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... is a poor substitute for living consciously.

Or, to put it differently, when we live consciously, we don’t need structure: we act from our own inner compass, and it is far more efficient (and far less burdensome) than adhering to guideliness we’ve set for ourselves or adopted from others.

“Doing is never enough if you neglect being. The ego knows nothing of being but believes you will eventually be saved by doing. If you are in the grip of the ego, you believe that by doing more and more you will eventually accumulate enough doings to make yourself feel complete at some point in the future. You won’t. You will only lose yourself in doing. The entire civilization is losing itself is doing that is not rooted in being and thus becomes futile.”

—Eckhart Tolle, from his book “A New Earth”

Last night I finally watched An Inconvenient Truth. Obviously, it brings into graphic clarity the effects of what we’re doing on the planet and to the planet, and the consequences to us for doing so. The thought that the undisputed and ongoing melting of the polar ice caps will result in a possible 100 million refugees from low-lying areas is truly mind-boggling. And yet amid all the obviousness of what Al Gore presents, there seems to be a somewhat misplaced message: that resolving this issue is the government’s responsibility. “Someone should do something about it” sort of thing. And while there are suggestions of contacting elected officials and lobbying them, and I do think that those are important, I feel that the greatest groundswell of change can come from the individual. I am flashing back on an article on National Geographic last summer on Swarm Theory. It basically states that in any group of animals (bees, wildebeests, salmon, migratory birds), the individual isn’t smart enough to resolve the group’s issues of survival. However, if the individual acts in the interest of the group, the group intelligence can indeed result in survival and even thriving. Perhaps we can take a page from their book and individually act in what each of us perceives to be the best for the group, and then there’s the hope that we as a species will survive. In that respect, resolving this issue isn’t a government’s responsibility (well, it is, but if the political system is controlled by other interests, it’s a much too slow and inefficient way of getting there to actually make a difference) so much as an individual responsibility. The climatecrisis.net website associated with the film does have good suggestions for individual actions, but the overall rating process of how well each person is doing in terms of making a difference is unfortunately misleading. I came out with flying colors because I don’t own a car and don’t travel very often by plane. But years ago I took a similar, though much more in-depth test, on BBCNews.com, and I didn’t really come out with such flying colors: it would take 2.2 earths to support my lifestyle if everyone lived like me. I live by myself; I live in a country that is very ineffective in its use of energy; I am not vegan; I have a hot water heater and a refrigerator that not only required lots of carbon emissions to make, but run 24 hours a day; and I have access to all the lights, computer equipment, buses that run whether there are passengers on them or not, and supermarkets that use resource-intensive packaging that can sometimes be recycled, sometimes not, and even if it is recyclable, it takes a lot of energy to do so. Not to mention that I eat frozen items and some of my food and purchased items come from thousands of miles away. So 2.2 earths indeed would be necessary to support the planet if everyone had a lifestyle like my own, a far more sobering thought than the fact that I’m far better than the national average in terms of my carbon footprint.

So, I need to start working on these things. Buying unprocessed food and cooking it is a start; and though I don’t care for the light given off by compact fluorescent bulbs, I can certainly replace half of the conventional bulbs in my house with them and supplement the quality of light with the other half of the incandescent variety. And come up with some strategy to my consumption of durable goods (all of which come from China) and see if I can get the management of the apartment building where I live to become part of Seattle’s Clean Green program so food scraps wind up being composted as opposed to mixed with inorganic matter in a landfill that gives off gases. And I suppose that living in a shared space would greatly diminish the issue of a fundamentally inefficient heater and refrigerator.

I have to say that there seems to be the belief that Americans are incapable of seeing the need for radical change in their lifestyles. “Don’t own a car; or if you must, think of every possible alternative before driving it” or “forget about setting the AC thermostat – have no AC unless you live somewhere where you’ve got desert temperatures” or “don’t buy packaged food” or “rethink your durable goods needs” would get us a lot closer to carbon neutral, but somehow there’s the belief that Americans can’t stomach these concepts or act on them.

I did like it that the film pointed out that solutions do already exist, each of which contributes to resolving the issue; and that if we implemented all of them, it would be possible to reverse the trend of global warming.

A friend of mine forwarded to me an article about what the current administration is doing inside the U.S. that circumvents the stated ideals of freedom of expression and dialogue and free flow of ideas that the United States was founded on.

I agree with everything posed by the article, and it doesn’t contain things and parallels that haven’t crossed my mind in the last seven years (minus the specific details that the article cites). However, I wish it included an action list; reading it leaves me feeling fearful and disempowered; and this is a feeling that I’ve encountered many times before in my life. Growing up, it was the prophecies of Nostradamus and of so-called channelled spiritual guides, which culminated in upheaval around 1999; then it was the Y2K scare; then the Mayan calendar and 2012; then it was this administration’s push for the belief that we were at risk from an amorphous enemy; or the
counterpush that points to this administration’s inability to deal with dialogue and different points of view. All of these instances have one thing in common: they leave us disempowered. They say, “you’re the little people, and the big people / events / predictions will descend on you and there’s nothing you can do but try to be anonymous and get out of the way.”

I think that despite the imperfections of the system (and the imperfections of whatever part of the cycle of liberalism vs. conservatism that we find ourselves in), we can’t forget that we have greater access to the potential for spiritual awakening than at any other time in recorded history. Sure, the Renaissance was fantastic, and so was the Enlightenment, America
at its birth, and Greece circa 600 BC and India at that time; but their fruits were only available to a very select few, to the elite. Today this elite is not something to be born into; it’s something that, assuming no vast social and economic upheavals around you (and it is sad and it is our responsibility to help wherever and whenever they happen), you can access and belong to through books, internet, the accumulated human knowledge and experience. With the internet, we may be at the threshold of something of equal magnitude as
the Renaissance, which was, if not the direct offspring, at least a great beneficiary of Gutenberg and the printing press. I don’t say this to be polyanna-esque and pretent that everything’s actually fine and nothing’s the matter; we may still have repressive states, even homegrown ones, to deal with
in our collective birthpangs of a consciousness beyond our purely selfish impulses. But I say this to remind you and me and everyone who’s felt limited by an impending sense of doom that we are first and foremost the result of all human evolution that has taken place from the dawn of civilization and we are spirit wanting to manifest greater consciousness, greater intelligence, greater cohesion. It is in this light that we should look at articles like the one my friend sent
me and say, “Yes, these are problems, and they will not stifle my focus, which is to give the greatest gifts I can to the world and show the greatest love through whichever area my talents express themselves.”

I used to wonder if there would ever be a day in which we’d all live in peace and we’d reach some level of balance where people wouldn’t steal or wouldn’t kill one another or torture or behave in the ways that represent such an collective infancy. Now I think that whatever form “evil” takes, it’s always there because it’s what defines our ability to grow and transform
and polish the light of our intellect, our sensitivity, our capacity to organize, manage and distribute our collective resources, and our capacity for transformation and self-transcendence.

Goethe lived in a time of lots of upheavals, wars, repression, etc. etc. —but it didn’t keep him from being the luminary he was or writing the works that he did, in so many fields. We should all aspire to do the same.

I read an article in National Geographic a few months back on Swarm Theory or something like that: how swarms (of anything: bees, ants, birds, fish, etc.) behave more intelligently as a whole than any single individual of them is capable of. And it dawned on me—this is the one and single hope for humanity: not that any one of us is smart enough or visionary enough to have the solution to all our collective ills, but that each and every one of us does best what we’re capable of doing best; and that otherwise we lead a life in integrity with what we perceive is best for the collective species and us, rather than just our selfish needs. It’s like the human brain: it’s really
mediocre for doing a lot of sequential calculations (computers beat it hands down) but it is fantastic at lots of parallel processes: a hundred billion cells firing simultaneously know what it means to pedal a bike while in balance; avoiding obstacles; taking in colors, temperature, and wind; digesting food; pumping blood; cleaning blood; whistling; thinking; and
admiring the shape of a woman pedestrian (if you happen to be like me :-)). If each of us, relative to humanity, is like one of these cells, then all we need is to do our function well and in harmony to the whole, and the body of humanity will work, survive, and perhaps even thrive.

At least that’s my take.

... only my connection to myself can. And the truest connection for me is when I’m immersed in my own creativity.

And sometimes it’s who you are and not what you do. I’ve been on both sides of this equation. Friends who were very loving toward me at a time in which I’d failed to recognize my own likability, or former lovers who had traits that I acquired by osmosis, or the burning efficiency of others that put in context my own efficiency… or the admission of a visiting relative, last night, who said that just being around me for a while gives him enough strength to last through a couple of years in his challenging environment back home. It was humbling, and a reminder that sometimes in the midst of “doing” to attempt to make a difference, it’s just “being” that does the most.

1. Know the outcome you want.
2. Take action and move toward the achievement of the goal.
3. Assess how it’s working
4. Modify your approach if the results aren’t what you wanted

“How long would you give a toddler to learn to walk before you gave up on him? What a silly question, right? A toddler tries and tries and tries and tries till he gets it. He doesn’t know fear of failure. This is how come most people can walk. Apply the same principle to your life and goals.”

“Most people major in minor things.”

“The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow. I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.”

- Rabindranath Tagore

I remember many, many episodes from my life as a kid that were magical – even though, from an objective, adult perspective, there was nothing particularly special about them. They weren’t about going to the circus, or anything made special; they were just the quality of newness, for instance, from a TV series set in Malaysia that was watched at the home of a friend married to an Egyptian woman – and the perfume she wore, the incense that pervaded the house, the assorted Egyptian motifs on the walls, the utter sense of being someplace exotic yet right in my own backyard. Or a stone house encased in ivy in a rainy, rugged, river-and-ocean bound region in the North of Spain. Or my first trip by airplane and seeing the clouds up close. Or just playing with my friends while waiting for school to open. In the receptive mind of a child, an everyday event seemed charged with adventure and discovery.

Now all that is buried under time: needing to be somewhere by a certain time erases the specialness of the moment. Or responsibilities. Or goals. Back when I was a kid, I had no goals, I had no time (especially if it was during the three months’ vacation we had in the summer), I had occasional chores but no real responsibilities. All I wanted was to play, and that world was filled with the magic of the moment.

I have glimpses of it now, but far too few. If I could only convince myself to do less, desire to do less, and feel more, I might be able to step across the portal into the magic of me as a child whose entire life was about playing.

... in the words of the Marquis of Carabas, from “Neverwhere” by Neil Gaiman.