Like everyone I know, I wear many hats. Or, I should say, I sport many “selves,” each of them quite sure of itself and many of them conflicting.

• One self says “we’re going to win” — this battle against lethargy, hopelessness, futility, brainwashing and/or the crushing economic, media and geopolitical domination of the PTB — via permaculture and other localized, whole system approaches.

• Another self looks at the possibility (probability?) of near-term human extinction and/or devastating collapse — no matter what we try to do about it — with an eye that is either flinching or not, depending on the day.

The above two attitudes/perspectives crash into each other regularly. How to hold them internally as equal possibilities without going mad? Good question. One way, at least for me, is to continuously open, open, open, without having to “settle.” Let go of beliefs, take off that stupid, confining conceptual helmut, shake out the hair, and so on. I’ve talked about this approach a number of times on this blog.

• Yet a third self continuously learns from my puppy Shadow to be, and to stay, right here, right now, excited about life, trusting the moment, yearning for the next smell, taste, view, hand to caress, lap to flop down on. This is the self that continuously centers in the moment, no matter what is going on internally or externally, head in the starry sky, feet deep within the Earth, channeling energy from both Above and Below through the heart, generous and radiant.

This third self, when present, instantly cancels the urgency of the conflict between the first two selves.

And, yes, there are other selves, many others — the self that assumes false flags in every MSM news “event,” the self that surrenders to mysterious nature — but the above three do seem to top the list.

Here’s two posts that second “self” picked out, again for your weekend contemplation. Actually, anything from John Michael Greer fits the bill. This is his most recent.

Archdruid Report: The Mariner’s Rule

And, perhaps even more to the point:

Learning How to Die in the Anthropene

I do feel that, besides permacultural visions of a transformed Earth, and besides working in our own local areas in whatever way we are called to realize that transformation, we also need to be spending some individual and together time imagining ways for our species to both beg forgiveness and say good-bye, if, indeed, it becomes obvious that this is required. “Extinction Protocols,” I call this direction of focus. On impulse, I reserved that domain name about a year ago. It remains empty.

Meanwhile, here is Robertson Jeffries, to help place all my selves in perspective. Via Poetry Chaikhana.