We are in a portal

I've a deep knowing: we humans have shifted. That's disorienting so here's 3 handrails to help: this is sourced in bliss; lubricated by peak oil; agreed by UN & 147 nations; and, all with dragonflies!

We are in a portal, a new reality where we are radically reimagining ourselves and reconnecting with the earth. I feel this viscerally and sensuously yet the frequency is hard to hold. So here are three handrails for some orientation as we transform:

1. Enhanced awareness—experiencing entangled deep love, amness, entireness—is common

2. As of 18 December, 2024 147 governments plus the UN agreed that I am nature and nature is me.

3. Physical systems show we are shifting.

In reverse order:

3. Power of Dragonflies, China and peak oil

Who here has had an experience where they felt something but it wasn’t there? Goosebumps, energy, felt like someone walked past you but no-one did.
Who’s heard something that just wasn’t there, but it was.
Who’s seen something that just wasn’t there but it was.
Regan Hillyer

As the world warms metamorphosis takes place. I invite you to feel this first. To do so you may like to close your outer eyes [audio from the 1 minute mark] and experience as if you are a dragonfly larva in a pond.

You can choose a pond near you, or the feature picture in this article. It is lit by the sun, golden reflections radiating, complex clouds and kaleidoscopic-deep coloured swirls, all around and through your larval body.

It’s an effortless place, suspended, weightless. And at the same time there’s a calling. That call is universal, a call to shift to embrace greater complexity, to see further, a desire to be in connection, to release yourself into so much more.

This is not an awareness, not yet. It is, however, a choice that is already made, a choice to expand, to be in and part of the world outside your world.

You feel yourself drawn towards the shallows as your body is preparing you, orienting for the new. There are urges to stretch and push, beyond the supportive watery confines, compelling you up nearby vegetation, away from your oxygen life support, fish out of water, into the air.

The dryness and unfamiliar movement, air-sharpnesses through you, trigger you out of impending asphyxiation, as you hang on, hold, and stay with the rushes, dizziness and nausea of all your internals redistributing. Body fluids whirl, the vortexes spin in you, your chest, head, legs and wings emerge. Your old larval skin shell starts to be pushed aside.

You harden, pull out by your belly, dry. You extend your wings, sense the multiple entities around you, set flight in a viscerally felt, quantum-ly different, vast space.

Expanding into all you can sense, you are grateful for that old skin shell, it kept you safe. And far more is here for you now, aliveness you feel, the fullness of all the space you are now: air, maturity, mating, territory. Connecting, penetrating, receiving and fusing.

You set wing into the air.

There’s a cognitive mirror of this too in our world: as humanity we are collectively preparing for metamorphosis, like larvae about to emerge from the water we are yet to be fully aware of it.¹

The signs are all around. For example for a decade China has been a principle driver of oil consumption.² This has now reversed. Peak oil for China is here and it is huge for our polycrises. So many facets of power, politics and inflicted pain globally revolve around oil. Reverse consumption, price falls, domination decentralises. That greatly assists us to re-pattern ourselves, redistributing wealth, resolving conflicts, distributing resources.³

2. Power of 147 governments and the UN

I can see clearly now the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
Jimmy Cliff

There are major inner subtle shifts too, hiding in plain sight just like a frog on the rock (above).

This month, December 2024, 147 governments and the UN did something extraordinary. The international group called IPBES, through a 3 year process, identified the science for transformation: what do we know, how and what are we already doing to reverse course, repair life support and let humans and nature thrive.

IPBES endorses spiritual reconnection between humans and nature as one of the major keys.⁴

This is radical. Some highlights include recognising:

• “collective imagining of fundamental changes in human-nature relationships... incorporating clarity, inclusion, creativity, flexibility are powerful and effective”

• “culture and ecosystems are integrated and co-evolving”

• “humans are part of and fully interdependent with nature”

This is legitimising a profoundly different space, preparing a metamorphosis of our modern day culture and its interdependent money / values systems.

Global government processes tend to prioritise order and rules. It’s safe, it is known. Just like the dragonfly larva is supported by the pond water leaving this environment is disorienting, takes courage, opens vulnerability and asks us to hold curiosity about co-created outcomes.⁵

Yet we did this.⁶ The governments and UNEP took themselves out of the current paradigm to recognise and honour the future we are creating.

1. Power of ultimate and linear truth

Being in unity, experiences of:

• feeling oneness,

• knowing it’s done (the choice is made, all has already decided),

• resting as pure awareness of awareness (I am, amness),

• awakening as love (all sensations),

• we are,

are states many people experience.⁷

That’s heady as a list. Consequently, I ground by feeling it. I invite you too as well. Feel as the dragonfly, newly able to fly, you’ve just metamorphosised. There is an entire new world around. You feel dimensionally liberated, take wing with me:

relaxing as openness, you can begin to feel that the appearance-realm in and around you is actually a world made of swirling, luminous consciousness, arising as a whole, including all selves, thoughts, emotions, objects, and the space between. As you practice, you can feel the pattern of the swirling currents moving you and others like leaves in the wind.
Waiting to Love, David Deida

These currents are profound. We can feel them through us, we commonly do. As we increasingly honour this, paying attention to our intuition alongside analysis, we can feel our multiple senses emerging:

when purpose dances with passion, and inner awakening meets collective transformation, 2024 revealed itself as a quantum leap – not just a year, but a portal where individual consciousness and systemic change became beautifully, irrevocably intertwined.
coauthor.studio, AI paraphrase of my, Simon Divecha, 2024 linkedin posts

This is an entangled space. Like the dragonfly that can now breath air and fly, it’s inviting us to feel all of what is around us, the many inputs from our multiple intelligences—felt, subtle, kinaesthetic, kosmic, cognitive, time, non-linear—while knowing deeply:

ultimate truth does not erase historical truth—they don’t cancel each other out. As with classical and quantum physics, both truths have their place. Nevertheless, it helps to know which truth a person is speaking from. Without being mindful that multiple views of reality exist, I get trapped in my limited perspective
Quantum Buddhas, Karen O’Brien

Wishing you all well with metamorphosis!

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Pictures: Festina Lentívaldi, (be) Benevolution. Reuse: Creative Commons BY-NC 3.0 US.

1. A dragonfly timeline: Eggs hatch ~5 weeks; Larva stage in pond ~2 years; In the pond preparing for metamorphosis ~3 days; Metamorphosis ~3 hours; Adults including mating, eggs-laying female and attending-caring male ~3 week (full life-cycle).

A human timeline on same scale: Modern humans evolve in Africa about 200,000 years ago—equivalent to the eggs hatching and dragonfly larva stage starts in the pond; Larva start preparing for metamorphosis 1,200 AD; Metamorphosis is 35 years starting 1995 and finishing 2030; Female and male dragonfly pair, us entwined laying-presence-caring, next 5.7k years to 7,780 AD.

2. China is about 16% of global demand. Peak oil in China is variously 2023 to 2027 depending on analysis. E.g. see Reuters and S&P. Recent evidence is that China oil use decelerated a lot in the last 3 months of 2024 (especially driven by surging electric vehicle sales).

3. There are plenty of examples such as U.S.A. coal use peaked in 2005, the UK’s last coal fired power plant closed 2024 and Senegal’s outstanding success against desertification with its green wall. However, these are sets of data in complexity including manufacturing and industrial processes shifting to other countries and there are multiple global-metric negatives (e.g. UN Gap Report). The point is we commonly accentuate difficulties, the crises, and not the soft landings we’re creating. See Legacies and Love here>

4. IPBES is the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem services. It’s roughly equivalent to the IPCC and yes, only the UN could have thought up a name like this. The quotes are from the Summary for Policymakers launch in Namibia 18 December 2024. Transformational Change Assessment Summary for Policymakers report is here> Launch video here>

Full title is “The thematic assessment report of The Underlying Causes of Biodiversity Loss and the Determinants of Transformative Change and Options for Achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity” !

5. This mirrors a developmental stage shift. The old/current norm is to create from an order, skill and rules mindset that is drawing on socialised (thinking and acting from the interests of the tribe/family/company) and self-authored (constructing ethical structures, acting reasonably and expecting others to as well). That rules based structure (we number it “3.5”) is common in many governments and the bureaucracies that support them. It is ‘safe’ in that it is accepted practice.

However, accepted practice is insufficient for the transformations we need. Getting curious about those rules, ethics and what it all can mean, co-evolving and creating, asks us to let go of that safety, be vulnerable and courageous. This is taking us towards a self-actualising space (in transition as self-questioning: “4.5”), honouring and feeling the elements—multiple intelligences, humans and nature—that make up our systems.

These adult developmental paradigm shifts are aligned with Robert Kegan, The Evolving Self, and I use The Core Teresa Zimmermann ‘s beautiful model. This gives us actionable clarity on our personal development at a depth nothing else I know of does. Please reach out email> for more.

I’m profoundly appreciative and grateful for being part of this, the IPBES collective group of scientists, governments and UN. It published from a place recognising the potentials in higher states. My view is this substantially lowers the barriers for ground-up biodiversity repair and transformation (rather than directly with government regulations).

6. Note: I am one of the contributing authors to the IPBES. For more see lead author

Karen O'Brien

‘s great Invitation here>

7. See Love and Peace here>