Duality seems to be the greatest challenge humanity is facing at this stage of our evolution. Whatever side of whichever fence we presently find ourselves on, what we can all agree upon is that we're collectively suffering from paralysis caused by our conflicting approaches to governmental power; our ongoing social clashes between men and women; our disagreements over what's profitable for individuals versus what's beneficial for life; our raging conflicts between what our minds want to explore versus what's healthy for our planet to experience; our wars over which religion is supporting the "truest" God...and so on down the line of our disagreements.
What is it about duality, we must therefore ask ourselves, that causes us to experience so much social dissonance? Certainly if everyone in the world felt, thought and acted exactly the same as everyone else we'd have far fewer battles and problems to resolve. Yet we don't all view life from a singular perspective, nor do we wish to, although we've all sprung from a singular source. So why are we experiencing these polarizing struggles, why all the pain and suffering we're going through as a species?
Duality, we're learning, can be destructive. At one time or another we've all joined or identified with a particular group and embraced its ideology, which in turn may have led us to fear the members of an opposing group. If we're Christians, we identify with the teachings and stories of Jesus Christ, which causes us to grow suspicious of those who don't embrace Jesus as the son of God. If we're Muslim, we identify with the teachings and writings of the Prophet Muhammed, which causes us to grow suspicious of those who don't embrace Muhammed's teachings. Two different ideologies, two belief systems, two seemingly intractable views on life and how it should be led by human beings. Is there any way through this tangled web that can leave both sides satisfied, both intact, both free to self-express without fear of oppression?
Whenever we're dealing with two opposing sides, the ability to solve a problem depends on both sides agreeing to a single shared solution. When those two sides are naturally divided both by philosophy and by approach, a disagreement more often than not leads to a no/no or a yes/no failure to agree than it does to a yes/yes agreement on a mutually satisfying solution. Consider how the Republicans and Democrats are approaching our political and economic challenges these days, and you'll recognize the controlling power of "no." The ability of the naysayers to stall any attempt - even by those in the majority - to solve a problem means that at least two-thirds of the time we can expect to fail to resolve our conflicts. The likelihood of any conflict that stems from human behavior resolving itself is quite small, while the likelihood it will worsen if we do nothing is substantial. Entrenched duality systems therefore create recipes for social disaster, as fewer and fewer human conflicts get resolved and more and more conflicts worsen in severity.
We're only just now experiencing the consequences of many years of duality thoughts and behaviors. The planet itself is letting us know that duality is not the right format for us to follow, because our problems are worsening even as our interpersonal conflicts grow more acute. So if duality isn't the answer we'd hoped for, what is?
All I have to go by, when proposing a social solution to this challenge, is my own internal experience of duality and how I resolved it. For years I suffered from painful experiences of dissonance between the inner workings of my own mind and the emotional responses of my physical body. At times it felt like a war was raging inside me. My body, speaking the primary language it knows, tended to constrict around my unconventional thoughts, sending signals of danger, fear and anxiety to my brain. Meanwhile my mind, speaking the primary language it knows, angrily disparaged my body's painful intrusions into the passionate explorations of what it considered to be important personal questions. Only recently have I discovered a way to move beyond that mutual hostility, to empower my mind to feel free to explore appropriate questions while encouraging my body to relax and trust that my mind won't push it in a dangerous direction that will threaten its future existence.
The solution, I've discovered, is not to forcefully try to unify my mind and body - either by getting angry with my mind for exploring perturbing thoughts, or by growing frustrated with my body for feeling the legitimate emotions that arise. Both of those methods have proven counterproductive. If I chastise myself for having negative thoughts, my internal lecturing only increases the number of negative, judgmental thoughts I begin to think. If I grow angry or fearful because my body is expressing fear and anxiety, that only increases the level of fear and anxiety I experience. Clearly then, increasing the power of something doesn't make it go away!
The process that lately seems to be working is to invite a third party - my heart's loving energy - into each dissonant conversation that takes place between my body and my mind. When I invite my heart into the mix and create a "trialogue," what I discover is the gridlock caused by polarity collapses. My heart, by virtue of its intrinsically loving nature (which is its primary language) holds the power to bring a healing, trusting energy to the battlefield where previously my body and mind were engaged in their war of wills. On the field of love, true synergy becomes possible. My heart sends waves of love and gratitude through my body for all its support, which immediately relaxes my body. It simultaneously sends waves of loving, heartfelt appreciation to my mind for all of its efforts, which shifts my thoughts from the negative to a happier energetic.
It isn't as if my heart takes sides or votes with one or the other; the experience goes a good deal deeper than that. My heart, simply by changing the tone of the inner debate that has been raging, raises the level of exchange beyond what feels good to the body versus what sounds right to the mind to what feels loving and supportive of that which they both are - life itself. On that level, love renders moot the delusion that there are differences between my mind's objectives and those of my physical body. When my body trusts that my mind's work is being done out of love for life, and when my mind trusts that my body's responses are offered out of love for life, they quickly realign themselves and begin to work together to address whatever challenge I am facing. Gradually my mind has been learning to pay closer attention to my body's responses, and to move slower and more gently through its thoughts. Likewise, my body has been learning to relax and allow my mind the necessary space and freedom to explore disconcerting ideas so it can find a way to resolve its own deep questions. The key to success seems to be maintaining an inner vigilance so that I notice when the dissonance first begins. That way I can quickly call upon my heart to intervene as the tension starts to rise, before the inner war takes over and causes more suffering.
I suspect this simple learning process that's been taking place within me is an illustration of what humanity has the potential to create on a much broader social scale. We can continue to focus on our surface differences, concentrate on our fears and suspicions, feed our mistrust and perceive "the other" as speaking a foreign language we don't understand. In doing so, we add power to those feelings and make more real the prospect we won't be able to solve our shared social problems. Or we can, by changing the context in which we perceive our problems, move beyond the duality of "us versus them" to a trialogue systems approach to problem solving. When we open our hearts and go beyond our fears for our physical safety, our competing mental ideologies, our cultural clashes and our external sexual differences, what we find - on the field of love - is that we are all unique and fractal creations of life itself. In life we are unified, and as life we can embrace, without a doubt, that what is good for one of us is good for us all. To begin to create solutions that emerge from love's field, rather than from where we presently stand entrenched in our mental and physical differences, makes it far more likely we will reach a yes/yes solution supportive of life.
And isn't life, when we get right down to it, what we're all here to be and do and know? Without life, and without love, what does any of what we think or do actually mean? To start there then - to perceive love as our shared compass and view life as our shared experience - allows for the emergence of a solution in which we can trust. How life unfolds may be a continual mystery, but the vision we hold of where we're going grows clearer when lit by love. When we love life in all its infinite forms and many creative expressions, there is no challenge we can't rise above.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
No Self? No Problem!
Sometimes, when we notice others receiving public accolades for all their hard work, we feel slighted that we too have not been noticed or fully appreciated by a larger audience for our own good works and personal contributions. We want to feel the power of that same limelight under which we see our own heroes basking, and experience the same public gratitude for the amount of energy we're expending on behalf of other people. It doesn't seem "fair" that one person should suddenly be elevated to the status of public hero when we ourselves are working just as hard as they are to do the right thing, yet nobody's noticed our efforts.
The human ego (the mind-based sense of self) seems to endlessly crave external validation. It needs constant affirmation that it's done the right thing or is better at what it does than everyone else. When it doesn't get enough positive feedback the ego starts to feel deflated, even angry that the rest of the world hasn't noticed or honored its true worth. Occasionally an ego grows so enraged over being ignored that it lashes out at the world and inflicts incredible violence and suffering on innocent people.
The need for external validation is what drives much of human behavior - both the constructive and the destructive kind. For many of us, that need springs in part from having been raised in religious faiths that taught us from an early age we were inherently unworthy. The message behind original sin that many children internalize is that they were born bad, and that their sin can only be washed away by someone in a position of authority. According to most Christian traditions, nothing a person can do in this life has the power to absolve his or her sinfulness and bestow the grace of forgiveness. Absolution from sin requires the approval of an appointed external source. The disempowering nature of that belief and its deleterious effect on the ego's capacity to love and heal itself (and by extension, others) cannot be overstated.
Traditional religions focus intensely on the evils of sin and the hedonism of fleshly pleasures, potential temptations by Satan and the risk to our immortal soul if we fail to follow the dogmatic rules of our faith. That too places a tremendous amount of stress on the human ego. On some level the ego knows it can't possibly make the ideal choice in every situation, because often it can't know beforehand which was the right choice until after it's learned a lesson from its own mistakes. The unspoken, mostly unconscious, but ever-present suspicion that the ego may inadvertently make a bad choice that could cost the immortal soul a ticket to heaven leads to an anxious, fearful ego that doesn't dare trust its own judgment - especially considering it's already been taught it can never be good enough. So the ego turns to others to soothe it and make it feel better about itself, to affirm that it's okay, is doing well and is deserving of reward. It's like a well that can only be filled from the outside instead of filling up from within. Such a well is in constant danger of running dry, and its lack of inner abundance inhibits its capacity to give.
How tragic are the consequences of such religious teachings. How painful they are for the ego to bear, and how much suffering they've caused to humanity over the eons. To end that suffering, to eliminate the pain and doubt and lack of trust in our own capacities is therefore a challenge worth tackling, because what it does for us personally - and by extension for all of humanity - is free us from the misery of fear. Self-validation and renewed self-confidence enables us to step into the fullness of our own perfection so we can learn to love ourselves just as we are.
The ego (mind-self) that has been taught to fear and even loathe itself for its many presumed imperfections has been lied to on multiple levels by society. Perhaps such teachings were initially designed to coerce people into doing the right thing, but what's become clear over time is that we humans respond much better to love and appreciation than to fear and intimidation. The truth is, the ego-mind that so fears it may err and cause the soul to be damned forever is but a temporary manifestation of a physical human body, and it will dissolve - along with all its thoughts, fears and beliefs - when the body dissolves. What remains after death then is not a mind-based, thinking entity at all, but pure awareness itself - the god-stuff that flows through every one of us. That god-stuff cannot be eternally damned, because it is not a separated self that can be isolated or punished by itself in any way. It's an integral part of the totality that IS the cosmic consciousness we sometimes refer to as God.
There IS no separate self after death; no entity who will see, feel, taste, touch or smell the world around it once the body dies. Such sensory qualities are pointless without the need for such sensory input to help a material body navigate the larger world. Instead, like air that was once temporarily trapped inside a soap bubble, when we die our human awareness will expand back into the vastness of everything that has always existed beyond our tiny, temporary personalized sense of self.
Every soap bubble is a beautiful manifestation in its own right, a brief wondrous creation in space and time. So too are each of us wondrous creations, gifted with the ability to be and do marvelous things during our temporary human lifetimes. To therefore become the most beautiful version of ourselves that we can imagine ourselves becoming, without fearing that how we choose to be or what we may choose to experience has the power to destroy the essence of who we are, is spiritual freedom. We are NOT our bodies, our senses, our thoughts, our fears or even our life experiences and stories. We are the witnessing presence within these human forms that are our bodies. When one day our own bubble bursts and the experience of being a human ends for us, as it inevitably must, our experience of being a separate human "self," which was in fact a mind-based exercise, will end along with it.
What this means for us, on a deeper level, is that cosmic awareness (what we call God) is like the air in which all soap bubbles briefly float. A wisp of that cosmic awareness exists within each one of us. That wisp will someday be reunited with all the other wisps of awareness that are presently contained by those we have loved - and those we have wronged - in our lifetimes. Let us therefore resolve to unconditionally love ourselves and do our best to love each other more deeply and fully during the brief amount of time we have to practice loving each other - because everyone we encounter in life is only ourself in a temporary disguise.
The self of the mind is an illusion created by thought. The only self that truly exists is the ONE awareness that lives within us all. And it is divinely perfect already, deserving of our love and gratitude as it explores its own infinite potential for the benefit of all the many wisps of awareness that are manifesting in this field of creation it has designed. The more we embrace that truth and learn to validate and love ourselves, the more love we have to send out to the rest of life.
The human ego (the mind-based sense of self) seems to endlessly crave external validation. It needs constant affirmation that it's done the right thing or is better at what it does than everyone else. When it doesn't get enough positive feedback the ego starts to feel deflated, even angry that the rest of the world hasn't noticed or honored its true worth. Occasionally an ego grows so enraged over being ignored that it lashes out at the world and inflicts incredible violence and suffering on innocent people.
The need for external validation is what drives much of human behavior - both the constructive and the destructive kind. For many of us, that need springs in part from having been raised in religious faiths that taught us from an early age we were inherently unworthy. The message behind original sin that many children internalize is that they were born bad, and that their sin can only be washed away by someone in a position of authority. According to most Christian traditions, nothing a person can do in this life has the power to absolve his or her sinfulness and bestow the grace of forgiveness. Absolution from sin requires the approval of an appointed external source. The disempowering nature of that belief and its deleterious effect on the ego's capacity to love and heal itself (and by extension, others) cannot be overstated.
Traditional religions focus intensely on the evils of sin and the hedonism of fleshly pleasures, potential temptations by Satan and the risk to our immortal soul if we fail to follow the dogmatic rules of our faith. That too places a tremendous amount of stress on the human ego. On some level the ego knows it can't possibly make the ideal choice in every situation, because often it can't know beforehand which was the right choice until after it's learned a lesson from its own mistakes. The unspoken, mostly unconscious, but ever-present suspicion that the ego may inadvertently make a bad choice that could cost the immortal soul a ticket to heaven leads to an anxious, fearful ego that doesn't dare trust its own judgment - especially considering it's already been taught it can never be good enough. So the ego turns to others to soothe it and make it feel better about itself, to affirm that it's okay, is doing well and is deserving of reward. It's like a well that can only be filled from the outside instead of filling up from within. Such a well is in constant danger of running dry, and its lack of inner abundance inhibits its capacity to give.
How tragic are the consequences of such religious teachings. How painful they are for the ego to bear, and how much suffering they've caused to humanity over the eons. To end that suffering, to eliminate the pain and doubt and lack of trust in our own capacities is therefore a challenge worth tackling, because what it does for us personally - and by extension for all of humanity - is free us from the misery of fear. Self-validation and renewed self-confidence enables us to step into the fullness of our own perfection so we can learn to love ourselves just as we are.
The ego (mind-self) that has been taught to fear and even loathe itself for its many presumed imperfections has been lied to on multiple levels by society. Perhaps such teachings were initially designed to coerce people into doing the right thing, but what's become clear over time is that we humans respond much better to love and appreciation than to fear and intimidation. The truth is, the ego-mind that so fears it may err and cause the soul to be damned forever is but a temporary manifestation of a physical human body, and it will dissolve - along with all its thoughts, fears and beliefs - when the body dissolves. What remains after death then is not a mind-based, thinking entity at all, but pure awareness itself - the god-stuff that flows through every one of us. That god-stuff cannot be eternally damned, because it is not a separated self that can be isolated or punished by itself in any way. It's an integral part of the totality that IS the cosmic consciousness we sometimes refer to as God.
There IS no separate self after death; no entity who will see, feel, taste, touch or smell the world around it once the body dies. Such sensory qualities are pointless without the need for such sensory input to help a material body navigate the larger world. Instead, like air that was once temporarily trapped inside a soap bubble, when we die our human awareness will expand back into the vastness of everything that has always existed beyond our tiny, temporary personalized sense of self.
Every soap bubble is a beautiful manifestation in its own right, a brief wondrous creation in space and time. So too are each of us wondrous creations, gifted with the ability to be and do marvelous things during our temporary human lifetimes. To therefore become the most beautiful version of ourselves that we can imagine ourselves becoming, without fearing that how we choose to be or what we may choose to experience has the power to destroy the essence of who we are, is spiritual freedom. We are NOT our bodies, our senses, our thoughts, our fears or even our life experiences and stories. We are the witnessing presence within these human forms that are our bodies. When one day our own bubble bursts and the experience of being a human ends for us, as it inevitably must, our experience of being a separate human "self," which was in fact a mind-based exercise, will end along with it.
What this means for us, on a deeper level, is that cosmic awareness (what we call God) is like the air in which all soap bubbles briefly float. A wisp of that cosmic awareness exists within each one of us. That wisp will someday be reunited with all the other wisps of awareness that are presently contained by those we have loved - and those we have wronged - in our lifetimes. Let us therefore resolve to unconditionally love ourselves and do our best to love each other more deeply and fully during the brief amount of time we have to practice loving each other - because everyone we encounter in life is only ourself in a temporary disguise.
The self of the mind is an illusion created by thought. The only self that truly exists is the ONE awareness that lives within us all. And it is divinely perfect already, deserving of our love and gratitude as it explores its own infinite potential for the benefit of all the many wisps of awareness that are manifesting in this field of creation it has designed. The more we embrace that truth and learn to validate and love ourselves, the more love we have to send out to the rest of life.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Rebalancing our Masculine and Femine Energies
Lately it's becoming clearer to me that the work our society most desperately needs done - work for which not nearly enough paying jobs exist - is work that has traditionally been performed by women in the home. The reason behind the pay disparity for our respective roles, when we look at it logically, is clear. Since men designed our modern economic system, and since masculine energy and values have dominated most of human society for several millenia now, all things traditionally feminine have been neglected, ignored or relegated to a lower status than what has typically been viewed as the purview of the male. I don't believe this was intentional so much as accidental; men simply didn't think about the value of what women do when they designed our modern Western society.
For instance, our entire planet today is in dire need of a good spring cleaning, given the messes we've been making for such a long time. We've got whole plastic islands floating in our oceans, scorched earth where beautiful trees used to grow, filthy, stagnant waters where once clean rivers flowed and mounds of garbage stacking up in our planetary corners. Additionally, many other species with whom we share space are going extinct because no one is caring for or about their needs. In a well run home, it traditionally has been the women who take care of the pets, clean up the house and make sure things are in order. Because we don't pay women to do such "unproductive" work, by extension we haven't figured out how to pay business to do it either.
Basic home maintenance has also been neglected in our society, which is why our roads are crumbling, our water delivery systems are failing and our energy systems have become inadequate. Additionally, our limited natural resources are not being equitably divided, so many of us are going hungry and dying every night. How often does that happen in a well-run home? A loving mother feeds all her family members, and she doesn't permit the men to hoard the food. For countless centuries it was also the woman (along with the older children) who forged paths to the river each day to fetch the water and wood for the fireplace, tasks which today still fall on women in places that have not yet industrialized. Such tasks have long been taken for granted by men, who were either out hunting or farming and weren't present to witness the energy expended by their women to keep the home running, so the assumption that somehow those tasks will continue to "magically" get done persists in society.
We can also look to the sorry state of education, health and elder care for more insights. Raising, teaching and nurturing our children to reach their highest capacity has long been the province of women in the home. Caring for the sick too has been a feminine role. Though medicine men sometimes provided the necessary cure, it was the women who nursed the patient back to health. With our elders it has usually been the daughters who have reached out to care for their parents in their old age, and who have lovingly hospiced them to the end of life.
The challenge we humans face today is to accept the fact that this world we've primarily structured around masculine energy, competition, domination, power, productivity and control is NOT a whole system. It is an unbalanced half-world, one in which the softer qualities of love, compassion, kindness, nurturing and cooperation are not being valued. Yet we know, as members of our own families within our private homes, that for any of us to thrive we must first create a stable, loving, orderly environment out of which to successfully operate.
How do we begin to place appropriate value on feminine traits when they don't create marketable products, only environments (wombs) out of which success is birthed? Feminine energy clearly isn't as easily measured as are masculine enterprises, because feminine energy is hidden, obscure and internal while masculine energy is forceful, projected and highly visible. I suspect the shift in our awareness will come when we collectively embrace the fact that each of us contains both of these so-called "masculine" and "feminine" energies, and that we need to honor them both to thrive and feel whole.
Interestingly enough, many women today are growing more and more "masculinized" and are stepping into roles that have traditionally been held by men. Many men too, are discovering the joy and beauty that is their feminine side. As this trend toward greater internal balance continues, it will become ever more apparent to us all that we can't continue to do "business as usual" from an economic standpoint, because our economy - at least the way we've designed it - doesn't support the maintenance and care of a beautiful,loving home environment from which our species can continue to successfully create and thrive.
Our present options seem to be to incorporate the feminine aspects of home, hearth and community maintenance into our current male-dominated business model - most likely through increased taxation on masculine productivity - so we can afford to pay people well to perform our traditionally feminine tasks; OR we can change the way we're operating so that none of us get paid to do chores because everyone performs their chosen work out of love for and a sense of responsibility to our larger human family.
Is there a both/and solution to this dilemma? Can we incorporate a love for our planetary womb and a deep appreciation for all life forms - including children, the infirm and the elderly - into our present paradigm, still maintaining a for-profit economic system? I simply don't know. What I can say is that for us to make it through the current spate of crises that we face, we need to design a whole systems social order where everyone benefits from - and contributes fully to - the beautiful world we choose to build and share.
For instance, our entire planet today is in dire need of a good spring cleaning, given the messes we've been making for such a long time. We've got whole plastic islands floating in our oceans, scorched earth where beautiful trees used to grow, filthy, stagnant waters where once clean rivers flowed and mounds of garbage stacking up in our planetary corners. Additionally, many other species with whom we share space are going extinct because no one is caring for or about their needs. In a well run home, it traditionally has been the women who take care of the pets, clean up the house and make sure things are in order. Because we don't pay women to do such "unproductive" work, by extension we haven't figured out how to pay business to do it either.
Basic home maintenance has also been neglected in our society, which is why our roads are crumbling, our water delivery systems are failing and our energy systems have become inadequate. Additionally, our limited natural resources are not being equitably divided, so many of us are going hungry and dying every night. How often does that happen in a well-run home? A loving mother feeds all her family members, and she doesn't permit the men to hoard the food. For countless centuries it was also the woman (along with the older children) who forged paths to the river each day to fetch the water and wood for the fireplace, tasks which today still fall on women in places that have not yet industrialized. Such tasks have long been taken for granted by men, who were either out hunting or farming and weren't present to witness the energy expended by their women to keep the home running, so the assumption that somehow those tasks will continue to "magically" get done persists in society.
We can also look to the sorry state of education, health and elder care for more insights. Raising, teaching and nurturing our children to reach their highest capacity has long been the province of women in the home. Caring for the sick too has been a feminine role. Though medicine men sometimes provided the necessary cure, it was the women who nursed the patient back to health. With our elders it has usually been the daughters who have reached out to care for their parents in their old age, and who have lovingly hospiced them to the end of life.
The challenge we humans face today is to accept the fact that this world we've primarily structured around masculine energy, competition, domination, power, productivity and control is NOT a whole system. It is an unbalanced half-world, one in which the softer qualities of love, compassion, kindness, nurturing and cooperation are not being valued. Yet we know, as members of our own families within our private homes, that for any of us to thrive we must first create a stable, loving, orderly environment out of which to successfully operate.
How do we begin to place appropriate value on feminine traits when they don't create marketable products, only environments (wombs) out of which success is birthed? Feminine energy clearly isn't as easily measured as are masculine enterprises, because feminine energy is hidden, obscure and internal while masculine energy is forceful, projected and highly visible. I suspect the shift in our awareness will come when we collectively embrace the fact that each of us contains both of these so-called "masculine" and "feminine" energies, and that we need to honor them both to thrive and feel whole.
Interestingly enough, many women today are growing more and more "masculinized" and are stepping into roles that have traditionally been held by men. Many men too, are discovering the joy and beauty that is their feminine side. As this trend toward greater internal balance continues, it will become ever more apparent to us all that we can't continue to do "business as usual" from an economic standpoint, because our economy - at least the way we've designed it - doesn't support the maintenance and care of a beautiful,loving home environment from which our species can continue to successfully create and thrive.
Our present options seem to be to incorporate the feminine aspects of home, hearth and community maintenance into our current male-dominated business model - most likely through increased taxation on masculine productivity - so we can afford to pay people well to perform our traditionally feminine tasks; OR we can change the way we're operating so that none of us get paid to do chores because everyone performs their chosen work out of love for and a sense of responsibility to our larger human family.
Is there a both/and solution to this dilemma? Can we incorporate a love for our planetary womb and a deep appreciation for all life forms - including children, the infirm and the elderly - into our present paradigm, still maintaining a for-profit economic system? I simply don't know. What I can say is that for us to make it through the current spate of crises that we face, we need to design a whole systems social order where everyone benefits from - and contributes fully to - the beautiful world we choose to build and share.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
I Am
I am everything that is...I am cloud and rain and earth and tree and flower. I am every fruit I have ever tasted, I am water and fowl and sheep and cattle and lamb. I am forged in the stars, I am sunlight and heat, I am wind and the slow, chill movement of icy glaciers. I am fish and bird and dinosaur...I am Jewish holocaust victim and the one who tormented and killed those innocents. I am crusader, I am warrior, I am heathen and lover of language...I am Jesus, nailed to the cross, and I am those who wielded the hammers that caused such pain. I am Vlad the Impaler and I am Buddha, who sits and smiles because the truth has chosen to make itself known. I am rocks and mountains and sand and oil and the effervescent sheen of a morning rainbow. I am ALL of the ALL; which means I am nothing special, yet everything true.
Every atom within my body is truly non-human. They have gathered together in a playful dance to temporarily sing me into existence. They carry within them the memories of all that has come before me; they hold in their infinite centers the dark, inspiring tales of life in all its mad glory. Death, love, sorrow, bliss...the eternal pleasures and sufferings of a thousand billion trillion infinite moments...all these are etched in atomic electrons that carve their immutable truths into my soul. Whatever I think I know, I know much more than I believe.
My umbilical cord to my mother is the every breath I take - it connects me to this world that holds and loves me. My exhales are a gift to my mother, an energetic offering that feeds my brothers and sisters in this world. Every beat of my heart, every thought in my head, every feeling and sensory perception I have does not belong to ME. It belongs to this world, through which I am temporarily passing in the form I label as "me." I am the gift that keeps on giving unto infinity and beyond, the miracle of the essence of life itself. I have no beginning, no end and no destination.
I AM the journey.
Walk with me?
Every atom within my body is truly non-human. They have gathered together in a playful dance to temporarily sing me into existence. They carry within them the memories of all that has come before me; they hold in their infinite centers the dark, inspiring tales of life in all its mad glory. Death, love, sorrow, bliss...the eternal pleasures and sufferings of a thousand billion trillion infinite moments...all these are etched in atomic electrons that carve their immutable truths into my soul. Whatever I think I know, I know much more than I believe.
My umbilical cord to my mother is the every breath I take - it connects me to this world that holds and loves me. My exhales are a gift to my mother, an energetic offering that feeds my brothers and sisters in this world. Every beat of my heart, every thought in my head, every feeling and sensory perception I have does not belong to ME. It belongs to this world, through which I am temporarily passing in the form I label as "me." I am the gift that keeps on giving unto infinity and beyond, the miracle of the essence of life itself. I have no beginning, no end and no destination.
I AM the journey.
Walk with me?
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Personal Improvement Action Steps To Create a Better World
Whenever I talk about Sacred Economics people often respond by asking me what they can personally DO to change our society. It's a common frustration. Intuitively we're coming to realize we're stuck in a social system that doesn't support an adult approach to life, because it was created by a juvenile species. As a structure designed by adolescents to control the wayward behavior of other adolescents, our system fosters continued adolescent behavior: self-consciousness, self-absorption, alienation, competition, fear that we're not "good enough," judgment, cliquishness and group-think, rebellion, aggression, short-term gratification, unfettered growth and consumption, a need for external validation and a tendency toward self-destructiveness.
While changing "the system" is an impossible task for any single person to accomplish, what we can each begin to change, one person at a time, is our unconscious practice of adolescent behaviors. We can change those patterns by noticing where we are acting like juveniles and - without blaming ourselves for being what our society has programmed us to be - stretching toward our personal adulthood. What we're seeking to attain by doing so are higher degrees of self-governance, self-discipline, self-awareness and yes...self-love.
Adolescence sucks. Ask anyone who's been through it and come out the other side, and the almost unanimous opinion is they'd rather have their teeth pulled without anesthesia than go through it over again. Yet here we are, called upon by life itself to go through it again collectively, and emerge as a fledgling adult human species. Since we already know how good it feels to get adolescence over with, why not start now?
In that spirit, I'm attaching my practical self-guide for stepping into my own adulthood, in the hope it may provide some concrete ideas for how we can collectively begin to make this transition. Feel free to add any new ideas or practices of your own, and embrace only those that resonate with you.
Daily Practices:
1. Upon waking, offer joyful gratitude to life for the opportunity it’s gifted me to be in this world one more day.
2. When preparing meals, ask myself if the food I’m choosing best serves my cells and body, so they can serve me.
3. When greeting other people, notice – REALLY notice – who they are (instead of what they’re doing) and honor their inner aliveness.
4. When doing my chores, stay focused on the task at hand and place all my attention on what I am doing instead of distracting myself by thinking about other things.
5. Turn off the television. Read books that sing to my heart and soul, spend time in nature and pay attention to the non-human life that is going on all around me. When I do choose to watch TV, choose programs that enlighten me, inspire me, are supportive of life or bring me deep enjoyment.
6. When confronted by a challenge, slow down. Breathe deeply and do not take personally whatever is happening. Every challenge presents an opportunity for me to transform a disagreement or misunderstanding into love. Respond from a place of compassion when I feel ready.
7. If I find myself around people who feel compelled to measure, judge and compare others, be silent. Walk away…or if I must speak, comment only on how amazing, gifted and infinitely complex each one of us truly is.
8. Pay close attention to my body’s signals. If it feels tired, give it rest. If it craves exercise, take it outside for a walk. If it feels hungry, nourish it. If it feels “bored” shift my attention to the complexity and activities happening in my surroundings, or change my surroundings to place my body at ease.
9. Notice my daily habits and static patterns of behavior. Am I doing things because that’s the way I’ve always done them, or am I doing things because the way I do them makes sense? Focus on changing any habits I could do better or more efficiently.
10. Be kind to myself throughout the day. Remember to enjoy the sense of a task well done, to reward myself with the occasional joy or treat after completing something hard, and take frequent time-outs to appreciate the beauty and miracles of life.
11. Stay in the moment. Practice calmness and serenity whenever I encounter people, images or stories that try to push my attention into the future or drive it into the past. Remind myself I have no power in either of those places. Steward my energy accordingly. Anger and fear diminish my ability to respond from a state of complete awareness, so notice them if they arise and allow them to subside before I respond.
12. When I’m ready to go to sleep at night, take a moment to look back on the day’s experiences and accomplishments. Remind myself that today I’ve brought a bit more love into the world than was here the day before. Be satisfied with that knowing. If today is to be my last day of life, remind myself how very good it was.
Longer Term Practices
1. Pay attention to how we’re all relating to each other. If I am presented with an opportunity to demonstrate what it feels like to give more than I take, then do so. If I find myself in a situation where someone asks for my help, offer it without requiring anything in return. Know that whatever assistance I can offer them will enable them to assist others in the long run, which is good for me.
2. Notice my spending and consumption habits and patterns. Am I buying and using things because that’s the way I’ve always done it, or am I being thoughtful about and appreciative of the life energy that has gone into producing what I am using?
3. Notice the garbage I am producing. Are there ways to reduce or eliminate some of my waste, or to recycle it more effectively? Am I composting any food waste and returning those nutrients to Earth in a helpful way?
4. Be more conscious of my water consumption. Can I recycle my bathwater, or reduce the time I’m spending in the shower? Is my landscaping native to my environment, or does it consume excessive time and energy to support? Am I using biodegradable products wherever possible to protect the planetary water supply?
5. Pay attention to my food supply. Is the food I eat grown as locally as possible, or does it consume vast quantities of energy to bring it to my table? Am I growing my own food and learning more about the time and work it takes to produce good food? What about the animals and animal products I’m consuming – are they well-treated and humanely cared for, or am I contributing to their misery by participating in their exploitation and consumption?
6. Look more deeply at the goods I purchase. Are they well made, or are they simply cheap? Do I want to buy products that are cheap and disposable, or things that will last me a lifetime? Do I allow advertising to sway me around what I “need” by selling me things I may want?
7. Notice my own travel patterns. Do I ride when I could walk, drive alone when I could share rides, organize my chores and trips so I don’t have to make multiple excursions? If I must drive, am I using the most energy efficient vehicle possible for the trip?
8. Continually inventory my possessions. Are there things I’m holding onto I no longer need or use? Can I give them away to someone else in need and not feel deprived? If I give them away, will I need to replace them or can I do without them indefinitely?
9. Practice new ways of sharing and experiment with new ideas. Can I invite someone to share my space if I have extra space? What about tools and other things I rarely use? Can I work with my friends and neighbors to create a rotational schedule, so we all don’t need to buy these rarely used items?
10. Take inventory of the energy usage in my home. Am I conscious of lights left on, fans operating in empty rooms, appliances draining power when no one is using them? Have I continually investigated solar energy, wind energy or the geothermal options for my area?
11. Stay abreast of new technologies that are supportive of sustainability. Even if they are not presently affordable or available, keep interested and continually look for ways to apply them as they become available.
12. Participate more fully in my village. Be open to any requests for help from neighbors and friends who support the practices and policies I myself am supporting. If what is being proposed is loving, sustainable and supportive of life in all its many forms, give whatever I can to bring it to fruition.
13. Lovingly steward ALL children and young people. Know they are eagerly seeking dependable role models in this ever-changing world. They desire NOT to be told what is true or what they “should” do, but for me to demonstrate competence in the skills they hope to achieve. Honor and support their passions, talents, desires and dreams…for they are the ones who will inherit this world I'm co-creating.
While changing "the system" is an impossible task for any single person to accomplish, what we can each begin to change, one person at a time, is our unconscious practice of adolescent behaviors. We can change those patterns by noticing where we are acting like juveniles and - without blaming ourselves for being what our society has programmed us to be - stretching toward our personal adulthood. What we're seeking to attain by doing so are higher degrees of self-governance, self-discipline, self-awareness and yes...self-love.
Adolescence sucks. Ask anyone who's been through it and come out the other side, and the almost unanimous opinion is they'd rather have their teeth pulled without anesthesia than go through it over again. Yet here we are, called upon by life itself to go through it again collectively, and emerge as a fledgling adult human species. Since we already know how good it feels to get adolescence over with, why not start now?
In that spirit, I'm attaching my practical self-guide for stepping into my own adulthood, in the hope it may provide some concrete ideas for how we can collectively begin to make this transition. Feel free to add any new ideas or practices of your own, and embrace only those that resonate with you.
Daily Practices:
1. Upon waking, offer joyful gratitude to life for the opportunity it’s gifted me to be in this world one more day.
2. When preparing meals, ask myself if the food I’m choosing best serves my cells and body, so they can serve me.
3. When greeting other people, notice – REALLY notice – who they are (instead of what they’re doing) and honor their inner aliveness.
4. When doing my chores, stay focused on the task at hand and place all my attention on what I am doing instead of distracting myself by thinking about other things.
5. Turn off the television. Read books that sing to my heart and soul, spend time in nature and pay attention to the non-human life that is going on all around me. When I do choose to watch TV, choose programs that enlighten me, inspire me, are supportive of life or bring me deep enjoyment.
6. When confronted by a challenge, slow down. Breathe deeply and do not take personally whatever is happening. Every challenge presents an opportunity for me to transform a disagreement or misunderstanding into love. Respond from a place of compassion when I feel ready.
7. If I find myself around people who feel compelled to measure, judge and compare others, be silent. Walk away…or if I must speak, comment only on how amazing, gifted and infinitely complex each one of us truly is.
8. Pay close attention to my body’s signals. If it feels tired, give it rest. If it craves exercise, take it outside for a walk. If it feels hungry, nourish it. If it feels “bored” shift my attention to the complexity and activities happening in my surroundings, or change my surroundings to place my body at ease.
9. Notice my daily habits and static patterns of behavior. Am I doing things because that’s the way I’ve always done them, or am I doing things because the way I do them makes sense? Focus on changing any habits I could do better or more efficiently.
10. Be kind to myself throughout the day. Remember to enjoy the sense of a task well done, to reward myself with the occasional joy or treat after completing something hard, and take frequent time-outs to appreciate the beauty and miracles of life.
11. Stay in the moment. Practice calmness and serenity whenever I encounter people, images or stories that try to push my attention into the future or drive it into the past. Remind myself I have no power in either of those places. Steward my energy accordingly. Anger and fear diminish my ability to respond from a state of complete awareness, so notice them if they arise and allow them to subside before I respond.
12. When I’m ready to go to sleep at night, take a moment to look back on the day’s experiences and accomplishments. Remind myself that today I’ve brought a bit more love into the world than was here the day before. Be satisfied with that knowing. If today is to be my last day of life, remind myself how very good it was.
Longer Term Practices
1. Pay attention to how we’re all relating to each other. If I am presented with an opportunity to demonstrate what it feels like to give more than I take, then do so. If I find myself in a situation where someone asks for my help, offer it without requiring anything in return. Know that whatever assistance I can offer them will enable them to assist others in the long run, which is good for me.
2. Notice my spending and consumption habits and patterns. Am I buying and using things because that’s the way I’ve always done it, or am I being thoughtful about and appreciative of the life energy that has gone into producing what I am using?
3. Notice the garbage I am producing. Are there ways to reduce or eliminate some of my waste, or to recycle it more effectively? Am I composting any food waste and returning those nutrients to Earth in a helpful way?
4. Be more conscious of my water consumption. Can I recycle my bathwater, or reduce the time I’m spending in the shower? Is my landscaping native to my environment, or does it consume excessive time and energy to support? Am I using biodegradable products wherever possible to protect the planetary water supply?
5. Pay attention to my food supply. Is the food I eat grown as locally as possible, or does it consume vast quantities of energy to bring it to my table? Am I growing my own food and learning more about the time and work it takes to produce good food? What about the animals and animal products I’m consuming – are they well-treated and humanely cared for, or am I contributing to their misery by participating in their exploitation and consumption?
6. Look more deeply at the goods I purchase. Are they well made, or are they simply cheap? Do I want to buy products that are cheap and disposable, or things that will last me a lifetime? Do I allow advertising to sway me around what I “need” by selling me things I may want?
7. Notice my own travel patterns. Do I ride when I could walk, drive alone when I could share rides, organize my chores and trips so I don’t have to make multiple excursions? If I must drive, am I using the most energy efficient vehicle possible for the trip?
8. Continually inventory my possessions. Are there things I’m holding onto I no longer need or use? Can I give them away to someone else in need and not feel deprived? If I give them away, will I need to replace them or can I do without them indefinitely?
9. Practice new ways of sharing and experiment with new ideas. Can I invite someone to share my space if I have extra space? What about tools and other things I rarely use? Can I work with my friends and neighbors to create a rotational schedule, so we all don’t need to buy these rarely used items?
10. Take inventory of the energy usage in my home. Am I conscious of lights left on, fans operating in empty rooms, appliances draining power when no one is using them? Have I continually investigated solar energy, wind energy or the geothermal options for my area?
11. Stay abreast of new technologies that are supportive of sustainability. Even if they are not presently affordable or available, keep interested and continually look for ways to apply them as they become available.
12. Participate more fully in my village. Be open to any requests for help from neighbors and friends who support the practices and policies I myself am supporting. If what is being proposed is loving, sustainable and supportive of life in all its many forms, give whatever I can to bring it to fruition.
13. Lovingly steward ALL children and young people. Know they are eagerly seeking dependable role models in this ever-changing world. They desire NOT to be told what is true or what they “should” do, but for me to demonstrate competence in the skills they hope to achieve. Honor and support their passions, talents, desires and dreams…for they are the ones who will inherit this world I'm co-creating.
Friday, July 16, 2010
There...But For Grace...
Yesterday morning a friend and I dropped by a local coffee shop to relax and chat a while. As we approached the entrance together, I happened to notice an elderly man sitting alone at one of the glass topped outdoor tables. A brown paper coffee cup was resting in front of him, but his hands were busy gesturing as he mumbled toward the sky, perhaps in response to a voice only he could hear. Something about his demeanor prompted me to approach him. I placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, smiled and said, "Good morning, my friend."
His entire face lit up as his attention shifted away from the conversation he'd been having with himself and responded to the sound of my voice. "Hello there. Is this a Club Med?" he asked, motioning vaguely toward the bubbling fountain beside the coffee shop. With the temperature hovering in the mid-eighties, the late morning sun blazing in the cloudless blue sky and the merry burbling of the water beside us, I could understand the logic - if not the nature - of his reasoning.
"Not a Club Med, no. It's a coffee shop." I replied, unsure what else to offer.
"Too bad." He shrugged. "I used to live beneath this place, you know. Ask anyone who's lived here a while what it used to be like before this. Although my home wasn't here, on top. It was inside the Earth. Before it exploded and thrust me into the past, the present and the future all at once."
His face grew animated as he began to tell me his story. He spoke to me of the spaceships, and the awful people who were trying to steal his blood for its unique DNA configuration, which resembled the molecular structure of honey. His mission, he informed me, was to stop the Earth from falling into a hole it can never get out of. Those of us who were milling around the coffee shop - he kindly included me in this explanation - were part of the human Exodus, the souls he was here to protect from the invaders.
I noticed how his fingernails were encrusted with the deep layers of dirt that accumulate from too many days without access to clean running water. His clothes, while neat, were worn and threadbare. Off to one side stood a shopping cart neatly packed with whatever precious items he'd managed to collect for himself on his travels. A blue plastic tarp covered the entire basket, preventing me from seeing the treasures within.
As I listened to his story, I found myself shifting between awe at the level of intelligent coherence he projected as he spun his tale, and compassion based on the realization he occupied a world no one else could truly enter. It was a magical realm indeed, filled with demons and heroes and adventures and lots of danger, while at the same time it was tinged with hope and wrapped in a deep sense of purpose. When he finished speaking he gazed up at me expectantly, waiting for something. What though? What could I possibly have to offer a man I couldn't understand?
Suddenly, I realized what he most needed from me wasn't for me to validate (or challenge) his ideas. By some serendipitous miracle a stranger had reached out to him and, at least in this one precious moment, had gifted him the chance to make some - any - slim connection with another person. That was what I had to offer, and it was enough. I smiled and patted his shoulder once again. "Well," I said, "That is some story. Best of luck to you, and I wish you success."
He laughed and pocketed the cash I offered him as if it was more of a distraction than something to be noted and appreciated. "I'm gonna be alright," he said, eyes twinkling. "I know how to take care of myself. Don't you worry 'bout me."
I walked away then, aware I wasn't worried about him in the least. Somehow, despite whatever dark nights of the soul and tragedies of the heart he'd experienced in his charred and broken past, he'd created a new world for himself out of the ashes. It was a world in which other people played minor supporting roles now and again, but where his primary "reality" mainly unfolded through the story inside his own mind.
It's a place I happen to know all too well, because I've been there myself the past. It's called psychosis. The alien landscape where my new friend dwells, perhaps permanently, is a world of his own creation. His mind has gotten so rooted in its own thoughts that his body has grown physically disconnected from external reality. While the body checks into the world now and then to tend to its basic needs - mundane things like shelter, food and sleep - as soon as those needs are satisfied he retreats to the world inside his mind once again. For people in his condition, sensory input is experienced not for what it actually is, but for what the mind has chosen to believe it to be so it "fits" into the story his mind is telling.
Angry, judgmental people become the alien abductors; the distant sounds of airplanes become invisible hovering spaceships. Kindly passing strangers become members of the Exodus team; the shopping mall becomes a cover for a hidden underground world filled with strange plants and beasts. Luckily for him, the saga he's woven is epic; it's exciting and coherent and open to lots of interesting possibilities as time passes. It is, I suspect, a story with enough of a punch to carry him for years.
It occurred to me then, as I entered the cool shaded realm of the coffee shop, ordered my tall mocha with whipped cream and prepared to settle into a comfortable chair and talk with my friend about our intertwined lives, that the only difference between him and me was that I'd managed - with the help of a loving family, good friends and an excellent doctor - to pull myself back from the precipice of mental illness before I'd fallen in so deep no one could help me. Most days these days I find myself fully connected to reality, surrounded by people who perceive the same things I perceive. Still, every so often a panic attack overwhelms me, reminding me just how fragile is the mind, and how lonely and frightening a place it can be when we're trapped inside it alone.
That's why yesterday morning I gifted a piece of myself to the man from the center of the Earth. There but for the grace of God...go all of us.
His entire face lit up as his attention shifted away from the conversation he'd been having with himself and responded to the sound of my voice. "Hello there. Is this a Club Med?" he asked, motioning vaguely toward the bubbling fountain beside the coffee shop. With the temperature hovering in the mid-eighties, the late morning sun blazing in the cloudless blue sky and the merry burbling of the water beside us, I could understand the logic - if not the nature - of his reasoning.
"Not a Club Med, no. It's a coffee shop." I replied, unsure what else to offer.
"Too bad." He shrugged. "I used to live beneath this place, you know. Ask anyone who's lived here a while what it used to be like before this. Although my home wasn't here, on top. It was inside the Earth. Before it exploded and thrust me into the past, the present and the future all at once."
His face grew animated as he began to tell me his story. He spoke to me of the spaceships, and the awful people who were trying to steal his blood for its unique DNA configuration, which resembled the molecular structure of honey. His mission, he informed me, was to stop the Earth from falling into a hole it can never get out of. Those of us who were milling around the coffee shop - he kindly included me in this explanation - were part of the human Exodus, the souls he was here to protect from the invaders.
I noticed how his fingernails were encrusted with the deep layers of dirt that accumulate from too many days without access to clean running water. His clothes, while neat, were worn and threadbare. Off to one side stood a shopping cart neatly packed with whatever precious items he'd managed to collect for himself on his travels. A blue plastic tarp covered the entire basket, preventing me from seeing the treasures within.
As I listened to his story, I found myself shifting between awe at the level of intelligent coherence he projected as he spun his tale, and compassion based on the realization he occupied a world no one else could truly enter. It was a magical realm indeed, filled with demons and heroes and adventures and lots of danger, while at the same time it was tinged with hope and wrapped in a deep sense of purpose. When he finished speaking he gazed up at me expectantly, waiting for something. What though? What could I possibly have to offer a man I couldn't understand?
Suddenly, I realized what he most needed from me wasn't for me to validate (or challenge) his ideas. By some serendipitous miracle a stranger had reached out to him and, at least in this one precious moment, had gifted him the chance to make some - any - slim connection with another person. That was what I had to offer, and it was enough. I smiled and patted his shoulder once again. "Well," I said, "That is some story. Best of luck to you, and I wish you success."
He laughed and pocketed the cash I offered him as if it was more of a distraction than something to be noted and appreciated. "I'm gonna be alright," he said, eyes twinkling. "I know how to take care of myself. Don't you worry 'bout me."
I walked away then, aware I wasn't worried about him in the least. Somehow, despite whatever dark nights of the soul and tragedies of the heart he'd experienced in his charred and broken past, he'd created a new world for himself out of the ashes. It was a world in which other people played minor supporting roles now and again, but where his primary "reality" mainly unfolded through the story inside his own mind.
It's a place I happen to know all too well, because I've been there myself the past. It's called psychosis. The alien landscape where my new friend dwells, perhaps permanently, is a world of his own creation. His mind has gotten so rooted in its own thoughts that his body has grown physically disconnected from external reality. While the body checks into the world now and then to tend to its basic needs - mundane things like shelter, food and sleep - as soon as those needs are satisfied he retreats to the world inside his mind once again. For people in his condition, sensory input is experienced not for what it actually is, but for what the mind has chosen to believe it to be so it "fits" into the story his mind is telling.
Angry, judgmental people become the alien abductors; the distant sounds of airplanes become invisible hovering spaceships. Kindly passing strangers become members of the Exodus team; the shopping mall becomes a cover for a hidden underground world filled with strange plants and beasts. Luckily for him, the saga he's woven is epic; it's exciting and coherent and open to lots of interesting possibilities as time passes. It is, I suspect, a story with enough of a punch to carry him for years.
It occurred to me then, as I entered the cool shaded realm of the coffee shop, ordered my tall mocha with whipped cream and prepared to settle into a comfortable chair and talk with my friend about our intertwined lives, that the only difference between him and me was that I'd managed - with the help of a loving family, good friends and an excellent doctor - to pull myself back from the precipice of mental illness before I'd fallen in so deep no one could help me. Most days these days I find myself fully connected to reality, surrounded by people who perceive the same things I perceive. Still, every so often a panic attack overwhelms me, reminding me just how fragile is the mind, and how lonely and frightening a place it can be when we're trapped inside it alone.
That's why yesterday morning I gifted a piece of myself to the man from the center of the Earth. There but for the grace of God...go all of us.
Monday, July 12, 2010
The Inherent Limitations of Capitalism
After much contemplation, below is a brief list of the inherent problems and fundamental shortcomings I've found in the capitalistic/for-profit paradigm. It's my belief that these problems reflect the adolescent mindset that created the system. Adolescents are fond of win/lose games, because they require external validation to feel good about themselves. Adults, on the other hand, prefer win/win games, because they validate themselves based on how much they are able to self-actualize and contribute to the well-being and success of others. Feel free to explore these issues more deeply, to ask questions and challenge your preexisting beliefs around capitalism for yourself. It's vital for humanity's social evolution and maturation that we let go of all the unexamined beliefs that have been instilled in us since childhood, and discern for ourselves what feels more right and true as we move forward...together.
1) Capitalism is designed to facilitate the flow of human creativity through a direct-exchange process (I'll give something to you if you give something to me) rather than an indirect one (I'll take what I need out of the larger system and when I'm able I'll give back whatever I can produce for everyone else's benefit.) Indirect exchange is nature's blueprint. The flower feeds the bee, which feeds the bear, which dies and feeds the insects, which nourish the earth, which feeds the flower. Because direct exchange is overly simplistic and highly limited - I may desperately need your corn but you have no present need for my masonry skills - we invented money to represent conceptual value and reduce the inherent problems with direct exchange. However, the human population and its concurrent ability to be more creative and productive over time have been expanding exponentially, so our need for money to change hands for an exchange to take place is actually hindering our ability to create and exchange all we're capable of doing and producing. There isn't enough money in the world to effectively match all our efforts and abilities; we now have to wait for it to become available BEFORE we can perform.
2)In a for-profit paradigm, "success" means continually taking out of the system MORE than you put into it. Even if you then reinvest your profits, you're doing so in order to take out even more than you extracted the first time at a later date. Since everyone is continually taking out more than they're putting in (or trying to) the system itself grows consistently more impoverished. One of the first rules of biology is that any whole must be greater than the sum of its many parts. Unless we design human society around that principle, the system is bound to collapse. Why be part of something that forces you to be "less than" you could be on your own? (The seething resentment this fosters explains why so many of us feel alienated and try to game or cheat the system.)
3)Allowing the "free market" (buyers and sellers) to dictate what gets produced and how it gets distributed is fundamentally undemocratic, because it denies a vote to those who don't have enough money to participate in the decision-making process. What gets produced is thus predicated upon who can afford to pay for it; how it gets distributed depends upon how much people are willing to bid for an item as they bid AGAINST each other. It's an amoral system conceptually; when applied to living beings it becomes profoundly immoral. When we fail to feed human beings who can't afford to buy the food they need to survive AND we've destroyed their ability to provide for themselves through ownership laws and other property restrictions, we're valuing monetary profits above life itself.
4)Capitalism requires constant growth and continual consumption to satisfy the ever-present profit motive and thus sustain itself. Our primary motivation is to acquire ever MORE. No living organism can consume and grow forever without destroying its host in the process, so capitalism is an inherently unsustainable model that must be released, or it will inevitably collapse.
5)Capitalism functions like a Ponzi scheme. All global lands have long been sold off and parceled out to the wealthy privileged few who got here first, so all new humans born into this world arrive with a huge disadvantage as the population rapidly expands. Like any Ponzi scheme, capitalism will thus always produce more winners than losers. Since the value of money is relative - I must have more money than you to outbid you for what we both want - no amount of cash infused into the system can correct that fundamental flaw. Prices will simply rise to siphon off the newly infused cash, enriching the wealthy even more.
6)Capitalism promotes unhealthy competition by fostering a 'destroy the enemy' siege mentality. A destroy the enemy approach promotes more, cheaply made products at lower prices, which cheapens society and creates more waste in the long run. Healthy competition asks the question, "how can I improve upon what has already been done by others?" Its aim is to elevate society by making it more beautiful, functional and long lasting.
7) Capitalism discourages cooperation. Anti-trust laws were invented because we can't trust our companies not to collude against the best interests of humanity in their quest to earn a profit. If companies were motivated and rewarded NOT by monetary profits, but because they performed a valuable service for the social good, they could get together and share ideas that could facilitate far more rapid advancement in how we produce things, as well as in what we're producing.
8)Because capitalism requires constant consumption to generate continuous profits, it must manufacture needs to induce spending by the wealthy once basic needs have been mainly satisfied. (An example of a manufactured need is a product like health insurance. Another would be cable TV.) Capitalism also creates artificial lack by deliberately keeping supplies of goods tightly controlled and limited, forcing people to bid up for them so adequate profits can be made. This keeps people trapped in the economic system by forcing them to continually labor to earn enough money to pay for the things they believe they need to ensure their own survival. It also destroys human trust and core competency by turning us all into children, entirely dependent upon an economic system that doesn't genuinely care about our well-being, to provide us with what we need.
9) Capitalism, through its use of money to represent conceptual value, has promoted the worship of an abstraction over a genuine appreciation of tangibles. As a result, our reverence for the importance of each thing based on its own inherent worth has been greatly diminished. For example, we intuitively consider a $10 hammer more valuable than a 20 cent orange - ask any schoolchild and they'll regurgitate the "correct" conceptual answer. Ask an indigenous person in the Brazilian rain forest which is more valuable however, and he'll tell you that if he's hungry, he appreciates the orange. If he needs to build something, he appreciates the hammer. One is NOT more valuable than the other - they're both priceless when they are necessary!
10)Capitalism fails to value the uniqueness of each individual. The social imperative to make money as a goal unto itself enslaves people to the labor force in exchange for their daily bread. People in need of a job to survive are not free to explore their skills, talents, passions and abilities and discern what they can best contribute to the whole over the long run. Capitalism therefore creates obstacles to genuine self-actualization.
11)Capitalism is a dangerous practice, in that it consistently undermines and exploits the one thing that can truly sustain us long-term - our planet - so a few people can gain short-term strategic advantage over the rest of humanity. It removes the sanctity of life - the undefinable aspect of nature that MOST defines us - from the social equation, by placing personal material success ABOVE the survival of the very fabric of life that supports us all.
12)Capitalism reinforces human frailty by blaming the "losers" for their failure to succeed in a system that - by definition - MUST always have more losers than winners for it to work. Since money is relative, I can't be successful unless I possess more of it relative to nearly everybody else. Clearly then, the more money I'm able to hoard, the more losers there will be in relationship to me. Blaming the so-called losers for not being able to lift themselves out of such a system destroys our trust in our abilities as a species, and discourages us from confidently and courageously exploring our own capacities. We "surrender" our dreams to the need to work for a living, rather than reach for the stars to discover and bring forth the best in ourselves.
1) Capitalism is designed to facilitate the flow of human creativity through a direct-exchange process (I'll give something to you if you give something to me) rather than an indirect one (I'll take what I need out of the larger system and when I'm able I'll give back whatever I can produce for everyone else's benefit.) Indirect exchange is nature's blueprint. The flower feeds the bee, which feeds the bear, which dies and feeds the insects, which nourish the earth, which feeds the flower. Because direct exchange is overly simplistic and highly limited - I may desperately need your corn but you have no present need for my masonry skills - we invented money to represent conceptual value and reduce the inherent problems with direct exchange. However, the human population and its concurrent ability to be more creative and productive over time have been expanding exponentially, so our need for money to change hands for an exchange to take place is actually hindering our ability to create and exchange all we're capable of doing and producing. There isn't enough money in the world to effectively match all our efforts and abilities; we now have to wait for it to become available BEFORE we can perform.
2)In a for-profit paradigm, "success" means continually taking out of the system MORE than you put into it. Even if you then reinvest your profits, you're doing so in order to take out even more than you extracted the first time at a later date. Since everyone is continually taking out more than they're putting in (or trying to) the system itself grows consistently more impoverished. One of the first rules of biology is that any whole must be greater than the sum of its many parts. Unless we design human society around that principle, the system is bound to collapse. Why be part of something that forces you to be "less than" you could be on your own? (The seething resentment this fosters explains why so many of us feel alienated and try to game or cheat the system.)
3)Allowing the "free market" (buyers and sellers) to dictate what gets produced and how it gets distributed is fundamentally undemocratic, because it denies a vote to those who don't have enough money to participate in the decision-making process. What gets produced is thus predicated upon who can afford to pay for it; how it gets distributed depends upon how much people are willing to bid for an item as they bid AGAINST each other. It's an amoral system conceptually; when applied to living beings it becomes profoundly immoral. When we fail to feed human beings who can't afford to buy the food they need to survive AND we've destroyed their ability to provide for themselves through ownership laws and other property restrictions, we're valuing monetary profits above life itself.
4)Capitalism requires constant growth and continual consumption to satisfy the ever-present profit motive and thus sustain itself. Our primary motivation is to acquire ever MORE. No living organism can consume and grow forever without destroying its host in the process, so capitalism is an inherently unsustainable model that must be released, or it will inevitably collapse.
5)Capitalism functions like a Ponzi scheme. All global lands have long been sold off and parceled out to the wealthy privileged few who got here first, so all new humans born into this world arrive with a huge disadvantage as the population rapidly expands. Like any Ponzi scheme, capitalism will thus always produce more winners than losers. Since the value of money is relative - I must have more money than you to outbid you for what we both want - no amount of cash infused into the system can correct that fundamental flaw. Prices will simply rise to siphon off the newly infused cash, enriching the wealthy even more.
6)Capitalism promotes unhealthy competition by fostering a 'destroy the enemy' siege mentality. A destroy the enemy approach promotes more, cheaply made products at lower prices, which cheapens society and creates more waste in the long run. Healthy competition asks the question, "how can I improve upon what has already been done by others?" Its aim is to elevate society by making it more beautiful, functional and long lasting.
7) Capitalism discourages cooperation. Anti-trust laws were invented because we can't trust our companies not to collude against the best interests of humanity in their quest to earn a profit. If companies were motivated and rewarded NOT by monetary profits, but because they performed a valuable service for the social good, they could get together and share ideas that could facilitate far more rapid advancement in how we produce things, as well as in what we're producing.
8)Because capitalism requires constant consumption to generate continuous profits, it must manufacture needs to induce spending by the wealthy once basic needs have been mainly satisfied. (An example of a manufactured need is a product like health insurance. Another would be cable TV.) Capitalism also creates artificial lack by deliberately keeping supplies of goods tightly controlled and limited, forcing people to bid up for them so adequate profits can be made. This keeps people trapped in the economic system by forcing them to continually labor to earn enough money to pay for the things they believe they need to ensure their own survival. It also destroys human trust and core competency by turning us all into children, entirely dependent upon an economic system that doesn't genuinely care about our well-being, to provide us with what we need.
9) Capitalism, through its use of money to represent conceptual value, has promoted the worship of an abstraction over a genuine appreciation of tangibles. As a result, our reverence for the importance of each thing based on its own inherent worth has been greatly diminished. For example, we intuitively consider a $10 hammer more valuable than a 20 cent orange - ask any schoolchild and they'll regurgitate the "correct" conceptual answer. Ask an indigenous person in the Brazilian rain forest which is more valuable however, and he'll tell you that if he's hungry, he appreciates the orange. If he needs to build something, he appreciates the hammer. One is NOT more valuable than the other - they're both priceless when they are necessary!
10)Capitalism fails to value the uniqueness of each individual. The social imperative to make money as a goal unto itself enslaves people to the labor force in exchange for their daily bread. People in need of a job to survive are not free to explore their skills, talents, passions and abilities and discern what they can best contribute to the whole over the long run. Capitalism therefore creates obstacles to genuine self-actualization.
11)Capitalism is a dangerous practice, in that it consistently undermines and exploits the one thing that can truly sustain us long-term - our planet - so a few people can gain short-term strategic advantage over the rest of humanity. It removes the sanctity of life - the undefinable aspect of nature that MOST defines us - from the social equation, by placing personal material success ABOVE the survival of the very fabric of life that supports us all.
12)Capitalism reinforces human frailty by blaming the "losers" for their failure to succeed in a system that - by definition - MUST always have more losers than winners for it to work. Since money is relative, I can't be successful unless I possess more of it relative to nearly everybody else. Clearly then, the more money I'm able to hoard, the more losers there will be in relationship to me. Blaming the so-called losers for not being able to lift themselves out of such a system destroys our trust in our abilities as a species, and discourages us from confidently and courageously exploring our own capacities. We "surrender" our dreams to the need to work for a living, rather than reach for the stars to discover and bring forth the best in ourselves.
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