At the retreat where I was during the solar eclipse, the way people reacted to the event fit the reactions of so many of us on this website to visions and news about our world.

Some people were fearful. They stayed indoors and would not look. One person danced around excitedly, inviting others to look through her glasses. I was surprised that I burst into tears upon seeing a bite taken out of the sun. Not sad, or despairing, just shocked at a visceral level to behold half the sun, something so reliable and essential to life, was blotted out.

Everyone who saw it was moved to ponder the large.

On this site, we open our eyes to the world, to how it is playing out in our consciousness. We see visions — some terrible, some hopeful, some ordinary. We react to those visions with hope, despair, humor, and fear.

We take comfort in our common belief in the interconnectivity of all beings, and in a moral decency we share.

I haven’t known where we were going with this website. My motivation has been to increase awareness of our world.

Seeing, I thought, perhaps we could avert dangers. But much of the time we can’t prevent our visions from happening. Although perhaps we are preventing worse things from happening in ways we will never know.

So mostly the result has been to increase our awareness, our ability to see. We don’t get our awareness from others. We get it from ourselves, which is why I encourage people to try to have their own visions.

And as we increase our ability to see, my hope is that wisdom will come from it.

Paul wrote in the forum that the feels his soul chose to be here at this time. He feels fortunate to witness the world’s rebirth, even though it means feeling the pain of going through it. Thank you, Paul, for point that out.

There is such an incredible wisdom we can get from going through this difficult time. From seeing that which has always been so reliable is now no longer reliable. When our leadership doesn’t automatically scream foul at the President condoning White Nationalist terrorism, our reliable world has been turned upside-down. It’s like watching the sun getting blotted out.

So what are we to gain from witnessing this? Why do I feel, as Paul, privileged to be alive at this time?

My thought is that we get wisdom from witnessing our world go upside-down. We can get wisdom if we keep our eyes open and then try to find an honest way of dealing with what we see.

I am hopeful about the future, but not because I think there won’t be suffering, or because I think I won’t suffer. I am hopeful because I think we will find a way to see and love this world in spite of the darkness in it.

I try not to pin my happiness on hope that this is all going to turn out just the way we envision. I don’t know how it’s going to turn out. No one does. We have our visions and they are encouraging that the forces of light will prevail in the timeline we have seen.

But we can’t know for sure. And we certainly can’t control forces as large as the earth or as powerful as human  hate and greed and the wealth that drives them.

But I get wisdom from seeing the good that has already happened, from the gratitude I feel for the earth, and the solidarity I feel with each of you, for the light in your hearts. I believe in the ultimate power of light and life.