Beware professional prophets.  Those employed by the people in charge, by the institutions and organisations.  Their job is to say “We can do this, there is hope, we only need keep faith and keep doing what we’re doing.”

It is the edge-person who can see ‘only anguish leads to life, only grieving leads to joy, and only embraced endings permit new beginnings.’*

Reality must be faced and grief experienced so that an ending may occur and a new beginning found.

I’ve just come across this, from mindfulness, which offers a little more insight into what is happening when we are able to accept reality.  To accept means to grasp and understand something, allowing us to ‘respond in a skilful way,’ that is, to have choice.**  The false prophet, and their company, are more inclined to employ ‘aversion, clinging, or tuning out’^ – that is, to deny reality or hold on to their version of reality, or to let their thinking wander, maybe to their retirement.

When we are willing to face reality for what it is, and all ourselves to grieve, then we are able to free tens and hundreds and even thousands of new ideas: ‘we are in a different realm, we’ve entered the universe that is inhabited by people who dare go into unknown territory.^

(*From Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination.)
(**From Mindfulness by Mindfullybeing.)
(^From Claudia Altucher’s Become An Idea Machine.)