I imagine any thinking person would agree that our species stands on some kind of threshold, teetering on the brink of extraordinary transformation of some kind. The old world is done, or dying. What is the new world to come? Is it apocalyptic or rapturous — or something in between? or something never before seen?

As usual, I throw up my hands in surrender to the NOW, and to what are at least the wondrous confabulations of human imagination. With inclusivity in mind, I read all sorts of things, in many different dimensions, including channeled material, for example, this particularly meaty message from Mathew (unlike other recent ones which, to me, have been rather ho-hum):

Mathew’s Message, July 19, 2015

I also read people who claim to have their finger on the pulse of the “drama between good and evil” on the planet, like Ben Fulford, who I must say, is at this point, gaining more of my attention and respect:

The Cabal Is Being Systematically Dismantled

And then there’s Cobra, who claims to be in touch with extraterrestrial and interdimensional beings, both above and below Earth, and also speaks of high drama.

Cobra Q & A transcript, July 2015

And there’s the recent phenomenon of Corey Goode, supposedly an ex-military person who has now teamed up with David Wilcock, who claims to have the ear of many “insiders.” Here’s Michael Salla, who has studied exopolitical affairs for a long time, reporting:

Cosmic Disclosure: Inside the Secret Space Program launches on Gaiam TV

It’s interesting to me that every one of the above transmissions, some referring to mind-boggling complexities of both allies and enemies, declares that “good” is favoring “evil,” gaining ground.

Then there’s the more decidedly 3-D grounded approach to “what is going on.” And these stories are unremittingly “bad.” Extinction, which used to be a bugaboo word that only doomers like Guy McPherson resorted to, is issuing from the mouth of even Governor Brown in California. He, however, is reported to have also said something like this, which I consider both interesting and wise: “There is an pessimism of the mind, and an optimism of the will.”

But let me say it again here: every time I hear another “scientific” prediction concerning sea-level rise or other arrogant/foolish prognostications based on maps or models of even this 3-D reality that is infinitely richer and more mysterious than any of our puny conceptual maps could ever imagine, I’m reminded of the extraordinary separation between mind and body, self and other, culture and nature, that has beset our poor species ever since we decided to live in man-made cities rather than dwell in concert with nature. John Michael Greer’s Archdruid Report is now unrolling a series about the inevitable process by which any “civilization” (or, concentration of power, wealth and population in cities) always devolves back into (rural, agrarian) “barbarism.”

BTW: For contrast (or is it similarity, I will find out!), I’ve just begun to read my newly ordered print copy of Carroll Quigley’s The Evolution of Civilizations.

The Cimmarian Hypothesis, Part II:

A Landscape of Hallucination

Here’s how Greer’s Part II ends:

People raised in urban environments come to treat their mental models as realities, more real than the often-unruly facts on the ground, because everything they encounter in their immediate environments reinforces those models. As the models become more elaborate and the cities become more completely insulated from the complexities of nature, the inhabitants of a civilization move deeper and deeper into a landscape of hallucinations—not least because as many of those hallucinations get built in brick and stone, or glass and steel, as the available technology permits. As a civilization approaches its end, the divergence between the world as it exists and the mental models that define the world for the civilization’s inmates becomes total, and its decisions and actions become lethally detached from reality—with consequences that we’ll discuss in next week’s post.