Written by MJ Ryan, SheEO Development Guide

Life is amazing in its web of connections and synchronicities. Recently someone sent me a blog by American astrologist Rob Brezney. Long long ago in a different lifetime of mine, I was the editor of a weekly newspaper in Santa Barbara, CA and published Rob’s astrology column. I found it to be the most intelligent and accurate of such things. After a few years, I went on to other pursuits and he disappeared from my brain, only to re-emerge 45 years later. He now has a website where he does “freewill astrology,” a concept I find fascinating, and is the author of a book called Pronoia, which is an antidote, he says, to paranoia. Check him out at Free Will Astrology.

In the blog, excerpted here and informed, he says, by Deep Adaptation, a book by Jem Bendell, he gives what I believe to be the best advice on the mindset we need in these unpredictable times. He titled his piece “How to Be Your Own Prophet.” Maybe so, but I see it as a primer on the attitudes and practices we need to cultivate for the wild ride we’re already on:

“I suspect that none of us has the capacity to foretell the future of the human race. No one — not psychics, not doomsayers, not intelligent optimists, indigenous shamans, no one.

“There is a strong case to be made that this is the worst of times, and an equally strong case that this is the best of times; a strong case that everything will collapse into a miserable dystopia and a strong case that we are on the verge of a golden age. It’s impossible to know in any `objective way’ which is `truer.’

“Anyone who asserts they do know is just cherry-picking evidence that rationalizes their emotional bent. The variables are chaotic and abundant and beyond our ken.

In the meantime, I’m doing what I can to create a golden age. P.S. The best way to prepare for the unpredictable is to cultivate mental and emotional states that ripen us to be ready for anything:

• a commitment to not getting lost inside our own heads;
• a strategy to avoid being enthralled with the hypnotic lure of painful emotions, past events, and worries about the future;
• a trust in empirical evidence over our time-worn beliefs and old habits;
• a talent for turning up our curiosity full blast and tuning in to the raw truth of every moment with our beginner’s mind fully engaged;
• and an eagerness to dwell gracefully in the midst of all the interesting questions that tease and teach us.”

I don’t know about you but even after decades of practice, I find it hard to be in such a state on my own. Isolation makes it more likely for hopelessness to trend in my head. I need a community of like-minded people to help me live in the unknown with curiosity and beginner’s mind. That’s one of the many reasons I’m part of SheEO. I hope you have a tribe too.