this era of awakening
“Things are not getting worse, they are getting uncovered. We must hold each other tight as we continue to pull back the veil.” - Adrienne Marie Brown
**The audio recording of this Morton Train is available to paid subscribers here.**
Fifty-five years ago, in February of 1971, astronaut Edgar Mitchell served as the Lunar Module Pilot for space mission Apollo 14. On that incredible journey, the one and only space flight of his career, Mitchell explored the moon for several hours. He was the sixth human being to ever walk upon that majestic surface.
It was during the return trip home, however, when Mitchell had his most profound experience.
Looking out the window of the spacecraft, at the awesome sight of the earth and the stars, he pondered the scientific knowledge that all matter in our universe is made up of the same material. In a flash, in one precious moment, from that unique vantage point, Mitchell suddenly understood the interconnectedness of all things. Like he really understood it… not with his intellect but with his entire being, with a newly awakened consciousness.
Mitchell called it a “deep ecstatic experience,” this realization that “we are one.” He described it as an “explosion of awareness” and an “overwhelming sense of oneness and connectedness... accompanied by an ecstasy.”
“It was an epiphany,” he said.
This event was not only personally transformational, it altered the course of Mitchell’s career. He founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences in 1973. Its mission is “to reveal the interconnected nature of reality through scientific exploration and personal discovery.”
Edgar Mitchell was not alone in having a mystical experience when viewing our Earth from the Cosmos. It’s so common among astronauts that it was given a name.
The NASA website refers to it as the Overview Effect, stating that “many astronauts emphasize the importance of unity” after such an experience.
The Overview Effect is an awakening.
***
Reverend Rob Schenck was one of the most influential evangelical leaders of the Christian Right movement for 35 years. His organization, Faith and Action in the Nation’s Capital, created a secret initiative, “Operation Higher Court,” that wined & dined right-wing Justices and their spouses, lavished them with luxurious gifts, prayed over them, and assured them that God supported their extreme stances on abortion, health care, marriage, and gun ownership.
Reverend Schenck aided in the ascension of right-wing members of Congress and even Presidents but referred to the Supreme Court as “the pinnacle” of his success. The goal of his ministry, for those many years, was “to convert a secular culture into a God-fearing, socially conservative, and politically Republican one.” He and his allies fostered the political culture that gave rise to the Christian Nationalism of today.
Some time ago, Schenck took a leave of absence from his organization to pursue a doctoral degree. While researching the German Christian movement of the 1930s, he read the words of a respected Biblical scholar from that time period who referred to Hitler as a “gift and miracle from God.” Something pierced through Schenck’s consciousness in that moment. “I began to suspect that we evangelicals were similarly allowing our faith to be co-opted for political purposes.”
That was only the beginning of his awakening. As he says in his article for Mother Jones, “Confessions of a (Former) Christian Nationalist”: “It took years for the scales to fall from my eyes.”
Just a few weeks ago, while marching in the freezing cold with thousands of others on the streets of Minneapolis, Reverend Schenck was interviewed:
“I’m making up for errors of my past. Being in solidarity with all these folks is part of the repair work in my own soul but, more importantly, in the external world where people have to live with the consequences of my decades of harm and injury. So I have to own that and it’s painful but I’ve found the folks here more gracious than any of the so-called Christian leaders that I kept company with in those years, that I thought of myself as being. These folks are showing more grace in accepting me and inviting me to walk with them than I would have ever extended to them ten years ago or twenty years ago or thirty years ago. This is redemption. This is redemption. In the big picture and in my tiny little small personal picture.”
Reverend Schenck, thanks to his awakening, is a changed man.
***
We are living through an extraordinary time in history where the morbidly rich, puppet politicians, tech oligarchs, and depraved rapists - who have had their interlocking hands on every lever of power - are being exposed.
The amoral system itself is being exposed.
Journalist Ryan Grim said last week that, if we want to know “how the world works, and who the people are who run this world, this is the moment that the window is actually open.”
Journalist Anand Giridharadas, who’s been painstakingly reading through the Epstein Files, says the files themselves “are an unprecedented glimpse into how the super elite that governs your politics privately out of view, that employs you, that runs your economy, that decides whether or not your kids have healthcare… it is an unprecedented glimpse behind the curtain into how they actually think, what they actually think of you, what their actual goals are, what their actual morality is.” (Or isn’t.)
The system that enabled this super elite - a.k.a. the Epstein Class - to dominate has completely relied on, in the words of Congressman Ro Khanna, “popular indifference.” Indifference meaning our perpetuation of the status quo, our compartmentalization between politics and society, and our passive acceptance of the way things are headed.
Well… We aren’t indifferent anymore.
The sleeping giant is waking up. The sleeping giant is us… millions and millions of us, in our country and around the world.
Our adherence to power structures is shifting. Our susceptibility to propaganda is slipping away. Our priorities are becoming clear.
This collective awakening - much like Reverend Shenck’s experience of the scales falling from his eyes - is painful, disorienting, and deeply uncomfortable. And, like the astronaut’s overview effect, this collective awakening is a thrilling recalibration. After all, it’s the power in our unity and the reality of our interconnectedness that are driving our mass mobilizations, our demands for accountability, our sharing of illuminating information, and our new visions of what’s possible.
***
On the very same day that the names of six co-conspirators were revealed on the House floor, nineteen Buddhist monks walked into D.C., wearing robes the color of fire.
The light, my friends, is on.
Yes, it is my friend!!!
Great post, dear Elizabeth!