Communities, Tribes and Villages

Last week on the Internet (Yahoo News), I read that Pope Francis had commented during an interview with an Italian reporter that it was his opinion that Europe needed a Federal form of government.  That was his thought after the observation that alliances being formed between countries attending the G20 conference were being structured in ways that left out the well-being of the poor and the refugees.  The article did not cover what the Pope meant by a Federal form of government.  Did he mean a government like we have in the United States, with a strong central government both superceding and linking together a group of component states, each with some independent governing authority, but subservient to Federal law?
Generally, I agree with the Pope on many issues.   However, I find myself wondering just what benefit he finds in a United States of Europe governed by a strong central system.  Whom would he include in such a federation?   Some states are both European and Asian.  What philosophies would be promoted by such a union?  The principles underlying the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics failed to either engender the well-being of the majority or to hold the union together.   The Federal government here in the United States is also having its problems.  It, too, does not focus well on the needs of the disadvantaged or the Earth.  Is the idea of strong central governments for each continent or combination of continents one which will engender the best possible environment for the people?  I am reminded of a similar organization in the futuristic fiction (and obviously inaccurately dated) novel 1984 by Orwell.  The three overarching governments were in a perpetual state of war.
It would seem to me that another way of organizing ourselves would be warranted.    Our current systems are based on an underlying principle of competition, of the strong taking from the weak and on a complicity in the assumption that some lives are more worthy than others and are more entitled to basic needs being met,  to more comforts and to a stronger certainty of survival.  It assumes that each individual must first ensure his own success, even at the expense of another.  This is true of whatever organized groups we may have (with the possible exception of small units governed by different principles).  It makes no sense to continue with systems which cannot tend to or even recognize the needs of all constituents and which fail to create a stable and peaceful global structure.  We need a different way of doing things.
I think we have become too big.  The very size of our governments presupposes that we will not know each other, will not have each in front of us the humanity of the other.  The massiveness of our units almost guarantees that most people will not be looking out for the needs of anyone but themselves, and that the poor or those disadvantaged in other ways will be neglected when systems, laws, regulations and economic activities are formed.  The challenge is formidable.  Change will need to be preceded by a reduction in the size of the governing units.  Continuing to consolidate and increase the size of our governments will serve to perpetuate and deepen the status quo.
Self-governing small communities that emphasize the necessity of knowing our neighbors and of being familiar with the condition of each community member would be a stark departure from what we now have.  Communities able to live and cooperate with other communities different from themselves have heretofore been dismissed as impossible.   From a global perspective, a sufficient abundance of such communities might lift us from the confusion, oppression and  inequality we now have.  We would have in front of us in real time the results of our actions.
 In order to achieve such a goal, skills which have been long forgotten would need to be revived.   One such skill is the skill of cooperation, and of solving problems through conscious communication.   Changing war for ongoing skirmishes between rival communities or tribal groups would provide little improvement, and would likely lead to alliances forming larger and larger competing groups, each looking out for itself.  A change in size is not enough.  We also need a change in consciousness.
 Such a change in consciousness needs to incorporate not only humanity, but also to include the life which inhabits our planet with us, as well as the life of the Earth itself.  We are all one, formed of the same basic energy.   What destroys a part of us will, in the long run, destroy us all.   Our smaller units, then, need to learn to respect the life around us and nurture that life, as well as the life of the planet that sustains us.  No more hoarding of resources, no more harmful means of increasing production of whatever it is that is being produced.  No more taking from others to increase ourselves.  We need to learn to live in peaceful stewardship of ourselves and our surroundings.  That is a tall order from what we are doing now.
There are examples of those who are doing this, who are changing their consciousness to live in harmony with the Earth and with others, human, animal and plant.  They are drawing on ancient wisdom and conscious discovery.  Indigenous tribes know many of these skills.  The neighborhoods of our great grandparents and great great grandparents were aware of them.    Intentional communities of many types are currently learning, practicing and developing them.  Many of these units have achieved self-sustainability.  They are small, and their formative and driving principles are ones of peace, cooperation, healing and stewardship.  We would do well to study them, and learn from them their philosophies and applications.    Our survival may depend on these.   It will certainly not depend on warring superpowers.
Instead of increasing the sizes of world governments, and relying on those governments to sustain us, let us learn the skills we need to live in smaller cooperating units and sustain ourselves.
Peace,  Diane

Beginner’s Mind

Lately,  I have been saying, “I don’t know” a lot.  I  used to feel more confident; now, I find myself frequently admitting ignorance.   At one time, a question such as, “Why do my shoulders ache?” would have elicited an answer in which I had some certainty of accuracy.  Now, I simply reply that I do not know.  Or, a query as to the best way to solve a given problem will elicit a response that I simply don’t know.   Given the task of addressing the issue,  I will just do it, unknowing.  Even if asked something ostensibly simple, such as “What is fun?”, I find the answer eludes me.

There is something to be said for  “beginner’s mind”, the state of unknowing.  Philosophers and mystics over time and across cultures have honored it.  For starters, it is a prerequisite to learning.  One cannot learn what one already knows or believes one knows.  It also fosters a state of humility, necessary for growth and for living cooperatively among the brothers and sisters with whom we share the Earth.  “Not knowing” opens us to new perceptions, and to the experience of awe.  Beginner’s mind also makes us less argumentative, less warlike.   After all, if we do not know, then there is no need to defend our perceptions against the ideas of others.

Beginner’s mind can also be relaxing.  There is no need to hold all the answers, and no need to prove oneself.  That does not mean that “anything goes” or that all actions and ideas are equally valuable in a given situation.  In a state of relaxed “not knowing”, one’s choices flow intuitively, cooperatively, with no need for defensiveness, logical justification, or aggression.   Action is consistent with the situation; figuring things out becomes counterproductive.  Accomplished martial artists understand this, as do many mystics and indigenous practitioners, as well as many artists.

It feels sometimes as if I were regressing into childhood.  However, I do not think I am losing my mind.  I do perceive what is going on around me.  My responses are usually consistent with the experience of the moment.  It is just that I feel that I no longer know, and that I would like to learn.   It would be nice to have all those answers, and to again feel confident in them.  I remember the comfort of a perhaps illusory certainty.

In a broader sense, I think that it is difficult for anyone to clearly “know” with any certainty in the confusion of the current times and events.  Each day brings surprises and changes to the status quo.   An abiding center to the ebb and flow of events can be difficult to perceive, as can any vector of apparently chaotic occurrences.   Perhaps beginner’s mind is what we need to bring things back into balance again.

I have always wanted to be a part of birthing a kinder and more just world than the one we humans have so far created.  It has seemed an elusive goal.  Perhaps not knowing is a step closer to that aim.  I wish for all of us the serenity to embrace not knowing, the willingness to be open to perception, and the grace to move cooperatively with those energies that lead to kindness and which honor creation.  I wish for us all peace, love and joy.

 

Peace,  Diane

Happy Trails, Joyful Journeys

Comparing life to a journey is a frequent means for explaining life’s ups and downs and encouraging people to actively engage in life instead of resisting or hiding from it.   The comparison assumes that most people are conscious of what is involved in a journey.  Since I am on a short journey this week, it seems an auspicious time to reflect on journeys.
Journeys come in all shapes, sizes and levels of intensity.  The simplest, such as a trip to a county fair or a birthday party (or even the grocery store) go generally unrecognized as such.   Excursions of a few days or few weeks, for which one needs to pack, are most often done by choice and are usually deemed mostly pleasurable.   Larger changes of venue may lack some elements of choice or expectation of pleasure.  Travel for business or relocating one’s residence are among these.  Largest of all (excluding the journey into death) are quests (journeys of discovery), and  those circumstances in which one ends up fleeing everything that is familiar, often with only the clothes on one’s back.  The list is not exhaustive.
Whatever their type, journeys share some common elements.  All journeys involve change. It is part of the definition of “journey”.  Staying in the same place, seeing exactly the same people, doing only the same thing cannot possibly be a journey.  It is also difficult to call that living, and barely identifiable as being alive.  Those who have limited tolerance to change will have difficulty negotiating not only what is commonly recognized as a journey, but also the changes inherent in life itself.  The difficulty is proportionate to the inability to accept change.
Journeys involve the unknown.  No matter how well a journey has been planned, the unexpected will arise.  No one – at least no one whom I know – has the ability to anticipate every detail of a fluid future. The ability to handle risk is an unrivaled blessing for any who engage in journeys (all of us, a least some times). Embracing the risks of journeying without fear – or at least, without resistance – begins a journey with a positive feeling of expectation.  The consciousness of being able to handle whatever may come to pass creates an enabling confidence that actually brings forth the right solutions at the right times.  These positive feelings of confidence and expectation dwarf the vicissitudes of the journey, overshadowing discomforts.
Most journeys involve some level of discomfort.  I have not known any journey that does not.  Uncomfortable airline waiting gates, cramped legs on planes, cramped shoulders from long hours behind the wheel of a car, abrupt weather changes, mosquitoes at that paradise-like outdoor retreat, less than optimal temperatures in that restaurant, the detour that delays and leads off the desired route, all such variations from an envisioned perfection produce discomfort.  For some, these are the high points of their journeys.  It is what they remember and what they discuss. It blinds them to the journey’s joys and high points, which are inevitably also there.  That intense focus on discomfort at the expense of appreciation deadens these journey makers to the joy they might otherwise have felt.
Yes, there are joys!  For me, there is a certain thrill of being on the road, making discoveries along the way, leaving behind the various tasks I cannot accomplish while gone.  There is a sense of freedom, of not being locked into a rigid schedule or way of doing things.  There is the joy of seeing and conversing with especially those with whom and to whom I am traveling, as well as those spontaneous contacts I may meet along the way.  There is the beauty of the nature I am traversing – certainly the list is not exhaustive!   It needs only to focus  on what is awesome, what is filled with beauty, nuggets of wisdom that arise, the sheer generosity of nature and of those one may meet along the way, the elements of comfort and pleasure.  It needs the gratitude to appreciate what is revealed by the focus on these things.  These joys are well worth any passing discomforts that may occur.
It takes courage to embark upon a journey.  It takes openness to whatever may transpire.  To attempt a journey in an attitude of disapproval or rejection of what the trip may or may not entail is to never leave on the journey in the first place, even if one’s body may change locations.  It is the openness to the journey that brings to the traveler the best the journey has to offer.  Courage is a part of journeys.
It is my belief that these elements also apply to the journey we call life.  There are those who rarely leave their homes; there are those who will risk an occasional vacation or short business trip.  There are those who seem continually on the move, and those whose whole life seems to the onlooker to be a glorious adventure.  Similarly, there are those of us who, while alive, are hardly living, and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, those whose lives are so full as to seem to be many lifetimes rolled into one.
I invite us all, rather than to simply accept that life is a journey, to think about the parallels.  How do the elements of journeys relate to the  elements of living?  Can they be applied to making desired changes in life, as well as on  journeys?  How does it seem to you?  Joyful journeys to us all!
Peace,    Diane

Creation Moves Forward

It goes practically without saying that human beings are creative.  We create when we think, feel, speak and act. Whatever we do inspires a result, or consequence.   If we look, we can see that our words and actions form results (if we like them) or consequences (if they please us less).  Our thoughts and feelings have a similar effect, creating or drawing to us according to their nature.    Many of us are now learning how to work with those thoughts and feelings, with varying levels of proficiency.  What most of us do not consciously realize is that while we exist within time, creation moves forward, and we cannot create backwards.  We cannot create the past!  We can bring elements of what was valuable in the past into the present and into our creative efforts.  Those elements can integrate themselves into our creative efforts and be incorporated into the future we are creating right now, but they will never be exactly as they were in the past.  This is where many are stuck and frustrated, wondering why life will not do what we try to get it to do, no matter how hard we try.

On a political level, it seems obvious that the efforts to “make America great again” (aside from the idea that America is already great) are not working very well.   Besides not producing concrete results other than chaos, they have generated ill will domestically and abroad.  They have provided abundant fuel for comedy, and serious accusations of treachery and treason.  They are decimating our economy and threatening to permanently damage our natural world.    Why?    In essence, because they are trying to recreate a world of more than fifty years ago, in which we did not need to worry much about pollution,  when one car per family was abundantly satisfactory, when, with some exceptions, one breadwinner could bring in enough to sustain a family, when we did not know about the effects of pesticides, when population and sprawl had not yet exploded,  when there was time to relax from work (possibly because a majority of women at home made that possible),  when excursions into nature were easier to find and do; the list is not exclusive.

That does not mean that what was valuable in those times cannot be brought forth, adapted, and continued into the present and future.  It does mean that those years are not going to come back, exactly as they were, accepted for better or worse as they were at the time, nor are they going to be remembered exactly as they were then.  The past cannot be recreated.  Efforts to do so will bring only a disfigured present, a warped blend of edge-softened memories inserted into the needs of the present.

On a personal level as well, attempts to recreate an idealized (perhaps even an ideal) past repeatedly end in failure. Creation is about change, and trying to bring back what was, no matter how beloved, is about immobilization.  Those of us who try to reconstruct in the present the memory of a happy childhood, the joy of a relationship now gone, the comfort and security of a stable job now ended, a familiar pattern of behavior which once worked, are expending effort to create against creativity.  We are at war with ourselves, and whatever change is created will not be positive.    That does not mean that the elements of what brought us joy as a child, the satisfying intimacy of a former relationship, the comfort and feelings of security or working patterns of behavior cannot be brought forth and integrated into what is now.  It is only that change must be acknowledged and that what is integrated must be consistent with change.  The past cannot be recreated.  We live with what is now, and build from that.

Culturally, we are going through a period of rapid change. Often, what is used as a vehicle to bring about a desired change (which is not always presented exactly as is really needed) is the idea of “rights”, entitlements as opposed to true acknowledgement of each other’s humanity.  The problem with “rights” is that they are a conceptualization of immobility.  They are seen as what always was, and from which we have gone astray and to which we must return, to which everyone must submit, without exception as exactly formatted by the ostensible creators of desired change.  They attempt to immobilize.  Creative change, on the other hand, recognizes the value of each member of humanity, and within that framework, communicates to create a solution that benefits all of us, not just the group that desired or needed the change in the first place.   Can we not, for example, come up with a framework that values all of our needs and humanity, without dividing ourselves into black, white, brown, citizen, immigrant, refugee, child, disabled, whole-bodied, gay, straight, transgender, old, young and the like?    Can we not refrain from making some people or groups more valuable than others, engaging in constant dispute over whose needs are being met and whose rights violated?    I think we can.    But we need to remember that we cannot recreate a more stable past, or conversely, completely deny that past into the present and the future.  We need to learn to let go of what was and incorporate its value into what is, in order to create a future that we all want.

I invite us all to examine not only what we want to create and what we are creating, but also whether our process of creation is working with the creative forces of change, or with the atrophic forces of immobilization.

Peace,  Diane