The shift ahead is to participation. Here I share why that's so and also invite you to a participatory experiment this Thursday, November 11th. That's Remembrance Day, of course. We remember a great effort of the past. I do believe that the time calls for a different but equally great participation today.

Why is participation essential?

The complexity of the situation we face feels so weighty that any individual response seems very light in comparison. It can seem to us so small, hardly worth mentioning.

The result is that the sense of our own possible contribution is often dramatically undervalued. We feel on the ropes, defensive.

The origins of this goes back a long way. Partly to the "inanimate machine-like universe" of early science. An early sense of original participation in the soul of the world has been lost. We feel relatively unmoored, outsiders that hardly belong here.

This breeds tremendous anxiety and inner work today often becomes about calming ourselves and feeling safe.

Naturally and appropriately, many of us, myself included, have a strong need for connection and belonging. This is a necessary foundation. However it easily becomes an end in itself, a limiting horizon.

It may only be the starting place. If I'm well-enough connected, safe, in good company, what then?

Is it possible to find oneself resourced, collected and soulful, looking at the world from the inside? Is the collective human consciousness the inside of the world's soul? Can I help contribute to its conscious growth through my participation? Is this a natural right of the mature human?

Do I see my hands as shaping the clay of the world as my friend Bob McGuire put it?

Yes, yes. This deeper participation is what awaits us.

Recently we've learned to our surprise that a forest is a community with underground mycellial networks. Each tree contributes to and takes from the connecting network and together they make a true community of trees. We didn't know this till recently. Even more recently we're noticing that we're a community of humans with deep underground networks and resources, an awakening conscious humanity.