 Okay, so one thing I want to make clear is that it's not like a new story that that we in the West have are going to invent and then bring out to the world and show everybody here's the new way to do it you know we've been telling you here's the way to do it for a long time and well we were wrong but now we know what the thing is. So it's it's if it is new it's new for for us meaning us the dominant culture of this planet or the culture that dominates the planet it's new for in that context but it also draws on ancient roots and incorporates ways of being ways of seeing ways of thinking that older cultures that are still around have preserved with varying degrees of fidelity and that can offer to us right now if we approach them with humility rather than trying to appropriate what those cultures offer to fit it into our own attempt to construct an identity. So that's that's one thing I'd like to clarify that that you know new story maybe it's a useful shorthand but I want to explain that it's not something new on the face of the earth but it's rather more to bring something very ancient on this earth and to and and to say how would that what would a mass civilization look like if it was in touch with these ancient ways because I'm not advocating going back to the past either so yeah the new story is not something that we can articulate I mean I'm tempted to quote the famous Einstein quote that our problems will not be solved from the same level of thinking that created them we are not coming from the story of separation the story of control the story of domination the story of ascent over nature that so deeply infuses the thoughts and perceptions of anyone who's grown up in this culture from there we cannot even tell we cannot produce a new story that is not actually some retelling of the old story that's not how it works we're not going to sit down in a group and say okay let's think of what the new story is and then impose it on everybody else that's not where it comes from the first thing to understand is that this story exists outside of ourselves it's not something that we create it is a being or an archetype or a god that wants to be born on this earth and is calling us into service of it and revealing its face in little tiny glimpses these glimpses these revelations take the form of of an experience that you have that just is so amazing an experience of such deep connection an experience of cooperation an experience of of of participating in the regeneration of soil or of water the healing of land the healing of species the healing of each other it could be a deep spiritual experience or any reconnection with a layer of reality that's outside the current story and you have that experience and you think this isn't just some trick that that some diversion from grim reality this is a promise and it gives you hope hope being the premonition of a future i won't say the future as if there is one fixed future but it's a premonition of something that in a sense already exists outside of the linear time stream so once you've seen it then you can maybe describe it a little bit and you might try to weave like a whole utopian society based on that principle or something like that but you're going to get most of it wrong but what you have what you have what your treasure is is that glimpse you've seen it and you know it's real and maybe you meet somebody else who's seen it too and they say yeah you're not deluding yourself i know that this can happen i know that there's a path from a to b i know that there's a way to this beautiful world that i've caught a glimpse of i don't know what it is but i don't have to know all i need to know is the next step how do i know the next step the next step is comes through what calls to my care and maybe somebody else has seen another glimpse of it that's something different and and tells you their experience of being in that medicine ceremony or of being on that on that permaculture design course or whatever it was and you or of doing activism in a prison and or doing embodiment work i mean i i they might seem like something totally unrelated but this possibility that they've seen you recognize as yet that's part of the same thing that's part of the same story you may not be able to explain how you know that you may not be able to explain why you feel such a deep sense of alliance with this person who's work it is to liberate dolphins while your work is to i don't know um practice acupuncture like they seem so unrelated where maybe your work is to to uh find housing for homeless people like what is what do these two things have to do with each other but we sense we sense that we're all devoted to the same thing so that's how we come to know what i might call the new story or the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible it's another way i like to say it we get glimpses of it we get called into its service and with each step of service we maybe will be given more glimpses of it which come in the form of more experiences that say yeah you were right you're not crazy for following this path you're not crazy for thinking that if you just give your gifts in the most beautiful way that you'll somehow be taken care of that it's okay to do that you're not being irresponsible you'll get confirmation it doesn't mean that all of a sudden it's peaches and cream and that because you've stepped into the gift that you will be showered with monetary riches i mean no it may not be that but you will get confirmation in some form and you will also go through continued initiations that demolish the illusions that you took into it so the story reveals itself like a like this gigantic angelic being coming through the fog and sometimes the fog clears just enough to see one one facet of its of its wing or one little patch of its face and it's so beautiful that maybe if you saw the whole thing you would you would die or something you know it's just or actually what would happen is if you saw the whole thing you'd be you'd just have to turn away because it's painful a little bit to see what could be to see something that beautiful and then to know that the world is so far from that and to be aware of of just how much suffering there is how much wrongness there is how many children are being abused right now as we speak and the ones that even we don't recognize the abuse that they're that they're being you know walked into classrooms and subject to behavior management techniques and standardized tests and and minimum wage jobs and the whole thing and not to mention the ecological world so in contrast to that ugliness the beauty is almost too much to take so we're given as big a glimpse as we can handle and then that sustains us and we sustain each other by confirming that we're not crazy and by sharing the stories that showed us what was possible