• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Charles Eisenstein

  • About
  • Essays
  • Videos
  • Podcasts
    • Charles Eisenstein Random
    • New and Ancient Story Podcast
  • Courses
    • Climate — Inside and Out
    • Conversations with Orland Bishop, Course One
    • Conversations with Orland Bishop, Course Two
    • Conversations with Orland Bishop, Course Three
    • Dietary Transformation from the Inside Out
    • Living in the Gift
    • Masculinity: A New Story
    • Metaphysics & Mystery
    • Space Between Stories
    • Unlearning: For Change Agents
  • Books
    • The Coronation
    • Climate — A New Story
    • The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
    • The Ascent of Humanity
    • Sacred Economics
    • The Yoga of Eating
  • Events
  • Donate

Presentation to Uplift Festival, 12.14.2014

December 14, 2014 by Charles Eisenstein

December 2014


“The truth goes in and out of stories, you know. What was once true is true no longer. The water has risen from another spring” – Ursula K. LeGuin

As individuals we are in transition between two stories that each define what it means to be a human. Our civilization is going through the same crisis. A convergence of crises is birthing us into a new world.

The story defines what it means to be human – it is the story of self. Who are you? You are a separate being in a world of other. The world outside yourself does not have the properties of a self. It’s just a bunch of Newtonian forces pushing masses around. Therefore in this alien universe your wellbeing comes through exerting as much control as possible over that universe. That’s where the technological utopian idea comes from. If we somehow master the random forces outside our self we will finally be safe; we will finally be happy.

The purpose of a gathering like this is that we can all come and be crazy together. Insanity is culturally defined. Insanity means you don’t participate in the real. Yet what we’ve been given as real is a tiny sliver of what is actually real….when we have an experience of something our existing story can neither explain or dismiss; when we experience an event that doesn’t fit with what we have been told is real; that kind of event is a miracle – an invitation into a larger view of reality. A miracle isn’t the intercession of some higher power in violation of the laws of nature. A miracle is simply something that is impossible in an old story but possible in a new one. A miracle is an invitation into a new story that says come over here – here’s a bigger reality. Miracles happen with more frequency as the old story cracks.

When things fall apart, when you are stuck in that liminal space the light from the new story shines through the cracks and lands in your life as miracles. It says, “You were right all along. That lonely knowledge that you may have hidden from yourself – that was true knowledge.”

This is good news because if you are an informed environmentalist it all looks pretty hopeless. Ian McPherson can make an airtight case for extinction. He’s is right according to what he takes for granted as real.

But from a larger story, a different story that is not a story of separation, anything is possible.

Because from the story of separation, if you are just a separate self in a vast universe of other; if your only power to change things is to exert force on a mass; then you are not very powerful. Maybe if you marshal great force you can be a little more powerful but the forces at work and the powers that be are so much bigger. They have the money, the guns, a surveillance state, armies, prisons. They have more force, so what can one little mass-pusher like you do? You cannot do much.

But when we step into the new story of inter-being and understand we are not separate selves but that we are the mirrors, the reflections, the holographic image of everything and everyone; when we understand that anything that we do affects everything; that every act has cosmic significance; that anything that is happening to any being on this planet is happening to ourselves; when we understand that we begin to step into our true power. This is not necessarily something that an intellectual argument can convince you of. It has to happen to you through one of these miracles that causes your jaw to drop; that delivers a powerful invitation that says reality wasn’t what you thought it was; that invites you to discover who you really are; to discover a different answer to “what creates well being”? If not control then where does wellbeing come from? If everything that happens to you happens to me then the more wellbeing I will experience.

People often ask me – who are your heroes?? I admire the people with platform, power and influence, but I admire even more the humble people who are doing the small invisible things that our theory of change does not validate or think is important. Our theory of change is an old, Newtonian theory. It doesn’t recognize the power of small, simple acts of compassion. The famous woman with the best selling book, the billionaire with lots of political influence that we see being effective in the world makes sense in our old story. But what about the woman who sacrifices her life to take care of a dying parent? Or the young volunteer who gives up a year of his life to empower a person with learning disabilities?

The new story of inter-being offers the way to marry the logic of the heart with the mind. Any change that happens in one place creates a field of change that allows the same thing to happen everywhere else. When you understand that, you can let go. When you understand that any action creates ripples through a matrix of causality that you can’t see; when you live in that truth, you don’t have to worry about whether the message will go viral; whether you can scale it up; how people will find out about it; because you know. Standing in this place, I think it very important to validate that. Most of us aren’t going to do big things but live small lives of care that are actually very BIG lives.

I have had some opportunity to interact with politicians struck by how powerless they are. They say, “I agree with you Charles but I can’t do anything about it because of this and that.” I realized they are just functionaries, puppets of a system even they don’t believe in. The real power is with we the people when we stand in a different story and allow everything we do to tug at reality through invisible subterranean threads. We cannot predict what the results will be but we can follow the call of what makes us feel alive. We are listening to a different way of knowing that only makes sense when we believe that the universe is a purposeful, intelligent, alive, sentient conscious place and we are not separate from that universe. And here we are to remind each other of that.

Mother Earth is in charge and we are being put through a transformational process that we don’t have to understand. Humanity is going through a coming of age ordeal – just like a teenager goes through in an indigenous community when put in a situation where our world falls apart, when our child’s identity is no longer functional; put into that space between stories so that we can step into the adulthood of the species – a space in which our gifts are turned towards their true purpose.

I am very grateful to be a part of that here and I am hopeful that, as we all go forth and step out of this field that Uplift 2014 has created, we will carry that knowledge within us; the knowledge that all our actions have cosmic significance; that this crystal [in front of the stage that two little girls are watering] likes to be bathed in water, that the planet is alive and conscious and that we are not alone.

The time of the lonely journey, thinking you might be crazy, is over. You know what it’s like – coming up for air into a sunlit world and being sucked back down again by all the forces around us that say that you are wrong; that normal is normal; that nothing’s going to change; that Kim K’s butt is important because otherwise why would it be in the headlines? Getting dragged down, coming up then getting dragged down again. Now when we come up for air, there is someone else there holding us up. For more of us are coming up more and more often and we are creating this human mat where we’re holding each other in this new place in this new story.

This is not a transition we can make by ourselves, because we are not separate selves. Any human being we judge as unenlightened is a mirror of something unenlightened within ourselves and we will not be fully enlightened until each person is.

So often the realization of the new story gets channeled back into the patterns and habits of the old. Even spiritual enlightenment becomes this thing you do on your own as a separate choice and, when you start thinking that way, a subtle kind of elitism creeps in because “I am making that choice and so and so isn’t, I tried and they didn’t. I will be tolerant of them and I will bless their journey…” In Buddhism that’s called “the stink of enlightenment.” You can’t smell it because you are used to it but everyone else can!

As we understand inter-being and become more familiar with and live the new story we understand that everyone we meet is on their path and brings their own unique gifts. We approach them with curiosity and we know that it’s not just a matter of raising our vibrations but that we are a symphony of vibrations – high and low. A flute is no better or worse than a bassoon. As the symphony changes and enters its next movement our vibrations begin to shift as well. In that transition, there may be some disharmony, so we listen to the disharmony and seek to heal it and move into the next movement of the symphony.

Here we all are on this journey together in gratitude for each other, in curiosity…What path of separation have you walked? What have you healed on behalf of us all? We are on this journey knowing that on this ride, everyone is coming with us!

Thank you!

 

A video of this talk can be found here.


Previous: Shadow, Ritual, and Relationship in the Gift
Next: Imagine a 3-D World

Filed Under: Self & Psyche Tagged With: Essay, interbeing, new story, story

Primary Sidebar

All Essays

Peace-building

Time to Push

The Rehearsal is Over

Some Stuff I’m Reading

Beyond Industrial Medicine

A Temple of this Earth

The Sacrificial King

Words to a Young Man

How It Is Going to Be

What I’m doing here

Charles Eisenstein, Antisemite

Mob Morality and the Unvaxxed

Fascism and the Antifestival

The Death of the Festival

Source Temple and the Great Reset

To Reason with a Madman

From QAnon’s Dark Mirror, Hope

World on Fire

We Can Do Better Than This

The Banquet of Whiteness

The Cure of the Earth

Numb

The Conspiracy Myth

The Coronation

Extinction and the Revolution of Love

The Amazon: How do we heal a burning heart?

Building a Peace Narrative

Xylella: Supervillain or Symptom

Making the Universe Great Again

Every Act a Ceremony

The Polarization Trap

Living in the Gift

A Little Heartbreak

Initiation into a Living Planet

Why I am Afraid of Global Cooling

Olive Trees and the Cry of the Land

Our New, Happy Life? The Ideology of Development

Opposition to GMOs is Neither Unscientific nor Immoral

The Age of We Need Each Other

Institutes for Technologies of Reunion

Brushes with the Mainstream

Standing Rock: A Change of Heart

Transcription: Fertile Ground of Bewilderment Podcast

The Election: Of Hate, Grief, and a New Story

This Is How War Begins

The Lid is Off

Of Horseshoe Crabs and Empathy

Scaling Down

The Fertile Ground of Bewilderment

By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them

Psychedelics and Systems Change

Mutiny of the Soul Revisited

Why I Don’t Do Internet Marketing

Zika and the Mentality of Control

In a Rhino, Everything

Grief and Carbon Reductionism

The Revolution is Love

Kind is the New Cool

What We Do to Nature, We Do to Ourselves

From Nonviolence to Service

An Experiment in Gift Economics

Misogyny and the Healing of the Masculine

Sustainable Development: Something New or More of the Same?

The Need for Venture Science

The EcoSexual Awakening

“Don’t Owe. Won’t Pay.”

Harder to Hide

Reflections on Damanhur

On Immigration

The Humbler Realms, Part 2

The Humbler Realms

A Shift in Values Everywhere

Letter to my Younger Self

Aluna: A Message to Little Brother

Raising My Children in Trust

Qualitative Dimensions of Collective Intelligence: Subjectivity, Consciousness, and Soul

The Woman Who Chose to Plant Corn

The Oceans are Not Worth $24 trillion

The Baby in the Playpen

What Are We Greedy For?

We Need Regenerative Farming, Not Geoengineering

The Cynic and the Boatbuilder, Revisited

Activism in the New Story

What is Action?

Wasting Time

The Space Between Stories

Breakdown, Chaos, and Emergence

At This Moment, I Feel Held

A Roundabout Endorsement

Imagine a 3-D World

Shadow, Ritual, and Relationship in the Gift

A Neat Inversion

The Waters of Heterodoxy

Employment in Gift Culture

Localization Beyond Economics

Discipline on the Bus

We Don’t Know: Reflections on the New Story Summit

A Miracle in Scientific American

More Talk?

Why Another Conference?

A Truncated Interview on Racism

A Beautiful World of Abundance

How to Bore the Children

Post-Capitalism

The Malware

The End of War

The Birds are Sad

A Slice of Humble Pie

Bending Reality: But who is the Bender?

The Mysterious Paths by Which Intentions Bear Fruit

The Little Things that Get Under My Skin

A Restorative Response to MH17

Climate Change: The Bigger Picture

Development in the Ecological Age

The campaign against Drax aims to reveal the perverse effects of biofuels

Gateway drug, to what?

Concern about Overpopulation is a Red Herring; Consumption’s the Problem

Imperialism and Ceremony in Bali

Let’s be Honest: Real Sustainability may not make Business Sense

Vivienne Westwood is Right: We Need a Law against Ecocide

2013: Hope or Despair?

2013: A Year that Pierced Me

Synchronicity, Myth, and the New World Order

Fear of a Living Planet

Pyramid Schemes and the Monetization of Everything

The Next Step for Digital Currency

The Cycle of Terror

TED: A Choice Point

The Cynic and the Boatbuilder

Latent Healing

2013: The Space between Stories

We Are Unlimited Potential: A Talk with Joseph Chilton Pearce

Why Occupy’s plan to cancel consumer debts is money well spent

Genetically Modifying and Patenting Seeds isn’t the Answer

The Lovely Lady from Nestle

An Alien at the Tech Conference

We Can’t Grow Ourselves out of Debt

Money and the Divine Masculine

Naivete, and the Light in their Eyes

The Healing of Congo

Why Rio +20 Failed

Permaculture and the Myth of Scarcity

For Facebook, A Modest Proposal

A Coal Pile in the Ballroom

A Review of Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years

Gift Economics Resurgent

The Way up is Down

Sacred Economics: Money, the Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition

Design and Strategy Principles for Local Currency

The Lost Marble

To Bear Witness and to Speak the Truth

Thrive: The Story is Wrong but the Spirit is Right

Occupy Wall Street: No Demand is Big Enough

Elephants: Please Don’t Go

Why the Age of the Guru is Over

Gift Economics and Reunion in the Digital Age

A Circle of Gifts

The Three Seeds

Truth and Magic in the Third Dimension

Rituals for Lover Earth

Money and the Turning of the Age

A Gathering of the Tribe

The Sojourn of Science

Wood, Metal, and the Story of the World

A World-Creating Matrix of Truth

Waiting on the Big One

In the Miracle

Money and the Crisis of Civilization

Reuniting the Self: Autoimmunity, Obesity, and the Ecology of Health

Invisible Paths

Reuniting the Self: Autoimmunity, Obesity, and the Ecology of Health (Part 2)

Mutiny of the Soul

The Age of Water

Money: A New Beginning (Part 2)

Money: A New Beginning (Part 1)

The Original Religion

Pain: A Call for Attention

The Miracle of Self-Creation, Part 2

The Miracle of Self-Creation

The Deschooling Convivium

The Testicular Age

Who Will Collect the Garbage?

The Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies

You’re Bad!

A 28-year Lie: The Wrong Lesson

The Ascent of Humanity

The Stars are Shining for Her

All Hallows’ Eve

Confessions of a Hypocrite

The New Epidemics

From Opinion to Belief to Knowing

Soul Families

For Whom was that Bird Singing?

The Multicellular Metahuman

Grades: A Gun to Your Head

Human Nature Denied

The Great Robbery

Humanity Grows Up

Don’t Should on US

A State of Belief is a State of Being

Ascension

Security and Fate

Old-Fashioned, Healthy, Lacto-Fermented Soft Drinks: The Real “Real Thing”

The Ethics of Eating Meat

Privacy Policy | Contact

Charles Eisenstein

All content on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Feel free to copy and share.

Celo: 0x755582C923dB215d9eF7C4Ad3E03D29B2569ABb6

Litecoin: ltc1qqtvtkl3h7mchy7m5jwpvqvt5uzka0yj3nffavu

Bitcoin: bc1q2a2czwhf4sgyx9f9ttf3c4ndt03eyh3uymjgzl

Dogecoin: DT9ECVrg9mPFADhN375WL9ULzcUZo8YEpN

Polkadot: 15s6NSM75Kw6eMLoxm2u8qqbgQFYMnoYhvV1w1SaF9hwVpM4

Polygon: 0xEBF0120A88Ec0058578e2D37C9fFdDc28f3673A6

Zcash: t1PUmhaoYTHJAk1yxmgpfEp27Uk4GHKqRig

Donate & Support

As much as possible I offer my work as a gift. I put it online without a pay wall of any kind. Online course contributions are self-determined at the time you register for each. I also keep the site clean of advertising.

This means I rely on voluntary financial support for my livelihood. You may make a recurring gift or one-time donation using the form below, in whatever amount feels good to you. If your finances are tight at all, please do not give money. Visit our contact page instead for other ways to support this work.

Recurring Donations

Note from the team: Your recurring donation is a resource that allows us to keep Charles doing the work we all want him doing: thinking, speaking, writing, rather than worrying about the business details. Charles and all of us greatly appreciate them!

One-Time Donation

Your gift helps us maintain the site, offer tech support, and run programs and events by donation, with no ads, sales pitches, or pay walls. Just as important, it communicates to us that this work is gratefully received. Thank you!

Cryptocurrency Donation

Hi, here we are in the alternate universe of cryptocurrency. Click the link below for a list of public keys. If your preferred coin isn't listed, write to us through the contact form.

View Keys



What kind of donation are you making?(Required)


Recurring Donation

We are currently accepting monthly recurring donations through PayPal; we use PayPal because it allows you to cancel or modify your recurring donation at any time without needing to contact us.


Choose what feels good, clear, and right.

One-Time Donation

We are currently accepting one-time donations with any major credit card or through PayPal.


Choose what feels good, clear, and right.
Donation Method(Required)

Name(Required)
Email(Required)