Needless to say, I did not die. But sometimes I wonder…Life has gotten really weird since then. I went on quite a few spiritual adventures, and more misadventures and decades later here we are. The most bizarre dystopia I couldn’t imagine. With everything collapsing.

I studied and practiced Buddhism for a good while. In the Tibetan traditions, the Bardo is the liminal space between death and rebirth. During this transitional time, one is said to face karmic horrors, challenges, and opportunities to awaken. According to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, it can get pretty weird.

And I cannot fathom how strange this all is. Today, I have a migraine because the valley where I live is surrounded by forest fires and thick with smoke and the smell of burning. The hummingbirds are going through my feeder more than 10 times faster than last summer. My neighbors are being kidnapped by masked dunces and taken to concentration camps where they are abused, neglected, and sometimes die. Billionaires have hijacked world governments and created military surveillance states. Artificial intelligence sexually harasses people and undermines our ability to think while devouring precious waning resources. Young people don’t want to have children, and can’t afford homes. Working people’s tax dollars fund genocidal war games. And, you know, all the rest.

And with all this, and the depressive funk that has stopped me in my tracks for almost 2 months now, I am still wondering about love. I won’t bore you with romance and fantasy. I am wondering what to do with the heartbraking love I feel for the mountains and trees that are burning, the children that are starved and raped, the entire beautiful species that are disappearing.

I am not the first to suggest that humanity itself is in a bardo of sorts—an in-between place. The worst of us seem to be hoarding and cannibalizing all that they can as the ship goes down, but what about the rest of us? There are many more of us who still love, I think. Is there some way to wake up? Can we do it collectively?

I’m not Buddhist anymore—I found myself in a religious institution there with the same foibles and harms as any other. But there are still some good teachings, insights and myths—like all the other religions. Buddhists foretell of the coming of the next Buddha (awakened one), Maitreya, the Lord of Love. I don’t know a thing, but I have speculated that the next awakening would have to be collective, because of the state we are in. And maybe that’s all any awakening is—remembering that we are not separate or individual, that we are one being, one Earth, and beyond, together. As the late Vietnamese Zen master, Thich Nhat Hahn, said—we “inter-are”.

I am not naive enough to think that we can snap our fingers and turn around the devastating harmful processes bringing down ecological, social, economic, and other countless systems right now. Nor am I naive enough to think that my tiny human brain comes close to grasping what is possible. But I am curious about what could happen if our young species relaxed our grip. We’ve lost control of the vehicle. Can a greater presence that unites us, and has something to do with Love, take the wheel if we discover our capacity to surrender what we thought we knew?

A Love in the Time of Collapse poem for you:

Ruby Throated (Hummingbird)

Tell me
they are of this world
while I watch them hover 
and dart
through portals in the sky,
carrying light on their invisible wings
gathering sweetness
and creating the tiniest
miracles

People are at war 
again
but these Harbingers
have something else to say

we played that part

rolled over

begged

cowered

fawned

it killed us. It.

now, what rises

has talons

fangs

roars

paces

pounces

disappears, but not in hiding

she is watching you

How the wind as she flies

Up the cliffs, from the salty

Dove waves, stormy mar

de cortez

Ocean mami

To kiss many besos

My throat

In this Latin dream,

Ensueno,

with ene

Her music sweet-sliding.

How gray in the sky

Competes

With the ocean

To signal the storm

Her darkness still forming

How violent the pink

Of bouganvilla y fachada

How deep dive the dolphin

To unknowns with bravada

My window is crooked

The glass, it is drafty

I hum out of tune

With a salted Sol melody

I tell you of nothing

But bring you here with me

I love all of everything

If only this instant

The palms, they are quaking

The maelstrom is building

I dance in monsoons

My dress, wet and clinging

You sigh for my body

Our sweat is commingling

We love like the mourning

Of doves in the evening

The dogs, they are howling

Iguanas up-downing

The streets though they’re cobbled

are trash-filled and dusty

My home, it is nowhere

While church bells are ringing

Our lives, they are melting

While the children are singing

Slip now between waves

Through the portal

Of dreaming

Come here, be my witness

The door, it is closing

I laugh, while my hair flies

Wild as the ocean

I love you in secret

And pretend it is nothing

We sway with el vino

But no one is watching

The moon calls the blackbird

And mountains are burning

We cry for the poor ones

And then we go numb again

I know that you love me,

We fight, and make up again

Leap now, through the crack

In the sky

It is narrowing

Our home, she has died

And the dream may be ending.

I will not starve a dark wolf

She too is hungry

She too was born of Earth, of starlight, and the endless space between

She too has a place here

I love the White Wolf yes

But my secret

Is that I love the rich-furred wild Black Wolf equally

I need her

And I want her

It is she who protected me

And kept me alive

When the rabid packs were circling.

She stood beside me, teeth bared and coat warm

In the coldest lonely winters

She belongs here too

And has a home within my breast

I will not starve her because she frightens you

And you would have what you call purity only

I will not betray her because you have forsaken what is wild

I will not forget her

Even as she walks unseen in a fog of blind men

Her heart beats just as yours does

And she is made of the world

And belongs as every tree needs a shadow

Every mountain a cave

Every ocean her depths

Every day its stunning death into night

I am the mother of every wolf

And I fold this dark one in next to her sister the light

Both suckled with the milk of love

Both mine

I claim her.

Our children

Do you look away from them

As though their small hands

Are not held out to you?

I cannot preach

Or moralize

I am speaking to the closed place

Inside my own heart

Every time

I look away

But I will share these eyes

With all of our hearts now

These eyes with a soul inside them

Like yours

Like your child’s

It is the soulless

Who can call a human being

With suffering eyes

An animal

As though an animal does not also

Have a soul

Look at your dog

Your cat

Your best friend

This soul we share together

The awakeness

That can feel love

And suffer

At the lack

I better start writing

or i might lose myself altogether.

An iceberg descends inside my chest

Its heavy weight sinking

Cold and slow

Deep and mystical

With colors like crystal

I feel it as a frozen platform

Small exposed tip

Perched tenuously

Fighting to sustain its massive root

In the depths below

Fighting not to topple

And overturn with the changing climate

The building heat

The way poles flip

And everything is different

Because the so much

That is underneath

Is and has been unbearable

As has its burying

So as i attend to this immense and icy mountain

It starts to rise

Up to my throat

With the threat of expression

A voice that has always been dangerous

For the truth it knows

For the lies it must ultimately betray