Dear readers, First some links to recent interviews that I feel quite good about: Totalitarian Trajectory vs. Courage. Interviewed by Tessa Lena. I really appreciate her perspective and insights as someone who grew up in the Soviet Union. We had quite a few good laughs.
My understanding about beliefs shifted when I saw a picture of the beliefs like little walls going down into the ocean to keep us all separate. Those walls extend merely 1/4 inch into the ocean. The rest of the ocean is below. Therefore, when you start entering your inner depths, mind-based separations around having different beliefs becomes relatively inconsequential. Knowing replaces beliefs. Knowing does not divide. Inner clarity does not judge. It aligns, and it resonates.
Charles, after your last essay, I decided to host a Christmas gathering for people in my town who had nowhere to be during the holidays. I posted it on the Facebook group of my town and several strangers came into my home. It felt so aligning to do this.
After your last essay I changed my office situation, resolving a deep inner conflict. Your words gave context around some pieces of my inner healing journey. It cleared mental conflict around how I will hold a group I want to start, in person, in my town to explore inner connection. I realized it just doesn't align to hold it with masks on. And the office I had was in a medical facility that housed chiropractors that have a strict rule about masks. It isn't that your essay told me what to do and I went out and did it. It's more that it activated parts of me that were already there and helped me find my way to inner clarity and peace and out of confusion, and led to some big moments of healing.
I don't watch news or read actually anything similar to your essays so I somehow randomly subscribed, and I kept questioning why I don't unsubscribe, when I let go of so many other things that found their way into my inbox. Reading this last letter, now I know.
You're bringing your true work, authentically. That matters.
It's a difficult thing, participating in today's society; I agree "anything I put into the world might bear a seed of division." But at this point in time, the spectrum of beliefs and perspectives is so vast, one sentence can possibly be interpreted 1,000+ different ways, and that is a beautiful thing that should not be abandoned, simply because there will be those who weaponize those words for their own agendas or cognitive comfort.
I'm glad you have kept writing essays Charles, thank you for continuing to share your insight <3
Charles, your courage is like a flame that lights the path for many to better navigate by. Maybe, with this light, some will eventually recognize that these paths all converge into one, that we are all on a human journey where our mutual respect, compassion, and love are the powerful energies that burn away the illusion of division. Thank you for reminding and reassuring me that this is so. I read your words with tears because I can feel your pain and concern. We've all experienced it to some extent, the bad fruits of this trajectory towards dehumanization. I lost a dear friend of twenty years, a person of deep faith, who refuses to see me. It all seems like a bad dream. I look forward to your stories of hope, and I remain one small voice cheering from your balcony.
Your writing makes me want to be good. And yet I rail against the idea that I'm not. I have not visited any bad upon anyone. I got ill. I was scared for a short while, faced with my mortality. I got better. I was so happy my body pulled through for me. I had always known that this was the way I wanted it to be. Living with, and facing the pathogens that would challenge me. Honestly. With what I had. For not to do so is denying my body the skills and strength to face the next round. Cellular skills wrought over millennia. Bypassing that, is cheating - cheating the foe and cheating myself. There are no quick fixes. We either work with nature, or we work against her. One day, those little foes will win. I will grow older. Not be strong forever. I'm ok with that. I am resolved to look after my body for as long as it will have me. With minimal interventions. Certainly none that are inserted into my body to wreak havoc with my cells like mRNA bulls in a China shop. Jangling my cells and confusing them. Playing an inept Frankenstein god over my internal workings.
Despite this, others will not leave me be. They insist I have it wrong. That I am weak and in need of imposed intervention. That I embody the possibility of illness, and this must be rectified, at all costs. My ideas are contagion, which will somehow become actualised and infect them. They don't seem to believe in their own strength, or accept their own mortality, so seek rather to undermine my own. I already capitulated once, out of fear. Fear of loss. Of my job. Of my friends. Of my husband. And now I am stuck. That didn't help. It doesn't stop at one. And now I have lost myself. Betrayed my body. Betrayed my health. And I might still lose that which I feared I would lose anyway. Because they will not stop.
How should I feel towards these people? Hatred? I can't help it. I do. But I do not want to hate. Pity? That seems arrogant - an arrogance of the recovered. Yet I do understand the fear. Empathy? It's hard to meet the threat of violence with empathy. That is the hardest.
So instead, I just want to retreat and cut myself off. They must just leave me alone. Please let them leave me alone. I want to go and meld with the rocks and seep into the earth and be invisible. Yet they continue to bay and hound.
(I've just edited this to add this little bit in parentheses at the end, because I realise I just plunged straight in initially, and did my usual stream-of-consciousness blatting straight on the "page". But in doing so failed to address you by name and thank you, Charles! Your writing is kind and luminous. I am trying to be mindful that there are people at the fibre ends of each of my digital interactions - so easy to forget this. That we each have a name, and saying it affirms our existence. Perhaps this is part of where everything started going so wrong for all of us?)
I think our judgments and reactions to "good and bad" people are somewhat of a distraction from a deeper issue, which I believe is resonance. If a musical note doesn't match or harmonize with another note it's not good or bad, it's just chaotic. If it's true that a drop of water responds to loving or hateful speech with symmetric crystals or deformed chaos respectively (Masaru Emoto's water experiments) then all we're doing is learning how to organize our energy, speech and action to create harmony and displace chaos. There is a lot of chaos right now. Keep sounding the tuning fork like a homing beacon. I feel the resonance rising around the world. Let's not get too frustrated. Keep going Charles. You're holding the gate to Eden open. Thank you for your work.
I deeply appreciate your willingness to wonder out loud and to offer a constant bridge to compassion and connection rather than feeding the divisiveness. I know this has taken a toll... to be willing to stand in the vicious line of fire that these times of a feardemic have wrought, and I having only gratitude for your work. We cannot know the full power of our efforts we can only step as fully with the grace of what we see. Thank you!
Thank you Charles. You provide a space with your words for me to discover more powerful truths. By dancing on the edge. I don't normally have this space in my life with those closest to me. As I write this I realise that I have been able to have conversations with others that grows the edge to allow for deeper exploration. I ascribe much of this to reading your words.
So thank you for helping to create more space and quiet for deeper reflection. This seems more powerful than seeking truth, and more realistic in these times.
I hear you, Charles. Last night, as I pondered my attendance at a funeral in which many refused to go because there were “unvaccinated” in the crowd along with a variance of “mask wearers” and the “non- masked,” I thought about the absurdity of it all. After months of hearing “they aren’t thinking about others” with almost a self-righteous boast of how dare they or how stupid are those that are questioning the vaccine, I cannot get past my own gut feeling that something is really off about this narrative. I had to check-in with myself and make a conscious choice—do I ignore my gut, instinct, and innate feelings? Believing that we as humans have not been taught, in general, to follow our innate guidance, as well as a feeling of being coerced into thinking I’m being ignorant or not thinking of others, I choose to be okay with my questioning.
Thank you so much, Charles Eisenstein for your wonderful work. I love reading your articles and so appreciate the much needed sanity and words of compassion and wisdom they provide in these trying times. Thank you for staying strong, for continuing to write and for shining the light.
As it goes, your willingness to dig into your motives and courage to speak honestly/boldly/compassionately, inspires me to the do the same — to feel less alone and more hopeful. Your writing over 2021 has been encouraging, meaningful and important. Thank you.
Such deep gratitude. Your essays, letters, books, podcasts have each time felt like a port in a storm and have also inspired my courage to speak up and out with confidence knowing there are others.....
God bless you for your courage, Charles! I wrote the following poem on Monday as a cathartic exercise, leaning into my own way of coping, humor and satire. I hope you enjoy it, I enjoyed writing it!
Thank you for sharing your humanity, for weaving words into insights, curiosity, contemplation and wisdom. Thank you for continuing to show up despite all of the inner and outer voices that may pull you down and under at times. The cracks in our foundation are showing...everything is collapsing and new growth will emerge. We will continue to create beauty.
Charles, you have moved me to tears with this one, as you have many times before. More than anything else, our world needs people who not only see but also value and promote our common humanity, over and above the decisions we make as individuals, and our differing perceptions of truth and reality. Thank you for shining a much-needed light into the collective confusion and darkness.
your words awaken me, like a mother who sits aside you and plays with your hair until you open your eyes. thank you for spending the days of your life on this work Charles, i am overwhelmed with gratitude.
My understanding about beliefs shifted when I saw a picture of the beliefs like little walls going down into the ocean to keep us all separate. Those walls extend merely 1/4 inch into the ocean. The rest of the ocean is below. Therefore, when you start entering your inner depths, mind-based separations around having different beliefs becomes relatively inconsequential. Knowing replaces beliefs. Knowing does not divide. Inner clarity does not judge. It aligns, and it resonates.
Charles, after your last essay, I decided to host a Christmas gathering for people in my town who had nowhere to be during the holidays. I posted it on the Facebook group of my town and several strangers came into my home. It felt so aligning to do this.
After your last essay I changed my office situation, resolving a deep inner conflict. Your words gave context around some pieces of my inner healing journey. It cleared mental conflict around how I will hold a group I want to start, in person, in my town to explore inner connection. I realized it just doesn't align to hold it with masks on. And the office I had was in a medical facility that housed chiropractors that have a strict rule about masks. It isn't that your essay told me what to do and I went out and did it. It's more that it activated parts of me that were already there and helped me find my way to inner clarity and peace and out of confusion, and led to some big moments of healing.
I don't watch news or read actually anything similar to your essays so I somehow randomly subscribed, and I kept questioning why I don't unsubscribe, when I let go of so many other things that found their way into my inbox. Reading this last letter, now I know.
You're bringing your true work, authentically. That matters.
It's a difficult thing, participating in today's society; I agree "anything I put into the world might bear a seed of division." But at this point in time, the spectrum of beliefs and perspectives is so vast, one sentence can possibly be interpreted 1,000+ different ways, and that is a beautiful thing that should not be abandoned, simply because there will be those who weaponize those words for their own agendas or cognitive comfort.
I'm glad you have kept writing essays Charles, thank you for continuing to share your insight <3
Charles, your courage is like a flame that lights the path for many to better navigate by. Maybe, with this light, some will eventually recognize that these paths all converge into one, that we are all on a human journey where our mutual respect, compassion, and love are the powerful energies that burn away the illusion of division. Thank you for reminding and reassuring me that this is so. I read your words with tears because I can feel your pain and concern. We've all experienced it to some extent, the bad fruits of this trajectory towards dehumanization. I lost a dear friend of twenty years, a person of deep faith, who refuses to see me. It all seems like a bad dream. I look forward to your stories of hope, and I remain one small voice cheering from your balcony.
Your writing makes me want to be good. And yet I rail against the idea that I'm not. I have not visited any bad upon anyone. I got ill. I was scared for a short while, faced with my mortality. I got better. I was so happy my body pulled through for me. I had always known that this was the way I wanted it to be. Living with, and facing the pathogens that would challenge me. Honestly. With what I had. For not to do so is denying my body the skills and strength to face the next round. Cellular skills wrought over millennia. Bypassing that, is cheating - cheating the foe and cheating myself. There are no quick fixes. We either work with nature, or we work against her. One day, those little foes will win. I will grow older. Not be strong forever. I'm ok with that. I am resolved to look after my body for as long as it will have me. With minimal interventions. Certainly none that are inserted into my body to wreak havoc with my cells like mRNA bulls in a China shop. Jangling my cells and confusing them. Playing an inept Frankenstein god over my internal workings.
Despite this, others will not leave me be. They insist I have it wrong. That I am weak and in need of imposed intervention. That I embody the possibility of illness, and this must be rectified, at all costs. My ideas are contagion, which will somehow become actualised and infect them. They don't seem to believe in their own strength, or accept their own mortality, so seek rather to undermine my own. I already capitulated once, out of fear. Fear of loss. Of my job. Of my friends. Of my husband. And now I am stuck. That didn't help. It doesn't stop at one. And now I have lost myself. Betrayed my body. Betrayed my health. And I might still lose that which I feared I would lose anyway. Because they will not stop.
How should I feel towards these people? Hatred? I can't help it. I do. But I do not want to hate. Pity? That seems arrogant - an arrogance of the recovered. Yet I do understand the fear. Empathy? It's hard to meet the threat of violence with empathy. That is the hardest.
So instead, I just want to retreat and cut myself off. They must just leave me alone. Please let them leave me alone. I want to go and meld with the rocks and seep into the earth and be invisible. Yet they continue to bay and hound.
(I've just edited this to add this little bit in parentheses at the end, because I realise I just plunged straight in initially, and did my usual stream-of-consciousness blatting straight on the "page". But in doing so failed to address you by name and thank you, Charles! Your writing is kind and luminous. I am trying to be mindful that there are people at the fibre ends of each of my digital interactions - so easy to forget this. That we each have a name, and saying it affirms our existence. Perhaps this is part of where everything started going so wrong for all of us?)
I think our judgments and reactions to "good and bad" people are somewhat of a distraction from a deeper issue, which I believe is resonance. If a musical note doesn't match or harmonize with another note it's not good or bad, it's just chaotic. If it's true that a drop of water responds to loving or hateful speech with symmetric crystals or deformed chaos respectively (Masaru Emoto's water experiments) then all we're doing is learning how to organize our energy, speech and action to create harmony and displace chaos. There is a lot of chaos right now. Keep sounding the tuning fork like a homing beacon. I feel the resonance rising around the world. Let's not get too frustrated. Keep going Charles. You're holding the gate to Eden open. Thank you for your work.
I deeply appreciate your willingness to wonder out loud and to offer a constant bridge to compassion and connection rather than feeding the divisiveness. I know this has taken a toll... to be willing to stand in the vicious line of fire that these times of a feardemic have wrought, and I having only gratitude for your work. We cannot know the full power of our efforts we can only step as fully with the grace of what we see. Thank you!
Thankyou for sharing your thoughts It means a lot to those who cannot vocalize them easily to others for all the above reasons....
Thank you Charles. You provide a space with your words for me to discover more powerful truths. By dancing on the edge. I don't normally have this space in my life with those closest to me. As I write this I realise that I have been able to have conversations with others that grows the edge to allow for deeper exploration. I ascribe much of this to reading your words.
So thank you for helping to create more space and quiet for deeper reflection. This seems more powerful than seeking truth, and more realistic in these times.
I hear you, Charles. Last night, as I pondered my attendance at a funeral in which many refused to go because there were “unvaccinated” in the crowd along with a variance of “mask wearers” and the “non- masked,” I thought about the absurdity of it all. After months of hearing “they aren’t thinking about others” with almost a self-righteous boast of how dare they or how stupid are those that are questioning the vaccine, I cannot get past my own gut feeling that something is really off about this narrative. I had to check-in with myself and make a conscious choice—do I ignore my gut, instinct, and innate feelings? Believing that we as humans have not been taught, in general, to follow our innate guidance, as well as a feeling of being coerced into thinking I’m being ignorant or not thinking of others, I choose to be okay with my questioning.
Thank you so much, Charles Eisenstein for your wonderful work. I love reading your articles and so appreciate the much needed sanity and words of compassion and wisdom they provide in these trying times. Thank you for staying strong, for continuing to write and for shining the light.
As it goes, your willingness to dig into your motives and courage to speak honestly/boldly/compassionately, inspires me to the do the same — to feel less alone and more hopeful. Your writing over 2021 has been encouraging, meaningful and important. Thank you.
Such deep gratitude. Your essays, letters, books, podcasts have each time felt like a port in a storm and have also inspired my courage to speak up and out with confidence knowing there are others.....
God bless you for your courage, Charles! I wrote the following poem on Monday as a cathartic exercise, leaning into my own way of coping, humor and satire. I hope you enjoy it, I enjoyed writing it!
Beyond the Singularity
‘Twas nigh before the Great Reset,
When all through the land,
Not a soul was full solvent,
But for the ‘invisible hand’ ,
When out on the lawn,
There arose such a clatter,
Sycophants and Toadies fawn,
O’er Ol’ Joe, the Mad Hatter,
He declared a new mandate for a sickness unseen,
The only known treatment?
An experimental vaccine,
This, Death Jab for Cooties,
Was known to have risk,
A heart prone to spasm,
At exercise brisk!
On Delta! On Omicron!
On variants yet seen,
We’ll conquer them all,
With mutant spike protein!
A modern germ 🦠 warfare!
Declared Tony Fauci!
The natives were restless 😬
The patriots grouchy!
If we just roll over,
In prostrate obedience,
We can return to normal,
With swiftest expedience!
The patriots arose,
Their sabers a’rattlin’ ,
They polished their guns 💪🏽
And prepared for battlin’ !
Just one Gol’ Darn second,
Shouted Patriot Nugent,
To line up like sheep 🐑
Just wouldn’t be prudent!
The right and the left,
Aligned in defiance,
Our true path to liberty 🗽
Is through non-compliance!
When amid the dissonance,
A voice could be heard,
Though faint was persistent,
It could not be deterred!
A More Beautiful World is Possible!
We must be assured,
Though the masses are sleeping 😴
Their spirits inured!
We will rise again,
Come Hell or High Water ✊🏽
Every Man, Every Woman,
Every Son, Every Daughter,
Will witness the birth,
A nascent revival,
To know our True Worth,
Not merely survival!
And so mote it be,
Our prayers and our dirges,
Remain to assuage us,
‘Til all torment purges!
A new Dawn, it beckons,
Arise and awaken,
A new Love ❤️ it reckons,
We Be Not Forsaken!
~ Antonio Marxuach
Thank you for sharing your humanity, for weaving words into insights, curiosity, contemplation and wisdom. Thank you for continuing to show up despite all of the inner and outer voices that may pull you down and under at times. The cracks in our foundation are showing...everything is collapsing and new growth will emerge. We will continue to create beauty.
Charles, you have moved me to tears with this one, as you have many times before. More than anything else, our world needs people who not only see but also value and promote our common humanity, over and above the decisions we make as individuals, and our differing perceptions of truth and reality. Thank you for shining a much-needed light into the collective confusion and darkness.
your words awaken me, like a mother who sits aside you and plays with your hair until you open your eyes. thank you for spending the days of your life on this work Charles, i am overwhelmed with gratitude.