On Novelty
1 February 2002
As
the world winds its unsteady way toward the so-called zero
point in 2012, the chief
characteristic of our remaining time promises to be "Novelty."
Indeed, this is the concept Terrence
McKenna used to identify the meaning of the end of time as
we know it. And all through our 2- or 7-billion year history,
each step forward--while rising and falling with the inevitable
ups and downs of resistance and change along the way--has been
fueled by that same motive force, tending toward that same inevitable
conclusion.
Is
it the creative energy of the universe at work here, in us, and
in less than ten years are we finally going to give in to it utterly,
to get out of its way altogether?
In
the moment, now, we realize like a hungry teen that there is something
to be had just beyond our grasp. Eagerly we await the next intoxicating
substance, event, morsel, gift. The mystery of waiting is made
both more anxious and more delicious by not knowing exactly when
or if that next satisfaction, however temporary, is to come.
The
mystery of not-knowing threatens to throw us back into the chaos
we have been escaping ever since our birth. We keep our backs
turned, then, at all costs, toward the future, toward novelty.
We crave the certainty of achieving...something, it hardly matters
what. As long as it's new and different.
Imagine
what it might be like to crave--no, to dwell within--the very
heart of novelty itself. Then we might know something like the
true satisfaction of desire, not in any small object or passing
experience to be gained, but rather in the essence of desire itself.
Remaining desirous, yet without object. Dedicated to novelty,
yet again without object.
We
will have then graduated from the status of hungry teen, to that
of spiritual adventurer. It won't really matter what comes next,
because we'll be at peace riding the crest of the wave.
Hold
onto your hats, kids. It won't be long now.
--Nowick
Gray
