I Choose Joy; I Reject Annihilation

[the_gneech]

So this is going to be a weird post, rooted in the more out there aspects of the maze of mirrors that is my psychology. Just sayin'.

If you hang around in spirituality circles you will eventually come upon the idea of synchronicity– i.e., when a bunch of things happen at once and seem to be related, even if there's no clear connection. Now human beings are hard-wired for pattern recognition, it's a survival mechanism rooted deep in the ol' lizard brain, and most of the time it works very well, but it's also easy to flag with false positives. Have you ever seen someone lurking in your bedroom in the dark and turned on the light only to discover it was your sweater hanging on the back of the door? That's pattern recognition at work.

Given that, it's no wonder that synchronicity is a thing. Humans find patterns in everything, whether the pattern's actually there or not. But we're also talking psychology here– whether the pattern really exists is not as important for this discussion as to how your psyche reacts to it. It's like a cosmic Rorschach test.

The reason for all this preamble is that over the past few days I have had a moment of synchronicity with a very specific image, to wit: the planet Earth, rendered uninhabitable and devoid of life. It first popped up in an environmental documentary on a passing TV, in which a researcher claimed that methane being released by the melting of the ice caps would flood the atmosphere and kill every living thing by the year 2030. [1]

In the time since then, I happened upon the image again on a blog about reincarnation. Although the idea of past-life regression is fairly well known, there is (at least in theory) also the possibility of future-life progression, and a notable number of the futures reported are apocalyptic hellscapes in which Earth is blasted and empty, with living things, if there are any at all, being in tiny enclaves, or surviving in space stations, etc. [2]

The image came up again somewhere that I've forgotten in the intervening time; I think it was an RPG forum post or something similar. But what I do remember is my reaction to it, which was, "Okay, three times is enemy action." Or that is to say, there's a pattern. There's synchronicity. The Universe is talking to me.

A widely-accepted idea in reincarnation studies (as much as there are such things) is that between lives, you are the architect of your own life. Your "higher self" (or soul, or whatever you want to call that transcendent aspect) comes up with an agenda for your mortal self, you're born, and you give it your best shot. If you get through the agenda, well done! New goals for the next time around! If you don't, no worries, you can try again for the rest of forever.

Your mortal self does this pretty much on autopilot. However, the theory goes, that if you want to check in with your higher self, or your higher self wants to check in with you, it's possible to communicate. This usually happens in frustratingly vague "Give me a sign!" ways, but as your higher self is part of you (and/or vice versa), direct communication can also be done with practice and focused thought. Higher self is always listening.

So that brings me around to the point of this post, which is really a memo to my higher self, which is: I am not interested in these apocalyptic visions and I'm not going there. We make the world around us, and the world I will make is a vibrant, happy, and healthy one full of awesomeness, joy, and love. [3] I'm willing to accept that I have lessons to learn about grief and loss, the past decade has made that amply clear, but I'm not going to sink into nihilism or despair. As they say on the internet, I'm going to keep calm and bugger on.

So higher self, just release those visions and stop sending them my way; send me great things instead, please. You've sent me plenty of awesomeness in the past, I know you can do it. :)

Thanks. :)

-The Gneech

[1] With the disclaimer that I am not a scientist, I find this dubious. The Earth's climate has been considerably warmer than it is now, and life flourished in those periods. If melted ice caps were a straight-up killer, wouldn't that have already happened?

[2] How a future life progression could reveal a future in which there is no life to progress to, is a mental exercise I leave to others. It's also worth noting that these are not the only futures people have reported. Assuming there's anything to future life progression at all, that would suggest there are diverging timelines and something causes you to go into one or another.

[3] I'll get into vibration theory in some other post, but my point here is, I will rise to higher levels. Those empty and dead futures may well be there for souls who need that. I do not, and will go to different futures instead.

Comments

[jamesbarrett.livejournal.com]

better yet, tell your Higher self to tell my Higher self all about it. He seems to thrive on those kinds of scenarios and uses them to give me some of the best dreams ever.

[jakebe.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the reminder that while we may not be in control of what happens with this planet, we ARE in control of how we respond to it. Things will undoubtedly be difficult for a lot of people in the future, but by turning to our better natures NOW we can train ourselves to do the same no matter how bad things might get.

In regards to the methane question, as far as I'm aware that's a real thing -- though I'm also not really a scientist. My understanding is that methane is a MUCH more efficient greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and decomposed Arctic forests and animals are beneath the permafrost that's been there for thousands (tens of thousands?) of years make tons of it. So, if the Arctic goes ice-free in the summers -- which a lot of climate scientists are predicting will happen at this point -- that methane suddenly gets released into the atmosphere, at far greater rates than our atmosphere can handle it.

The theory is, at some point, greenhouse gasses trap enough heat to start a positive feedback loop. Methane creates heat, which means that more water stays in the air as vapor because it never gets cold enough to condense into precipitation. This means denser cloud cover and more humid air, which is even more efficient at trapping heat, which makes the planet warmer -- which releases more methane, which creates more water vapor, which makes the planet even HOTTER. So forth and so on.

The greenhouse effect then runs away from us, and the planet becomes too hot to sustain life. We become a second Venus. In fact, some folks believe this is what *happened* to Venus some time ago. There's still debate about whether or not it could happen -- you'd need to warm the Earth fairly quickly in a short amount of time -- but if it COULD happen, the warming of permafrost and the subsequent release of methane would be the most likely scenario.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-runaway-greenhouse/

[laurie-robey.livejournal.com]

This is why environmentalists would like people to eat less beef. Beef production is supposedly a major source of methane.

[laurie-robey.livejournal.com]

The TV show was the Bill Nye episode of Explorer on the National Geographic channel about the 5 stages of grief dealing with climate change. That particular scientist believes that the world will be devoid of human life by 2030, however, the other scientists Nye interviewed on the show were not that pessimistic. It is a big issue, to be sure, but the others believed we can keep it from getting too bad, and even reverse it, IF we do the most we can about it now, and keep improving our efforts to deal with the causes and effects as our technology improves.

Re: your response, I agree with you. Wallowing in despair isn't going to improve anything.