The spiritual gift on the inner journey is to know that creation comes out of chaos, and that even what has been created needs to be returned to chaos every now and then to get recreated in a more vital form.
—Parker Palmer
Many indigenous stories and myths speak of unraveling and reweaving; dissolution and recreation; floods, fires, earthquakes, and pestilence that destroy places and people for the purpose of clearing away the old as part of a transformative process.
I believe that the life/death/life cycle is not only an inherent aspect of the inner journey but of the external world as well. We are front-row observers of and dynamic participants in a culture that is being returned to chaos. For many, this is and will be a meaningless, absurd process. But hopefully, for all readers of this book, the return to chaos will be significantly illumined by what is written here.
Something—call it the universe, spirit, matter, the sacred, the divine, god—is attempting to recreate us in a more vital form. We humans have initiated the process of demise, but that experience does not have to be nihilistically absurd for us. Painful, frightening, frustrating, and sometimes seemingly impossible? Yes indeed, but never devoid of meaning.
What will evolve from the chaos is anyone’s guess. Myriad possibilities, many now beyond our ability to imagine, will reveal themselves with time and dissolution—dissolution not only of old structures but of an old and no-longer-appropriate paradigm.
We must hold the vision of possibility alongside our experience of the chaos. The old alchemical principle assures us that if we hold these opposites together—and especially if we hold them in close proximity to each other—transformation is certain. We may not endure to see it come to fruition, but we will have the privilege of being participants in an unprecedented journey from creation to chaos to rebirth.