Manifesto #11 / Year One, Zero Hour, and Every Clock is Ticking in New Now Time
We’ve only been living inside the New Now for a brief moment in time.
How did we get here? What changed?
Finally, the repeating false reality loop was disrupted.
People stopped believing dumb throwaway comments, like this one we’ve all heard millions of times: “People don’t change.” Let’s agree to call bullshit on this inane comment once and for all. We all constantly change, transform, and evolve over the course of our lives.
What else?
Enough people in our country said enough is enough. And the entire world joined in. Minds and hearts have been deepened and reawakened.
We’re awakening to a global all-inclusive sense of humanity. The words Equality and Justice for All must finally mean something.
The New Now began when we finally disrupted replaying the false reality loop we’d been stuck inside, which was fueled by a never-ending loop of the 24-hour news cycle of lies, distress, and panic. If a constant stream of emergency news programming isn’t distracting to the human nervous system, then honestly, what is?
In wildest dreams and most heartfelt yearnings, during a global pandemic, during a time of global wars, and murderous torture, in small towns and big cities—as a world culture, people of every age, belief system, race, rose up and spoke up.
It took this long to completely disrupt a deadly and damaging repeating false reality loop that had been agreed upon and installed into our culture before any of us were born. It’ll take lifetimes to unpack and address it, in every possible necessary way.
It’s past time for destructive social systems to be completely transformed. In the same way The Age of Reinvention bumped into the pandemic years, this historic moment is calling for new ways of not only looking at, but deeply perceiving everything.
When the whole world has been rebooted, we get a chance to change like never before.
The global pandemic rolled across the entire world, slowed down social interactions to a crawl, and we were able to do something unimaginable. Hit the reset button on the world. This is Year One, Zero Hour, and every clock is ticking in New Now time. The repeating false reality loop was overloaded with toxic brainwashing, false societal obligations and truisms, and mindless mental patterns long past their expiration date.
We’re entering hotter, darker, colder, increasingly more devastating Climate Crisis times. It’ll take the world working as one, or at least large pockets or bio-regions of the world working as one. Something that’s never been done.
Now what? is a question with millions of answers from billions of people living on our planet.
Not just our country, but the world needs leaders with big hearts and true-life wisdom. Leaders who don’t play deadly and idiotic games with peoples’ lives, and shrug and chuckle when they are called out for over 20,000 documented lies, since they have no shame, and always sink to the lowest common denominator in every type of social interaction.
Big ideas come from taking the time to stop and think and document your thoughts on the page. This turning point in history calls for culture-shifting big ideas.
In the New Now, the script has been flipped. We’ve gone through the looking glass, and we’re officially on the other side of history. In some sense, we can mark this as a post-history beginning.
We’re going through one of the most planet-shifting times humanity has ever experienced.
Like it or not, the only way out is in. And one of the most often repeated sentences of the past several decades is now as false a statement that can be made: “I don’t have enough time.”
As a global culture, we now possess the time to learn, grow, and reconnect ourselves to the Earth. Sit and think or sit and don’t think. No matter, thoughts arise anyway. The only way out is to put a pause on everything you’re doing; turn off the phone and any other electrical device in a fifty-foot radius and just pause for a time. How will you know when to start up again? When you can hear birds singing above the hum of traffic, you know you’ve been pausing for awhile.
Sit there and think deeply about how you want to spend the rest of your days, no matter how young or old you are. The answer may not come right away. That’s fine. If it doesn’t come today, maybe it will tomorrow. The key is to allow for stillness. Daydreaming should be taught in schools as much as every other type of learning. Let your mind wander, and ideas emerge. Scientific and artistic breakthroughs come from daydreaming. Close your eyes, pause, breathe, and regain a bit of clarity.
We’ve been living in a distracted, “busy for the sake of being busy culture” for far too long. The simplest methods for transformation are the timeless ones. Walking and meditation are the everyday ways humans have done this in previous centuries. Let’s rediscover how to turn off negative mental feedback loops. It’s not just about giving yourself a break, or allowing for some mindfulness because it would be a nice thing to do. We’ve easily distracted ourselves into a path that’s detrimental to our body/mind/spirit, which is a pattern we must break. Countless books and websites are devoted to getting us back to living with a clearer mind, and taking care of ourselves with daily healthy habits.
Let it not said we were distracted to death.
Rewire you brain, body, mind, and spirit. Meet the New Now version of yourself.
Putting your life on pause, even when it’s a matter of life and death may not be easy, after being programmed by decades of the socially induced pressure to constantly keep busy. It wasn’t always this way. But now pausing and thinking is at long last possible. Time is abundant, and necessary for survival. Thinking is good. Reading is imperative. Journaling is healing. Asking ourselves the tough questions is easier. Questioning how we got here is essential. Sit and listen to your mind, ask yourself questions, and don’t rely on a mobile device to find your answer. Left to its own devices, the human mind can come up with pretty much every answer you’re seeking.
Now is the time to reinvent every part of our culture that isn’t working. Make a list of things you can do, support, and help remove or help to create.
The limit of our personal observable now has shrunk to a matter of seconds. Our minds have been programmed to love distraction, and we’re bonded to our tech devices as we used to bond with people. Distraction can be overcome. By nature-walking, book reading, and mind calming. By taking time to think and meditate, you can get a bird’s eye view of your situation.
In a world of instant gratification where your next jolt of pleasure is just a smartphone tap away, it’s time to actively consider the long-term consequences of being too far removed from nature. Putting yourself on pause for a few moments you can recalculate your New Now. In timeless states of mind, you’ll feel like you’re able to incorporate three months, three decades, and even three centuries into your expansive senses.
In the New Now, we’re called upon to listen to what our hearts are telling us. And do our best to show up each day with love, empathy, and truth in our hearts.
The world is truly shifting before our eyes. Now is the time to reinvent yourself, and the culture around you.
Two of the single most important things you need to be doing every day have always been there for you. You can even start the day by pausing and breathing.
We can’t reinvent the world without reinventing ourselves first.
We can continue to step out of our repeating reality loops and focus on what we genuinely want our life and our future to be without the influence of media bombardment, advertising messages, or talking heads regurgitating scripted messages.
We breathe easier when we press the pause button on our personal analog machines, our very own minds. Technology can help give you a break from technology. Every morning, set the timer on your phone and give yourself 15 minutes to sit and breathe with closed eyes (bonus points for sitting out in nature), and it may surprise you beyond belief.
In the age of the 24-hour news cycle, smartphone push notifications, movies streaming from any device, and malignant narcissistic world leaders looking to divide and conquer, it’s become far too much to handle unless we learn to unplug and decompress. We’re spinning so fast reality is becoming less and less real. Imagine time traveling back only as far as the mid-1990s, to tell yourself about current world events. You’d probably never believe you.
And yet here we are.
We’re living through these hard to believe times, and yet believe them we must. Because more than anything, we’re helping ourselves, those who love us, and the world—by believing in and transforming ourselves.
And by believing in the power of love.
The New Now
Manifestos, Reinventions & Declarations
Revised & Updated
by
Russell C. Smith
Michael Foster
Lovely and insightful. Thank you Russell.