Did you see what the Pittsburgh murderer posted before his rampage?

I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered.

Screw your optics. I’m going in.

Like so many others, this guy believes in a very different reality than most of us reading these words. In his world, the Jews he killed have been helping immigrants to settle in his country, immigrants with the intention to murder his people.

He lives in a different world, a world that is considered fictional by those of us who buy into another consensus reality, the one we call truth, or fact. His reality is consensual too, though a smaller number of people buy into it.

Not long ago, when there were three TV networks presenting news in compliance with the Fairness Doctrine, and just so many print publications available, it was easier to control consensus reality. Propaganda could be labeled propaganda, hate speech hate speech. Those who believed the propaganda and hate speech had to keep to themselves because of the labels applied by the believers in consensus reality. That isn’t happening anymore.

The perception of truth is always problematic. When scripture – writing – is labeled Truth, larger consensual groups form and wars break out. People who hold one Truth supreme clash with those who believe in another.

Now that we have the internet, and apps like Snapchat that disappear after messages are sent, and the dark internet, consensus is rapidly breaking down. Every small group forms its own world, the bubbles we live in. Consensus reality is under siege from all angles.

More than ever, Pittsburgh makes me feel that most forms of resistance are futile. The Tree of Life, primal symbol of all cultures, is under attack by an individual man who feels his kind is threatened. He doesn’t need to be part of an organized group – in fact he’s even more iconic if he’s a loner. To his fellow believers, he’s a hero, a martyr. Can we change what they believe? What resistance can be mounted against a sea change in the nature of reality?

More and more I’m coming to believe that it is only nature, a sea change, that can create a united human consensus: climate change.

Only when we are all pushing against the wall together to keep the sea out will we humans again agree on a reality.

I’m not a great believer in channeled teachings, but I like to think that I have a reasonably good intuitometer (thank you, Joe Abrahams). I do like this teaching:

The Hathors, an interplanetary intelligence channeled by the musician Tom Kenyon, advise that when one’s perceptual boundaries crumble and fail – surely this is what is happening now – not to visualize the future (that vision can only be based in the past), but rather to be still and to await the unknown with eager anticipation – and when action is required, to act in a way that will be of greatest benefit to whatever sphere you find yourself in.

Be still, await the future with eager anticipation, and when it’s time, push against the wall together.