Reformulation of Institutions

Are profound relationships possible only among handfuls of like-minded people? Can these exist in our private lives only, among family and friends, leaving out all the rest? Or is love possible in whole communities?

What would the institutions of daily life look like if they were not self-centered, superficial, and transient? What if they were founded on the expression of our whole selves and the deepest realization of our potential?

The humble must unite, because greed is merciless. When the power-hungry achieve power, gentler personalities retreat. Isolated, humility and integrity cannot survive. But working actively and jointly in the public realm they have an insuperable efficacy.

Let’s envision a Society of Care, founded on humility, understanding, and love – not narrow love, not institutional wisdom, and not bureaucratic peace. Let’s create a Culture of Understanding, in which aggression is contained, not through force, law, or custom, but naturally and spontaneously because we are in the process of living into being a world that is the expression of our integrated personalities.

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Implicity
We are complicit in problems, but we are implicit in the total range of the ramifications of our existence. Implicity is the actual fabric of relationships that interconnect us.

Implicity involves the entire process in which we interact, including the way what we produce and consume affects our humanity.

Understanding implicity requires that the whole range of the ‘functions’ of a human being – such as imagination, vision, thought and feeling – are addressed. All these influences produce the social, moral and spiritual climate in which we live. This climate is the air we breathe: the subtle but tangible environment that lifts us or flattens us, that stimulates joy or fear, that engages us in active, creative life, or distracts us and satiates us with tepid amusements. It sets limits for the depth, quality, and meaning of our life in society.

There is a sadness that is spreading over us. The hidden influences on everyday life are often pernicious. A multitude of oppressive influences, of degrading or destructive cultural objects, are continually being presented to us.

It is as if we were gasping for oxygen. Without sufficient richness in the concealed yet crucial origins of our life we begin to suffocate.

A stitch is broken, a sleeve is torn. A thread is hanging loose. We must mend our complicity and sew our implicity. The purpose should not be only to remove what is injurious, but to weave a world in which every part is made with care: where no one prospers by making another suffer, where the small and hidden origins of everything that impacts us – though the cause is far away and unknowable – is beneficial.
This great interaction of events, of one caring, insightful creation on top of another, could produce beauty that is unimaginable to us now. Implicity is complicity in the good. It heals fractured relationships, and produces spiritual joy.

Implicity is also an alternative to political action: instead of turning to structures, we assume the full scope of action we actually have that 'lives into being' the world we envision. It is the means and method of bringing the spiritual reality we comprehend into life in society.

Vitality: Bringing social institutions to life

Our potential remains mysterious. How much room exists for spiritual joy, for creative work that makes a significant difference in daily life, for daily life that challenges our souls?

The key factor in vitality is that society is produced through inner and not outer means. Events must originate and terminate in actual concern and care for the subject. We must be the one who acts, with integrity and without any pretense or subterfuge. It is truly and fully utilizing our potential by expressing our own true nature. This determines the reality of our social existence.

Vitality in society is a result of vitality in self. Desire is founded in self-interest, but passion for life itself originates in a comprehension of the beauty, power, and meaning of existence. This can only be achieved through a transmutation of the narrowly-focused self. Vitality arises from connection to a transcendent reality, and this produces cosmic passion – spiritual joy and action.