Opening Thoughts

We’ve been having fun lately, mostly because we’re feeling more unhinged than usual. When you’ve got everything to lose and everything to gain, and the “safe harbors” all seem so boring (like death even when you live to a ripe old age), then it gets more interesting, more . . . fun. Well, that’s how it’s been feeling here at Alternatives lately.

Everybody knows that any door leads into the center. Let’s go through that shamanic-style door offered by Trance Dance, the event advertised on the back cover of the last issue of Alternatives. We gifted that workshop experience to the entire staff of the magazine. For two days, we all danced blindly with abandon. Blind? because blindfolds were a condition to participate. Abandon? because when the drums and music overwhelm the senses, with no visual cues, no checking someone else out, only dancing remains . . . go there and you find yourself abandoned on a far shore. That’s only the beginning, only the vehicle. The true passage is through the spiritual door, if you can find it, hidden as it is within all the projections, personal wounds, and posturing of the personality which we all take so seriously. Great workshop, but only the beginning. If you missed it, don’t miss it again when Wilbert Alix brings Trance Dance to the Eugene Health & Wellness Celebration on September 5th & 6th.

We have found our calling (for the moment) and that is producing this magazine. Alternatives is a journal, like a personal journal—only transpersonal. It allows expression of voices from our community, people doing interesting things. What’s going on? So much, it’s impossible to “grok,” but there are some great projects, some miracles of synchronicity, examples of inspiring perseverence, hope informed by intelligence in action. It’s all happening right here, in the chaos and confusion of this strange field of life on which we meet. Alternatives is talking about it, and, more to the point, we’re absolutely committed to providing a forum for people to express their experiences of it.

We’re dealing with inspired commonalities here. Most culturally creative people believe they’re marginalized by their interests (vegetarian, back to nature, environmentalism, new age, killing their TV—you get the picture). These healing currents come together on the common ground of our community connections. It’s the alternatives that make sense in the wake of the departing twentieth century. In the metaphor of this nuclear age, we are the emerging “critical mass” of our society. Let’s blow this joint.

The Editors