{"id":19200,"date":"2020-08-14T09:01:02","date_gmt":"2020-08-14T13:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19200"},"modified":"2020-08-14T09:54:32","modified_gmt":"2020-08-14T13:54:32","slug":"a-further-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19200","title":{"rendered":"A Further Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Order, Disorder, Reorder:<br>\nPart One<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>A\nFurther Journey<\/strong><br>\nFriday, \u202fAugust 14, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uJjCXK7fUT8\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>If we are granted this first stage of <em>Order<\/em>&nbsp;(and not all are),\nwe feel innocent and safe. Everything is basically good, it all means\nsomething, and we feel a part of what looks normal and deserved. It is our\n\u201cfirst na\u00efvet\u00e9.\u201d Everything has an explanation, and thus feels like it is\nstraight from God, solid, and forever. This is probably why we are so reluctant\nto relinquish our innocence; it often feels like a loss of faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most\nworldviews have encouraged this perspective. We, in the United States, are a \u201cfirst\nhalf of life culture,\u201d largely concerned about surviving successfully. Probably\nmost cultures and individuals across history have been situated in the first\nhalf or \u201cOrder\u201d stage, because it is all they had time for. We try to do what\nseems like the task that life first hands us: establishing an identity, a home,\nrelationships, friends, community, security, and building a proper platform for\nour only life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But\nthis is only the first task! When we try to stay in this first satisfying\nexplanation of how things are, we tend to avoid any conflict, inconsistencies,\nsuffering, or darkness and therefore opportunities for transformation. The\nfamiliar and habitual are so falsely reassuring, we make our homes there\npermanently. The ego believes that disorder or change is always to be avoided,\nso we hunker down and pretend that <em>our\nOrder<\/em>&nbsp;is entirely good, should be good for\neverybody, and is always \u201ctrue\u201d and even the only truth. The new is always by\ndefinition unfamiliar and untested, so God, life, destiny, suffering have to\ngive us a push\u2014usually a big one\u2014or we will not go. Even many Christians do not\nlike anything that looks like \u201ccarrying the cross,\u201d no matter how piously they\nuse the phrase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most\nof us are never told that we can set out from the known and familiar to take on\na further journey. Our institutions, including our churches, and our\nexpectations are almost entirely configured to encourage, support, reward, and\nvalidate the tasks of the first half of life. We are more struggling to survive\nthan to thrive, more just \u201cgetting through\u201d or trying to get to the top than\nfinding out what is really at the top or even at the bottom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most of us in the first half of life suspect that all is not fully working, and we are probably right! Many, if not most, will settle for first-stage survival, and never get to \u201cthe unified field\u201d of life itself. As Bill Plotkin, a wise guide, puts it, many of us learn to do our \u201csurvival dance,\u201d but we never get to our actual \u201csacred dance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"331\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Shot-2020-08-14-at-9.53.31-AM-500x331.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19202\" srcset=\"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Shot-2020-08-14-at-9.53.31-AM-500x331.png 500w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Shot-2020-08-14-at-9.53.31-AM-300x199.png 300w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Shot-2020-08-14-at-9.53.31-AM-768x509.png 768w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Shot-2020-08-14-at-9.53.31-AM.png 1954w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Order, Disorder, Reorder: Part One A Further Journey Friday, \u202fAugust 14, 2020 If we are granted this first stage of Order&nbsp;(and not all are), we feel innocent and safe. Everything is basically good, it all means something, and we feel a part of what looks normal and deserved. It is our \u201cfirst na\u00efvet\u00e9.\u201d Everything has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19200"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19200"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19203,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19200\/revisions\/19203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}