For me a clarifying point regarding open mindedness is a dynamic posed by Don Juan Matus. He posited that each of us has an assemblage point. It is the point or perspective around which we consciously and unconsciously yet deliberately assemble the picture of our world that we call "real." Many factors enter in to the positioning of this point. Religious faith is one of these, but most of the factors are subliminal and not available to our reasoning minds--yet we sense that we are reasoning. This dynamic is born out to a great extent not only by a study of human mentality as a discpline, but by self examination as well. The injunction "Know Thyself" is not to be taken lightly, but is a tool for honesty, insight, and wisdom.
On the level of religious affiliation, if we accept this idea of an assemblage point, we could ascribe that name to our understanding of our own faith, that of others, and of their relative positions on various value scales. Yet, as someone earlier on in this thread mentioned, what we profess and how we act as Catholics are quite dissimilar according to pew polls. I would imagine that in order to remain sane, it would be necessary to "compart--mentalize" our thinking in order to experience a smoothness that includes contraries. Mark Twain said that man is not a rational animal, he is a retionalizing animal. There seems to be some truth in that.
K.G. Mills said ""Perhaps the root of the problem within the world and within yourself is the refusal to face conflicting beliefs, which are obliterated by correct Identitiy." Correct Identity, we might say, can be approached by knowing our Self. This is an intense activity requiring aciduous honesty. There is no room for dogmatic piety or parochial attitudes in this search. So I would say that being closed or open minded is an internal function relative to the integrity one has within the entire arena of their awareness.
For my own part, I had to go through a revison of my entire inventory of beleifs when I had a near death experience. I had to incorporate new experiential data. You might say that my assemblage point was moved for me. It was a rude awakening. I saw clearly that I was not allowing communication between different "persona" which emerged in different situations. There were too many "me's" to have any sense of integrity. I can't say at this time that I am healed and whole, but I can say that I see with different eyes and have compassion for myself and those who are in the trap of a mind closed to itself. I guess I am now more concerned with the beam in my own eye as distinct from the mote in someone else's. It allows me to talk dispassionatley about potentially "loaded" subjects with other "beamers." You might say that my mind is more open because I saw how closed my own can be.
Showing posts with label Here's an idea. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Here's an idea. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Antidote
I received a return e-mail from a dear friend who bemoaned the depressing nature of some forwarded information on food addatives. Here is my reply:
"Yes, there is a lot of depressing stuff going on, the worst of which "they" are not even telling us, if my alternate sources are correct. However, that is not the point, as I see it, anyways. We are here to grow in Conscious awareness, and promote that growth overall by our presence as the Light to the mundanities of life. Part of that, for me, is being aware of the exigencies of existence in an ego maniacal world. That means information, both about Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, and their ilk, as well as MSG. It is why I am associated with the Consciousness Cinema here, and with other local groups working to reduce suffering through knowledge of whatever sort.
"Primarily, I feel we need to build the harmonious community of our friends. If anything, we can foster the feeling of being more than "this." You do that by just being who you are, _____. It is a great work in this day and age, just Being. There is no other antidote to ego. So, it isn't about saving the world, or fighting the corporations or the governments, or any such thing. It is about being Awake. The enemy is not an institution, it is sleep and ignorance of Self. When we are awake, good public results may follow. Or not. No one said that the human experiment had to work. We are a race that traditionally crucifies its saviors and in the name of a loving god commits wholesale slaughter. But we are also gifted with Giants, such as our dear Teacher, Guide, and Friend. We are privileged to stand on his shoulders and the shoulders of others like him and thus be granted a larger, more inclusive view. And don't discount that you chose to climb up to stand there, however much MSG of any psychic or other form you might have swallowed. That's what counts, my friend. That's why we feel the love that we do."
"Yes, there is a lot of depressing stuff going on, the worst of which "they" are not even telling us, if my alternate sources are correct. However, that is not the point, as I see it, anyways. We are here to grow in Conscious awareness, and promote that growth overall by our presence as the Light to the mundanities of life. Part of that, for me, is being aware of the exigencies of existence in an ego maniacal world. That means information, both about Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, and their ilk, as well as MSG. It is why I am associated with the Consciousness Cinema here, and with other local groups working to reduce suffering through knowledge of whatever sort.
"Primarily, I feel we need to build the harmonious community of our friends. If anything, we can foster the feeling of being more than "this." You do that by just being who you are, _____. It is a great work in this day and age, just Being. There is no other antidote to ego. So, it isn't about saving the world, or fighting the corporations or the governments, or any such thing. It is about being Awake. The enemy is not an institution, it is sleep and ignorance of Self. When we are awake, good public results may follow. Or not. No one said that the human experiment had to work. We are a race that traditionally crucifies its saviors and in the name of a loving god commits wholesale slaughter. But we are also gifted with Giants, such as our dear Teacher, Guide, and Friend. We are privileged to stand on his shoulders and the shoulders of others like him and thus be granted a larger, more inclusive view. And don't discount that you chose to climb up to stand there, however much MSG of any psychic or other form you might have swallowed. That's what counts, my friend. That's why we feel the love that we do."
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
A city with a view
I maintain that cities ought to be designed around people. That means to me, that since the human brain is wired, they say, for about 500 close "people recognition" connections, cities ought use units of + or - 450 people as an organizational basis. This means that a city could be built of "blocks" that precisely house that number of diverse occupants, with perhaps "blocks" that house specialty cultural components, such as artisans or bachelors, or whatever. Each of these "blocks, would have upper and lower story buildings that house a family on one level and a business on the lower level. This eliminates needs for both community stretching and travel for basic goods.
Then we could add Paulo Solari's verticalization ides and have these units stacked in buildings that would have internal transportation built in, as well as an energy producing skin incorporating the energies of sun, wind, and falling water. Any idea how much energy a 50 story rain downspout can produce and cache as drinking, etc., water? This concept also frees up land for agriculture, perhaps recapturing some of the field and orchards acreage we have paved over to provide insularity for our overblown sense of consumerism and artificial false privacy. Our "current" society is geared to make money for everything that depends on oil, and we have forsaken the treasure of ourselves so that we can commute an hour or more to get a home with a view.
I'd personally be happy with a home having a large deck 25 stories up that overlooked farmland or ranches that provide my food, and from which I could commute to work by elevator and slidewalk. I could even have neighbors to talk with and go shopping on foot on the way home. Heck, Bucky Fuller even designed self sustaining cities for 10,000 that could float not only in water, but also in the air, freeing even more land. The problems really are in our greed and in commercial favoritism, and that means, again, that we do not think for ourselves and vote with our money and our voice at crucial times. Who said "It is great luck for leaders that men don't think?" It was Adolph Hitler. Anybody remember him?
Consciously or not, haven't we cooperated with corporations who, consciously or not, have cooperated with this observation by one of the most adept mobilizers of these last so many decades? How can we more quickly mobilize the same amount of energy and organizational ability to do good, even to the point of saving ourselves from an ignominious end? Was Walt Kelly right when one of his characters misquoted and said "We have met the enemy, and he is us!" Or was it a misquote? Either way, wouldn't our own defeat of our own squanderous ways be our most glorious victory?
Then we could add Paulo Solari's verticalization ides and have these units stacked in buildings that would have internal transportation built in, as well as an energy producing skin incorporating the energies of sun, wind, and falling water. Any idea how much energy a 50 story rain downspout can produce and cache as drinking, etc., water? This concept also frees up land for agriculture, perhaps recapturing some of the field and orchards acreage we have paved over to provide insularity for our overblown sense of consumerism and artificial false privacy. Our "current" society is geared to make money for everything that depends on oil, and we have forsaken the treasure of ourselves so that we can commute an hour or more to get a home with a view.
I'd personally be happy with a home having a large deck 25 stories up that overlooked farmland or ranches that provide my food, and from which I could commute to work by elevator and slidewalk. I could even have neighbors to talk with and go shopping on foot on the way home. Heck, Bucky Fuller even designed self sustaining cities for 10,000 that could float not only in water, but also in the air, freeing even more land. The problems really are in our greed and in commercial favoritism, and that means, again, that we do not think for ourselves and vote with our money and our voice at crucial times. Who said "It is great luck for leaders that men don't think?" It was Adolph Hitler. Anybody remember him?
Consciously or not, haven't we cooperated with corporations who, consciously or not, have cooperated with this observation by one of the most adept mobilizers of these last so many decades? How can we more quickly mobilize the same amount of energy and organizational ability to do good, even to the point of saving ourselves from an ignominious end? Was Walt Kelly right when one of his characters misquoted and said "We have met the enemy, and he is us!" Or was it a misquote? Either way, wouldn't our own defeat of our own squanderous ways be our most glorious victory?
Monday, March 10, 2008
What to do: a mustard seed.
Recently I was confronted with a cloud of ideas that had to do with solving this or that problem in the world. This came in the form of a letter by e-mail from someone concerned with the world situation. This was my reply:
I have considered this matter for years, since my childhood. At first I took it personally, as in dealing with "my" problem. How could I do otherwise? A child learns to make do in his own environment. But as I grew up, I saw that there were others who were having the same problems as I was. I started to postulate the problem as one that "we" had, or as the problem of a bigger "I." A lot of "us" who are part of a "we" make a larger "I." Later, I found out some astonishing properties of this "I." There is even a book now, by a doctor, called The I that is we.
To make a long story short, I realized that we make our problem(s) worse by labeling them as specific to a group. In other words, names divide. I saw clearly that we disipate our energies and fight our like minded brethren by calling a problem as having specifically to do with a group o other person. We call it a problem with American teens, or with immigrants to our country, or of the illiterate in our cities, or the homeless in Chicago. We call it the terrorists, the Mafia, or the government, or the corporations o the banks. We even call it religion and the love of God. We manifest it as a race by acting like animals that defacate in the space that they live without cleaning it up.
What we fail to notice is that in dividing it up like that and not cleaning up our mess, we are missing the core perception of the problem, which is the only level at which we can do any good or effect any real change other than cosmetic. Without naming all the links in the chain, we can go directly to the piece that anchors the problem in our experience. That piece is Identity.
All problems are expressions of the activity of defining identity. Fear is the feeling of threatened identity, love is the feeling of validated identity. Fear is the threat of being a solitary entity against a hostile environment, Love is the feeling of being so One with it all that any threat of the perceived environment is trivial.
What we might need to address is how the human system of conscious awareness, which has now been proved to stem from an identical source in Africa, can globally function at every level of organization with the result of promoting and fostering the feeling of Unity with all his fellow humans, but especially with that "I" that is we.
The Human Idea is of a piece. We now know that at many levels, from the genetic to the cosmic. What we don't know is how to install a pattern of behavior in our children that is big enough to accommodate growth into a cooperative global economy. Now remember, that "economy" stems from a word that means "household management." I cannot think of a more appropriate word to encompass the enormity of all the levels of human experience from internal physiopsycospiritual health to the finding of pied a terre's sin the stars.
In the same way that my Mentor stated that "Consciousness is the Light to the Awareness of Ideas and thoughts" we can and must, if we wish to continue as a productive growing species, proceed in our relations with each other from the most fundamental of ideas. This idea has to be rooted in the muscles so deeply that we cannot harm another. and that brings it back to Identity. If I am established in the feeling that the other person is myself wearing another suit, how could I do harm? Would I harm myself? The Bhagevad Gita says "Established in Unity, act." The two forms of the golden rule say "do unto others as you would have done unto you." and "Do not do unto others what you would not have done unto you." It also o says "Know ThySelf." Could this last have a greater fruit that an experiential knowledge of the "I" that is we? Who would not want to help themselves?
This alone may be our only fundamental problem, and our only task might be to see the fundamental unity of all the seemingly seperate systems that constitutes our world. The most basic system is the human pattern and we share it, each an every single an plural one of us. We carry within us, as our own conscious awareness, the solution to all our ills. It is the recognition that WE ARE ONE is not platitude, it is a Way, but as GK Chesterton said about Christianity, "it's not that (it) doesn't work, it just hasn't been tried yet."
I have considered this matter for years, since my childhood. At first I took it personally, as in dealing with "my" problem. How could I do otherwise? A child learns to make do in his own environment. But as I grew up, I saw that there were others who were having the same problems as I was. I started to postulate the problem as one that "we" had, or as the problem of a bigger "I." A lot of "us" who are part of a "we" make a larger "I." Later, I found out some astonishing properties of this "I." There is even a book now, by a doctor, called The I that is we.
To make a long story short, I realized that we make our problem(s) worse by labeling them as specific to a group. In other words, names divide. I saw clearly that we disipate our energies and fight our like minded brethren by calling a problem as having specifically to do with a group o other person. We call it a problem with American teens, or with immigrants to our country, or of the illiterate in our cities, or the homeless in Chicago. We call it the terrorists, the Mafia, or the government, or the corporations o the banks. We even call it religion and the love of God. We manifest it as a race by acting like animals that defacate in the space that they live without cleaning it up.
What we fail to notice is that in dividing it up like that and not cleaning up our mess, we are missing the core perception of the problem, which is the only level at which we can do any good or effect any real change other than cosmetic. Without naming all the links in the chain, we can go directly to the piece that anchors the problem in our experience. That piece is Identity.
All problems are expressions of the activity of defining identity. Fear is the feeling of threatened identity, love is the feeling of validated identity. Fear is the threat of being a solitary entity against a hostile environment, Love is the feeling of being so One with it all that any threat of the perceived environment is trivial.
What we might need to address is how the human system of conscious awareness, which has now been proved to stem from an identical source in Africa, can globally function at every level of organization with the result of promoting and fostering the feeling of Unity with all his fellow humans, but especially with that "I" that is we.
The Human Idea is of a piece. We now know that at many levels, from the genetic to the cosmic. What we don't know is how to install a pattern of behavior in our children that is big enough to accommodate growth into a cooperative global economy. Now remember, that "economy" stems from a word that means "household management." I cannot think of a more appropriate word to encompass the enormity of all the levels of human experience from internal physiopsycospiritual health to the finding of pied a terre's sin the stars.
In the same way that my Mentor stated that "Consciousness is the Light to the Awareness of Ideas and thoughts" we can and must, if we wish to continue as a productive growing species, proceed in our relations with each other from the most fundamental of ideas. This idea has to be rooted in the muscles so deeply that we cannot harm another. and that brings it back to Identity. If I am established in the feeling that the other person is myself wearing another suit, how could I do harm? Would I harm myself? The Bhagevad Gita says "Established in Unity, act." The two forms of the golden rule say "do unto others as you would have done unto you." and "Do not do unto others what you would not have done unto you." It also o says "Know ThySelf." Could this last have a greater fruit that an experiential knowledge of the "I" that is we? Who would not want to help themselves?
This alone may be our only fundamental problem, and our only task might be to see the fundamental unity of all the seemingly seperate systems that constitutes our world. The most basic system is the human pattern and we share it, each an every single an plural one of us. We carry within us, as our own conscious awareness, the solution to all our ills. It is the recognition that WE ARE ONE is not platitude, it is a Way, but as GK Chesterton said about Christianity, "it's not that (it) doesn't work, it just hasn't been tried yet."
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