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It’s officially official. As of Wednesday November 4, the U.S. is out of the international climate accord. Our withdrawal is expected to have a strong adverse effect, as our actions ripple out to influence those of other countries. This is disheartening news but we can’t afford to wallow in discouragement.

Our best hope now is individual action. Actually, that’s been our best hope all along. If you don’t believe that individual action — lifestyle shifts on the household level — makes a difference, I understand. But, I do believe it; always have. In fact, I believe it’s the main or even the only thing that might save us in the end. And we saw evidence of the aggregate power of individual action during the pandemic shutdowns, when households curtailed travel and consumption. The positive effect on wildlife and ecosystems of this pandemic-induced reduction of the human footprint was quick and dramatic.

To all who are reading my book, following my blog, and reporting your own struggles and successes, thank you. You are part of a #GrassrootsGreenMobilization

P.S. If Biden gets elected, he plans to get us back into the climate accord the minute he is able. So we may only have a couple months of not being in. Even so, individual and household purchase decisions and other choices are the driver of consumer demand and ultimately of government policies. So keep up your good work, and never underestimate the power of your choices, be it refusing a plastic bag, bottled water, or an unnecessary trip; allowing your yard to revert to meadow; paying a little extra to buy local pastured meat and produce instead of factory-farmed; line-drying your clothes; etc etc etc … the list is endless! So many opportunities; you can find plenty more examples in my book and throughout this blog.

“After the elections are over, your neighbors will still be your neighbors. Trump won’t be there to ring up your groceries; your neighbors will. Biden won’t be there to fix your car or help with yardwork; your neighbors will. Both Trump and Biden will still be in their wealthy political world, and the rest of us will be in ours. They’ll both be doing their thing, while you and I live together, work together, learn together, shop together, eat together, worship together, and pump our gas next to one another. We the people are what makes a country great. We are the ones who choose to be decent, loving, caring, and compassionate human beings. Vote for whomever, but always choose kindness.” (Source unknown; from a friend’s Facebook status.)

(By the way, choosing kindness doesn’t mean we let racism or other bad stuff pass unchallenged. We have to call out wrongdoing, and do what we can to correct it. Kindness isn’t kindness if it actually means “Let’s not ever be confrontational or talk about anything difficult.”)

And, from Charles Marohn at StrongTowns.org: “… everything you are passionate about at the national level has a local analog that needs your attention. And not only does it need your attention, your passion and energy is game-changing. The time and effort you put into making your place stronger and more prosperous will make a huge difference in the lives of others. The result of those efforts won’t be ambiguous — show your place love and it will love you back. I promise.
Voting is important, but … it is one of the least impactful things we should be doing over the coming months and years.” Go here to read the rest of Chuck’s article, “It’s All Local Now.”

Like Chuck, I have been a “localist” for a while now. Yes I vote in national elections and yes I care about the results. But at the end of the day, what happens on the local and regional level has more of an impact on our day-to-day lives. I always tell people the neighborhood and the household are the real units of power.

Today I’m sharing an election safety checklist which includes useful links, and questions to ask yourself to help you and your community prepare. Thanks to the Anti-Racism Daily email newsletter for offering this Safety Checklist for November. Caveat: A few of the resources linked at the bottom of the checklist suggest actions I do not condone, except possibly in certain life-threatening emergencies. A pamphlet isn’t license to violate your moral principles. Think for yourself, and always be guided by your own highest moral principles.

The Anti-Racism Daily email newsletter has been an essential resource on my anti-racist journey. You can go here to get more info and to subscribe.

From Nicole Cardoza in today’s edition of the newsletter:

The first part of preparing is to prepare yourself. This is not to center your needs above those more marginalized. This is about ensuring you are resourced enough to do the most. Make your self-care plan.

Then get clarity on what it looks like to protect your community. The checklist offers ways to help from a wide range of perspectives: you can organize politically to defend polling sites, passing out food and water in places with long lines, or offer rides to people in your community. You can organize logistically by offering food, money, and other tangibles to those worried about leaving their homes in the coming weeks. You can also get prepared to participate or defend any protests that may unfold in the weeks ahead. The checklist includes links to upcoming trainings and virtual gatherings you can join – and I recommend subscribing for future events that may be scheduled as things unfold.

If anything, perhaps this plan will bring you and your community some ease and relief as the weeks unfold. But at most, it can save lives. …

Key Takeaways:

• State and local governments, organizers, activists and extremists are worried about election violence over the coming weeks
• Creating a plan is critical for your self-care, but to support and protect the people around you – especially those most marginalized 
• Take some time to prepare now, and keep this election safety checklist in your back pocket for whenever a response to crisis is needed

Here is a U.S. Government website page on household disaster-preparedness planning. (It’s one of the resources mentioned in the safety checklist linked above.)

And my own plan: Offer food, water, shelter, preparedness training, emotional support to community members in every way I can. I aspire to be stability in unstable times.

And remember: Whoever gets voted into office, we still all have to wake up together tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. If we really focus on what matters, the forces that unite us are greater than any artificial thing we can possibly make up to divide us.

The other day for the first time I heard about something called a “fire tornado.” It’s just what it sounds like, and they’ve happened in California and Australia.

Here is a nutshell explanation. And here’s an article about the first-ever one sighted, back in 2003 in Australia. And if you want to see what one looks like, just google images for “fire tornado.” From the number of images, apparently they are not as “rare” as they used to be.

I’m not prone to fire-and-brimstone preaching, but if I were a fire-and-brimstone preacher for climate awareness, I’d surely invoke fire tornadoes as an image.

Here is footage of one forming.

Further Reading:

• “In the West, Lightning Grows as a Cause of Damaging Fires” (John Schwartz and Veronica Penney, NYTimes.com). “Warmer temperatures and drought are expected to reach other parts of the country as warming continues. Recent research suggests that combinations of extreme heat and drought that could make lush forests more prone to fire are occurring together more frequently — not just in the American West, but also in the Northeastern and Southeastern United States, as well. As Craig Allen, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, put it, wildfire could be ‘coming soon to a landscape near you. Wherever you are.'” (This is why I emphasize residential landscaping choices so much on this blog. Re-vegetate landscapes and turn the soil back from sieve or cement to water-absorbing sponge; it’ll help repair the hydrological cycle. This is a key leverage point accessible to everyday people.)

• “After the Fires” (Llewellyn Vaughn-Lee, tabletmag.com). “[W]hen you experience a month under wildfire evacuation warning, with a few bags packed, somehow you are reduced to essentials, to the values that support you rather than the possessions that burden you. … Both the pandemic and the wildfires were caused by an imbalance in nature, the pandemic by wildlife habitat destruction, the wildfires by unseasonable dry lightning and warmer, dryer conditions making the land combust. The most basic question is how to return to a place of balance … Will we have to wait centuries before a new civilization is born from the ashes, one that is not built upon violence against nature, extraction, and pollution, but once again recognizes the earth as an organic, interdependent living being to which we belong?” “Will this moment’s challenges—and those unknown still to come—help our civilization move past an obsession with material prosperity?”

(Sound advice from Joan Pancoe, Modern Mystic):

“…[S]ince we all do live in 3D, a plane of relative truth, it is unrealistic to dwell solely in the realm of the Absolute, unless we are fully enlightened beings with no return to lesser states. And how many of us can say that?

“In fact, any spiritual philosophy or teaching that propounds a perspective of reality with no polarities, contradictions or paradoxes is NOT OF THIS EARTH as it now is. So, trying to live solely by these absolute or ultimate truth teachings—whether from Advaita Vedanta (Krisnamurti, Adyashanti, Eckhart Tolle, etc.) or Christian Science (more recently Course in Miracles etc.) is unsustainable as a way of life.

“Accordingly, anyone who is attempting to exist exclusively in an absolute reality with no duality, while in an incarnation in the earth plane where relative truth is the rule, as many die-hard “new-agers” try to do, is going to end up triggering feelings that something is inherently wrong or inadequate within their beings. 

“My solution to this rejection and denial of 3D reality as merely a delusion or samsara or, conversely, to rage and frustration at not having even an illusion of control over the duality of the physical plane, is to utilize a perceptual split-screen to view relative and absolute levels of reality simultaneously.

“This means that, on one side of the screen, I live fully embodied in the world as it is, wholeheartedly playing the game of Life amidst so much Divine orderly chaos. I still have my preferences on the individual personality level and act on these preferences as desired. On the other side of the split-screen, I’m holding the vision of the absolute reality in which we’re all One Being with billions of faces and everything is part of the Tao—with no exceptions.

“The key is to not be so attached to having our preferences met—especially in terms of how the relative reality of the world is playing out now in the Kali Yuga (Dark Ages)—that we cause ourselves undue suffering.

“I view the Earth Game as an infinite perpetual motion machine in which souls incarnate to learn how to grow into cocreators with All That Is, while healing their karma. And, without doubt, the physical plane is definitely the best show in the Universe in this regard.”

(This quote is from the edition of Joan’s email newsletter dated October 2020. The title is “October Surprise Invitation.” To sign up for her newsletter and see her other offerings, visit her website.)

Solid advice from White Eagle, Hopi Indigenous Wisdomkeeper (via a Facebook friend-of-a-friend):

“This moment humanity is going through can now be seen as a portal and as a hole. The decision to fall into the hole or go through the portal is up to you.

“If you repent of the problem and consume the news 24 hours a day, with little energy, nervous all the time, with pessimism, you will fall into the hole. But if you take this opportunity to look at yourself, rethink life and death, take care of yourself and others, you will cross the portal. Take care of your homes, take care of your body. Connect with your spiritual House.

“When you are taking care of yourselves, you are taking care of everything else. Do not lose the spiritual dimension of this crisis; have the eagle aspect from above and see the whole; see more broadly.
There is a social demand in this crisis, but there is also a spiritual demand — the two go hand in hand. Without the social dimension, we fall into fanaticism. But without the spiritual dimension, we fall into pessimism and lack of meaning. You were prepared to go through this crisis. Take your toolbox and use all the tools available to you.

“Learn about resistance of the indigenous and African peoples; we have always been, and continue to be, exterminated. But we still haven’t stopped singing, dancing, lighting a fire, and having fun. Don’t feel guilty about being happy during this difficult time.

“You do not help at all being sad and without energy. You help if good things emanate from the Universe now. It is through joy that one resists. Also, when the storm passes, each of you will be very important in the reconstruction of this new world.
You need to be well and strong. And for that, there is no other way than to maintain a beautiful, happy, and bright vibration. This has nothing to do with alienation.

“This is a resistance strategy. In shamanism, there is a rite of passage called the quest for vision. You spend a few days alone in the forest, without water, without food, without protection. When you cross this portal, you get a new vision of the world, because you have faced your fears, your difficulties.

“This is what is asked of you:

“Allow yourself to take advantage of this time to perform your vision-seeking rituals. What world do you want to build for you? For now, this is what you can do — serenity in the storm. Calm down, pray every day. Establish a routine to meet the sacred every day.

“Good things emanate; what you emanate now is the most important thing. And sing, dance, resist through art, joy, faith, and love.”

(As I said, this quote was shared via a friend-of-a-friend on Facebook. If I find a website, book, or other link for the writer, I’ll post it here.)

One of the main roots of war and other conflict in the world is the tendency of human beings to project evil onto other people. This means seeing the bad in others without being able/willing to see any corresponding tendency in ourselves. “Those other people” get identified in our minds as the bad ones that are causing all the trouble, or at least starting it.

The process of getting in touch with and owning our own “dark side” is sometimes called “shadow work,” and it’s an essential step to co-creating an enlightened society, not to mention experiencing true liberation and happiness on a personal level.

(Important Note: As I see it, “Owning our shadow,” “shadow work,” etc., is in the realm of metaphysical or spiritual work. It does not invalidate, or remove the need for, one’s political or moral beliefs, and actions to counter evil in the world.)

The other day I came across a quote that really nails our current contentious times as they relate to owning our shadow: “So if you’re wondering, dear reader, why those of us in the USA live in a country where one party accuses the other of being full-blown goose-stepping Nazis and the other party insists that the first are Satan-worshiping pedophiles, where compromise has become a swear word and both sides have convinced themselves that all they have to do is come up with the right gimmick and the Shadow they hate so much will pop like a bubble, now you know. The bitter irony, of course, is that they’re both wrong. No matter how many self-proclaimed Frodos drop surrogate Rings into notional equivalents of Mount Doom, the Shadow will not go away, because it’s being projected by the people on both sides who have convinced themselves that they’re fighting it.
He knows … If there’s a solution—other than mutual slaughter, that is—maybe it’s to be found in the first Shadow we discussed, the one who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. (Not, please note, their minds—it’s in the heart, the seat of unbalanced passion and distorted love, where the evil that matters has its root.) That tremendous, mordant, terrifying laugh is only possible for one who has already confronted the unbalanced passion and distorted love in his own heart. If there’s a way forward for us here in the United States, that knowledge might just provide it.” The full article is here. (“What Evil Lurks,” by John Michael Greer at Ecosophia.)

And another goodie, which landed in my email inbox just now: “Having the ability to see something in another person, and automatically bring this observation back to ourselves, is like having a built-in system of checks and balances that enables us to be continually engaged in self-exploration and behavior change. When we see behavior we don’t like, we can make a concerted effort to weed it out of ourselves, and when we see behavior we do like, we can let it inspire us to engage in imitation. Through this process, we read our environment and let it influence us to bring out the best in ourselves.” (This quote comes from an article titled “Checks and Balances,” by Madisyn Taylor at DailyOM.)

Things that can help you own your shadow include therapy, writings (Carl Jung and many others), 12-step programs, and hanging out with other people who get this. Personally, my favorite tools for quickly identifying and dismantling my projections (or any other patterns I identify as being out-of-integrity with my higher self), are the Personal Integrity Minicourse (and other materials from The Avatar Course). The Personal Integrity Minicourse is available as a free download from this page. It’s #6 on the page.

On a topical note: With elections coming up next Tuesday, and a lot of people surely feeling averse to going through the big day/night alone, I offer you my official “Deep Green Election Watch Party recommendation.” And that is: Outdoor small gathering + Zoom combo. A few neighbors walk to your house and come sit in your driveway, or you go sit in theirs (or meet at a neighborhood park); while friends/family located beyond your immediate area connect by Zoom or phone. This covers all the bases: low-footprint, public-health-conscious, and nurturing community.