time, the reflections from eons of mystics, and most importantly from our direct experience as we are willing to abide in/as being, all aligning to support it.
I believe that abiding and expressing as being, opens the doors, windows and knocks down all apparent walls, so that “me” and “we” can concurrently heal and evolve, increasing our interconnectivity so that even these concepts dissolve into BE - life for humans, on earth will rapidly shift into the beautiful world our hearts know is possible – someone famous said “build it and they will come”.
Yes, yes, yes, Charles. It’s all hollowing out. I feel that really acutely in contemplating what iChristmas is all about for my son, aged seven. He sees right through all of the trappings, thankfully. And what he expects, almost demands of me, is for something more sacred. Something divine and real. He has mostly enjoyed our small rituals, our offerings to nature and community. He has been especially interested in giving and being in service, rather than receiving. In fact he is quite bewildered by the gifts he receives. He has wholeheartedly confirmed to me what I’ve felt and known all along, this is all crumbling - the consumerist idea of Christmas - I’ve been keenly aware of that since my childhood. And now I see it.
All of my inherited celebrations seem hollow, I’m rebuilding something from the ashes. I’ve been picking around in the debris for a while. Even New Year seems meaningless, although I’ve been contemplating on the old traditions of new year : cleaning your house out of all the clutter and unnecessary baggage, welcoming in community, and in Scotland making sure the1st ‘footer’ (1st person to enter your home in the New Year) brings symbols of abundance and health. We can also learn from the old rituals, they hold meaning.
I’m glad to hear the young adults are seeing through the veneer and the tinsel. And that you bring this to light.
Thank you for these reflections, as usual I resonate with your thoughts and I’m grateful for your ability to convey them in a lovely way 🙏🙏
What a gorgeous way to usher in the new year, Charles. Reminds me of one of my favorite pieces by you:
• “Time to Push” (https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/p/time-to-push)
I know you have nuanced views on forgiveness, amnesty, and justice as well as the role (or lack thereof) of planning in the crimes against humanity that have been committed in the name of COVID. I would be curious to hear your thoughts on the poem I just published:
• “Mistakes Were NOT Made: An Anthem for Justice” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/mistakes-were-not-made-an-anthem)
It appears to have struck a chord with many readers, who resonate with the call for accountability.
Ever since 2016, US society has been awash in what I would characterize as demonic energy, in character at least if not literally. My hope is that this message is saying that this malevolent energy, which I have referred to as "the black oobleck" on other forums, will start to abate instead of just getting stronger and stronger the way it has been for especially the past three years. Because I really don't think I could stand it becoming any stronger than it already has. I just really feel like I'm at the end of my rope, here.
Oh thank the stars for this writing, it's like a balm on a raging sore! I can't tell you how it gives me comfort and affirms what I see around me. In reference to Christmas, we have celebrated the solstice in preference for about 20 years, since my daughter wanted to do so at the age of 10, and we have grown to love this meaningful ritual in our house, and we build on it every year. The last couple of years I have noticed the 'You're a bit potty aren't you?' turn into a 'What is it that you actually do?' and this year friends were acknowledging the arrival of our Solstice like an old friend, someone even brought me a solstice candle! A soap bubble! Things are changing. People are sick of the status quo, they want more authentic meaning and I have to hold on to that. Thank you so much for your writing.
The first time I read the title "The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible", it reached something deep within. I started using the phrase all the time in conversations, well before ever reading the book. It actually took me quite a few years to come around to actually reading it. It felt like there was no point, that I was already intimate with the work -- a feeling that was confirmed when I did go through the book.
I was touched deeply by this post, which I received with some sense of relief. Your work -- especially your work focused on building the new story -- has been a tremendous source of inspiration for me, and I'm excited to see what this new year brings.
You probably don't need any reassurance that the awakening you describe is indeed happening everywhere at every moment, but I did want to share a story, as one more tiny example of small people in small places slowly learning, through trial and error, to inhabit the More Beautiful World.
Yesterday, January 1st, I felt called to bring some sacredness to these holidays. The feeling of emptiness you described was very much alive, and a call to do something about it came over me. I gathered the tools I have been picking up along the way, and organized a small fire ceremony, just with my partner and our daughter. To let go of the old, make space for the new in the new year. It felt awkward. I had to fight a sense of ridicule, of being an imposter -- I mean, I am no shaman, just a regular man who for some reason is feeling a need for something greater. But we went through it, opened the ceremony, built the fire, dialogued with it, made offerings. It was clunky, and never stopped feeling a bit awkward, but it all helped infuse some sense of holy back into the day, and I know that as a family we'll keep building on this practice.
Thank you, for the synchronicity, the insights, the guidance. Thanks for putting words on what already is. Thank you for the fuel that keeps us all going!
On a particularly bad day, your words quench my deep thirst within. You remind me, there are others travelling through these time of dismantling, not only our external systems but also our internal. It's been a long road and when you are on your own, at times it can feel overwhelming. Thank you Charles for everything you and others are "being" and "doing" to forge "The Most Beautiful World Our Heart Knows". I also love in 2023 that we raise the bar into the creation of this world by communicating our natural tune so other "notes" can harmonise into the orchestra of truth.
Love Jilly
The caterpillar has dissolved into quantum soup, knowing it is dying, and amongst the imaginal cells of this soup, the butterfly is birthing.
The Human Metamorphosis is unstoppable, so is The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible.
You have beautifully enunciated Charles, why we should not force, fight or coerce the butterfly's opportunity to fly free and shine it's beauty upon our world.
Thank you for the reminder and inspiration.
thank you Charles - your 18 yr old son is the future and he is right - energetically we are moving away from the old co-opted lies of Santa Claus the tooth fairy and the easter bunny which have over shadowed the true stories behind them the more sacred stories - this base culture this lower bandwidth culture does that to everything and people are waking up to it on so many levels - the sacred has been sacralised replaced withi a commercial superficiality that many have felt for a long time
while I am not an astrology I read energy and astrology is pointing to an energetic shifting - its planetary alignments are empire busting and have been for about 5 years now
The covid response was the catalyst necessary to shake the world out of its coma that last stage before death sent to us by our future selves in a sense - a bitch slap from the universe saying do you really want this authoritarian control matrix to continue
2023 is the year of accountability its going to be exciting especially to watch how those caught in the biggest lie of all time or one of them will spin the evidence we are all now swimming in
this world is beautiful its nature Beauty is breathtaking even as its being destroyed by those who tell us to eat insects another of natures beautiful creatures
the word that comes to me is that humanity is maturing - tick tock the clock has been ticking for a millennia - we are not in just another century now we are in a new millennia and with it comes a whole new harmonic which nothing can be hidden - notice they can't hide much without someone finding out and exposing it
compassion is the key to our way through the unwinding narrative officials spun - justice is needed for sure but compassion is the key moving forward other wise we just repeat the old heavy dense energy
I am excited to watch what unfolds in the next year or three as things begin to shift towards the new harmonic already there are peoples health alliance's forming globally which can change the way we see health. all eyes are now focused on the regulators of big pharma and how much damage they have done and thats so very needed - change has been needed for such a long time but so few knew the extent of the rot now its being exposed - change cannot happen until one first sees the need for it and this is what the past years have been revealing
I feel this so hard. The more beautiful world has come up to bat. ❤️
A new ‘holiday’ celebration for life that is emerging is the solstices.
"How do we walk each other into the unknown?" (Ladha and Murphy) is a phrase I heard recently, for me it resonates with this space between stories...
How do we allow ourselves to walk into the unknown space between stories that will take us towards the more beautiful world? How do we take those who are fearful of letting go of what they know (despite its inability to nourish) into this unknown? How do we keep on the unclear path when so much in the current system dismisses what you think and feel as irrelevant? (I have spent most of my life separate from the world in order not to feel that hurt.)
While we can never 'know' the answers to these questions one thing is certain, especially in relation the last enquiry: Charles, your essays help - a LOT! They remind me that what I think and feel and try to put out in the world are not irrelevant, that they are spidery threads of light cast towards me by the more beautiful world... and that being the place that life comes back from* is all we can do/be, and our very action creates the space into which the more beautiful world can flow... I sense that may be what you will speak of regards causation??
* "the place that life comes back from" this idea/phrase came out of something my husband said to me one day when looking at the devastation created by the east coast Australian bushfires of 2019/20 (around where I live). He asked in desperation 'where does life come back from?' Yet it does and has - it comes back from small islands of life within the devastation... I realized that being surrounded by (and painfully aware of how dependent I am on way too much of it) a system that brings only devastation and slavery, being the place where life comes back from is all I can be... it is what I must do... the ancient flowing into the new... And like all life, it knows how to become vibrant again - it is within each of us, we just have to learn how to see it again, to honor it, to trust it...
Dear Charles, (excuse for my faults and bad english) in the endless chaos of my hundreds and thousands of emails your text found the way to me. Your words reached me directly into my heart and touched me so deeply, I did not experience for years. The confidence and light and the future you are forming with your words explode to a tremendous puzzle in my head. So many positive thoughts are floating through me know and I am in a hurry to keep them and to write them down.
One idea keeps me thinking further: "Causality does not operate as we have been told." For me, this leads to a whole different level of lurking doubt. What if we have to question the whole structure of regulars, laws and other themes. If they don't operate as we have been told, either? This contains so much possibilitys and opportunities for positive changements ,,,
I'll try to organize my thoughts and return with a clearer view. So much to think of!!!
Thx Thx Thx and love from germany.
Hagen
This reads like a hymn to me Charles. Such beauty, and excitement for what’s coming! ✨
Beautiful work Charles. Many of us feel it. My intuition tells me an understanding is coming, that we suffer not from faulty institutions, but from a lack of integrity. If we have and unwaveringly demonstrate integrity, any framework would work. Capitalism would only consist of mutually beneficial exchanges (win/win), not profiteering at other’s expense. Socialism would work because people would only take what they actually needed, never thinking to take more. Those who lust for power and control would be recognized and simply never be allowed power and control. With no order-followers to commit violence for them they would be rendered impotent. Nationalism would remain for structure/organization, but not something one would murder fellow humans over. It’s coming.
Thanks for saving a kind space for cynicism! And yes to more synthesis than analysis this year! 🙌🏽
Thank you Charles
I feel happy reading this latest sharing, hearing of your adjusting focus and expression - I love the current alignment of our personal wisdoms and support you/us wholeheartedly.
I concur with your vision and would add the suggestion that "we" become vigilant, dedicated, certain to ongoingly include and abide in essential knowing of "me", as “I AM being”, lest we get ahead of ourselves, distracted by a refreshed sense of "collective" thus refueling our "othering" software to continue its reign, as it appears to have done for at least several millenia. I'm highlighting this, noting that when we get lost in "we-ing" by ignoring "me-ing, expressing “being”, as we seem to have done for 10,000 years of "recorded" history, we lose hope and have to circle back to our evolutionary roots of being. I note; our history has been ruled and recorded by a ruthless me-centred elite, scamming the name of "we" and certainly pillaging the name of “be”) and that we are at serious risk of being proffered and buying into, more similar rotten ice cream with a new attractive glam topping
My working life hypothesis is simple: "being" is what IS, true, immutable, indefinable, infinite, indivisible ONE, knowable while not perceivable (even as we are able to perceive its magnificent, mysterious reality in every expression of life), with localised "me-ing" as the first level subset (including soul/heart/god-spark as you wish), and "we-ing" as the next subset, like twin. This means “I AM” must rule (as if it doesn’t or cant!), and I must find "you", in and as "me", which with prayer, hope and diligence, I always can, even as I frequently resist and feel discomfort doing so. I believe we are at our essence and share with all of life, "BEING"! I suggest less-than-humbly, this hypothesis can hardly be deemed a theory any more, with current leading-edge science, the core of religions over time, the reflections from eons of mystics, and most importantly from our direct experience as we are willing to abide in/as being, all aligning to support it.
I believe that abiding and expressing as being, opens the doors, windows and knocks down all apparent walls, so that “me” and “we” can concurrently heal and evolve, increasing our interconnectivity so that even these concepts dissolve into BE - life for humans, on earth will rapidly shift into the beautiful world our hearts know is possible – someone famous said “build it and they will come”.
Lets BE IT!