Stories
The great longing
The great
no
Challenge to identity
Commitment
Senses of reality
Cosmic passion
Declaration of sovereignty
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Can deep relationships occur by chance only? Or is it possible
to learn how to be less superficial, to become capable of real
depth, and to design places where relationships of this kind occur?
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When you go as a human, you meet a human
The
great longing
The original human condition: full awareness of the vulnerability and
freedom of being separate.
The great no
Renunciation of superficiality. We refuse natural or cultural determinism,
superficiality and banality, psychic and spiritual numbing.
Challenge to identity
Senses of reality
There is an aperture which closes or opens, shutting out or letting
in the true light. It is a fearless, exquisite aptitude that may be
rarely achieved, but which is the universal birthright of humanity.
Dimensions of reality we have the capacity to perceive: Truth, Beauty,
Love, the Good, and the Sacred.
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Cosmic passion
The goal of reformulation of self.
Commitment and Declaration of sovereignty
Instead of seeking change in institutions, let us generate it through
who we become and who we are. In all our active life – in what
we do, make, feel, think, and care about – we will bring into
being the culture and society that we envision.
Living into being
Instead of political action, we assume the full scope of action we actually
have that 'lives into being' the world we envision. It resolves conflicts
spontaneously and directly, by simply being the response. We can reclaim
the institutions which diminish our humanity, but this depends on our
capacity to perceive transcendental qualities in static forms. This
state of mind will naturally produce a corresponding state of society.
What is the true nature of our character? Do we know the difference between being happy and being self-satisfied? Between mediocrity and vitality, superficiality and depth?
Typically we heap up pleasures, hording them inside of thick walls. If we tear down the walls, heart rays will shine in. These are the longings not just of our isolated contemporaries, but of our abandoned counterparts: those who suffered in ages past, holding millenial dreams.
The illusory will pass, and the truth will enter. The reality of our character will be revealed: the range of interests and the source of our joy.
Language is the capturing and forming of ethereal qualities. These are abstract things—things that don’t have a concrete or physical existence, but which simply ARE. Existence, reality, truth: these are the ‘ethereal’ subjects which – at their best – words can HOLD and express. But it’s not just words that can do this: A living being can do so as well – and more directly and clearly – by simply BEING the realization of truth and beauty.
“That whole raft of cowardly obstructions, which in tame persons and dull moods are sovereign impediments to action, sinks away at once. Our conventionality, our shyness, laziness, and stinginess, our demands for precedent and permission, for guarantee and surety, our small suspicions, timidities, despairs, where are they now? Severed like cobwebs, broken like bubbles in the sun....The flood we are borne on rolls them so lightly under that their very contact is unfelt. Set free of them, we float and soar and sing.” The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James, 266
"When an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws....If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man." Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 34
What is your true state: your founding principle, your underlying motive,
your actual identity?
Rule by law undermines our integrity when it overreaches, stupefying
our minds and coercing our wills. When we hand over our power, institutions
grow but our minds and hearts shrink. We become discrete units that
government operates upon, alienated from ourselves and isolated from
each other.
Everything that exists on a national scale is an attenuated and faded
representation of our personal will. The origin of events is in the
free choices each of us makes every day. In actuality it is not the
state but we who are sovereign. So instead of seeking change in institutions,
let us generate it through who we become and who we are.
We refuse natural or cultural determinism, instinct and dogma. We refuse
psychic and spiritual numbing, and decline membership in any group that
diminishes our integrity by assigning our power to organizations. We
stake our entire being on becoming and acting on what is real.
The declaration of genuine sovereignty recognizes that it is the individual
– not institutions – who forms society and reestablishes
it every day. It is not a statement, or any other public act, but the
formation of a self that reclaims its full scope of action. This simple
origin can produce a culture of care that would overcome continents.
Political sovereignty assigns power to governments. Inner sovereignty
is a defeat of the bland state of the public mind. In all our active
life – in what we do, make, feel, think, and care about –
we will bring into being the culture and society that we envision.
We are fully capable of enacting our own forming principles. Examine
the core social relation: fathom the opposite. Write the constitution
that you envision into your own heart. Be the state.
Stories about becoming ourselves
Humba Jumba Necessity
In a corner of the universe there was a galaxy, a bright and beautiful
galaxy, and in this galaxy there was a solar system with a single planet.
The planet was a beautiful spinning sphere, with an average temperature
of seven times the boiling point of water. It was inhabited by a race
of living beings called humba.
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Welcome to life
Please step forward. Move up to the line painted on the floor, and
wait for instructions.
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Who are you? What do you know?
An old man lay on his death bed. The well-wishers who stood around
the bed grew dim. The fluorescent bulbs above stopped humming, and the
walls began to glow. The plastic tubes in his arms dissolved, and for
the first time in weeks he was without pain, and his mind could focus
again.
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Something unsullied
She pressed herself against me. I was sitting on the massive
stone railing of the Malecon, Havana’s waterfront promenade, with
the sea to my back, and in front the pastel-colored colonial buildings.
She was poor, pretty, and young, a black girl from the Cuban countryside,
without resources or skills, despairing of her life and aching to escape
from it. She had latched onto me: a dream of opportunity, an object
of hope.
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