The Perils of Extreme Thinking

Well what is there to say? We just have to look around. So far in 2012 we are collectively facing a collapsing global economy, tremendous technology acceleration, government meltdowns, the Occupy movement, unprecedented government austerity measures, the Arab spring, severe earth and climate changes including a possible pole shift, disruptions in food and oil supplies, and a possible war in the Middle East. And of course there’s more to add to the list. When you add all these disruptive changes up, it means that a crisis point has indeed arrived and we seem to have arrived at it relatively quickly. Remarkably in the midst of this chaos the mainstream media and many in our society are carrying on with the same routines, as if none of this was happening. As the French like to say “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” In any event, it seems clear that we’re definitely not in Kansas anymore.

I am very grateful to have my Buddhist and Taoist background to fall back on at this time which emphasizes staying grounded and not getting swept up by the extremes of spiritual experience or any other kind of experience for that matter. I do believe that we are in a time of incredible social, political, and cultural change perhaps unlike anything else in history. There’s a lot of emphasis about staying in the heart at this time and I think that’s really important. But I also think that it’s equally important not to let our thinking get warped or distorted by what I call extreme thinking.

When I use the term extreme thinking, I would put quite a few things into that bucket. Certainly we can see it in politics where the discourse has become quite incendiary. The energetic phenomenon we are all experiencing causes confusion in areas that aren’t normally confused . We see for example a lot of emotion being injected into politics. This is normally not the case and in my opinion doesn’t make for good governance. Reason can’t do the job of emotion but neither can emotion do the job of reason. Mind and heart need to work together. If one predominates, there is a lack of balance.

Extreme thinking also shows up in the spiritual community as well. One way it shows up is in the form of conspiracy theories. I like to call some of these cosmic rumors. Now I’m not going to say the one thing or another is true or not true. That’s not the point. Each of us has to decide for ourselves. But I think one thing that has happened is that the Internet has allowed many of these ideas to become amplified and passed around to the point where it’s hard to tell what’s true and what’s not. As the shift intensifies, we will be tempted to buy into more and more extreme thinking especially because some amazing things will and already have happened. Now is the time to use discernment to decide what we should and should not align with.