Consuming Thoughts: V

V is for Vision and What We Can See. Perry Farrell: We saw shadows of the morning light, shadows of the evening sun, till the shadows and the light were one. We act within the limits of our vision: what we perceive. From attention emerges intention, intention framing and directing attention. From Council Crest, a mountain top near our house I can see the valley where we do our shopping, downtown Portland, Mt. St. Helens, Rainier and Adams. I’ve seen the sun setting over the Coast Range and moon rising over Mt. Hood, shadow and light becoming one. From where I sit in my house, now, I see the Winter sun thawing the frost from the rhododendrons and hummingbirds hovering over their feeders. Mountains, valleys, sun and moon are mostly hidden from view. Yet, still they are here. Around me, in me, a part of me, in mind.

Deciding what, when and how to consume is a matter of vision. What do we perceive as our needs? What do we choose to see? To what are we blind? What is in our line of sight that we choose to ignore? From Council Crest some of us see mountains, some see the glittering lights of downtown Portland, some see power lines. For some people a home is family, for some shelter, for others – a prison.

If our vision is limited to “me”, my backyard, my needs then we act and consume accordingly. The world, essentially is perceived as a place that meets or threatens our well being. We take what we want. If, in seeking the larger view, we begin to include the people, plants, animals, environment and energy flow that create our community we will act and consume differently. Seeing the larger view, brings the world into mind.

Where we choose to direct our gaze depends on where we’re standing. Are you looking out a window? Staring at a wall? Commanding a view from Council Crest? Inspecting the bottom of your shoes?

Tags: Community, Council Crest, hummingbirds, Mt. Adams, Mt. Ranier, Mt. St. Helens, Perry Farrell, Portland, the Coast Range, Vision

Consuming Thoughts: U

U is for use and what we give back. Bono: And you give, and you give, and you give yourself away. 40% of all food produced in the US ends up in the trash. 32% of all municipal waste in the US is packaging. The percentage is nearly 50% in Japan. We consume for many reasons and most of what we consume we don’t use. Mazlow’s hierarchy of needs provides a tidy summary of these reasons. At the bottom of the pyramid is survival. At the top is self-fullfillment. In between there are things like status, belonging, recognition and reward. Nearly all of what we consume is tied to our sense of self, our identity. Like caddis fly larvae we accrete bits and pieces of the world around us to create a protective, self-gratifying shell. Except, then we do something funny. We throw away something like 80% of what we buy.

This Christmas pay attention to which pile is larger: the piles of paper and packaging or the presents. We are “recycling” more – which is good – except that most of what is “recycled” is actually down-cycled where it is used one more time and then discarded. We are throwing, wasting our selves away.

Instead of perpetuating this crazy samsara loop what can we do to give more of our selves back? Can we consume in a way that, rather than creating waste, actually adds value? Rather than consuming “stuff” can we spend our time and money in a way that not only enriches us but directly benefits our communities without all of the waste?

Tags: Bono, caddis fly larvae, food waste, Mazlow's hierarchy of needs, municipal waste, recycling, samsara

Consuming Thoughts: T

T is for Trust That We Now Sorely Lack. Peter Gabriel: You can blow out a candle but you can’t blow out a fire. Alone, and many of us feel more alone than we care to admit, no matter how brightly we burn we are still a single flame, an isolated candle. I love Ignite Portland, an event where an unpredictable array of individuals assaults, entertains and inspires us with a non-stop onslaught of 5 minute presentations. It’s brilliant. It truly shines. Thank you Raven for making it so. Yet, it is a collection of bright spots, a series of separate flames, a parade of fireflies.

Most of us in our work, often even in our home lives, remain disconnected. Work has demanding deadlines and we sacrifice the human quality of our teamwork to function mechanically. We sacrifice “trust” for “alignment.” I’ve been in a number of meetings where the detente of alignment censors discussion of deeper, later very destructive issues. At home the distractions of PS3, computers, smart phones, cable TV-technologies that are supposed to connect us-actually make us experts at remaining apart.

One of the catalysts for our over-consumptive ways is a lack of connection. We substitute stuff for substantial relationships. The foundation of strong, healthy relationships is trust. The source of Abundance in our lives is trust. Trust in our selves, trust in relationships with others, trust in the power of community, trust in the wisdom of the systems that support and sustain us.

Trust demands an openness, an intermingling of mutual vulnerability. Somatically, energetically it is supported by a strong core of self-awareness and feels and acts a lot like love. Ask people who were part of high-performing teams. The adjectives and descriptions they use to describe their experience could easily describe a good marriage. High-performing teams emerge from deep and enduring trust. Strong communities are sustained through webs of relationships woven with threads of trust. Together, we burn brilliantly, much brighter, than a collection of disconnected  individuals.

Tags: alignment, cable TV, fireflies, healthy relationships, high-performing teams, Ignite Portland, Peter Gabriel, PS3, Raven Zachary, smart phones, trust

Gratitude

It begins with an awareness of breath. My breath, my wife’s breath, rain falling lightly in the fog outside the bedroom window. My son stirs, clambers down from his loft and crawls into our bed. Family, the three of us half-awake, half-asleep, still this early morning.

Memories of Thanksgivings past dance through the fog Douglass Fir tree tops emerge. Family gathering in Ohio. Friends coming down from Tacoma. Friends full, already stuffed in Tokyo. Ah, the gift of Chex mix and bright green moss on the trees.

Grace, our turkey, begins her slow transformation into dinner. Grace, the words and the intent behind the words uttered before our feast, our communion and celebration of Abundance. So much to be thankful for. So much.

My son’s blonde mane appears over his now sleeping mother, followed by, simply, the most beautiful smile. Time to wake and be, fully, part of a day dedicated to Gratitude.

Itadakimasu. We humbly and wholly accept and receive this gift of life, family & community, bountiful harvests, opportunity & prosperity, and the means to give these gifts of Abundance to others. Om Shanti Om. Amen.

Tags: abundance, grace, Gratitude

Consuming Thoughts: S

S means Savings Through Which We All Win. John Lydon; Anger is an energy! Anger is an energy! So is money. It is the water cycling through our economic ecosystems, the electric currency powering the prosperity of our communities. Life is a big ‘ol square dance of energy exchange.

Money is kind of funny because it has value only because we agree that it does. It’s not food, shelter, clothing and certainly not sex. It is a means to an end. What end? In the “West” we tend to focus on personal prosperity. In the “East” there is still often a strong element of familial piety that creates large amounts of savings and distribution within large, extended families. Both models work and both can become highly dysfunctional. Their relative levels of success depend on where we stand in terms of scarcity and abundance.

Scarcity leads to contraction, hoarding, and win-lose competition for what are perceived as limited resources. Abundance demands we expand our sense of “me” to “we” and our sense of family to include community. In a scarcity driven world we save money out of fear and distrust. With an abundance mindset we save money because of its potential to benefit us and the community that sustains us. Scarcity leads us to the false choice of “either/or.” Abundance challenges us to be big enough to hold “both/and.”

To spend money we have to save money. Saving is good. It builds up a reservoir of energy. What we need to consider is, “What are we saving it for?” How can those savings be best used to sustain us and that which sustains us?

Another key consideration is value. Some of us are highly skilled at accumulating money but are terrible musicians and would soon whither in the extremes of a 1st grade classroom. Currently schools throughout the US are significantly underfunded yet scarcity minded, yet professional sports salaries continue to climb. Koyaanisqatsi, koyaanisqatsi.

Collectively we have the talent, resources and means to create communities of abundance. Our biggest obstacle? Our selves. What are we saving it for? What are we waiting for? What can we create-together?

Tags: abundance, bonuses, John Lydon, koyaanisqatsi, savings, scarcity

Consuming Thoughts: R

R is for (Re) That Begins the Begin. Michael Stipe: Let’s begin again. Begin the begin. Yes, REM again. It is slowly dawning (at least publicly) on key economic muckety mucks that a straight line growth model for business and the economy driven by relentless consumer spending may not be the direction we want to continue heading in. From No more reliance on consumer spending: Volcker on the Reuters site:

Consumer spending accounted for 70 percent of the U.S. economy before last year’s economic meltdown, a level that Volcker said was sustained only by “the magic of financial engineering.”

“We cannot rebuild the economy to the tune of 70 percent consumption or housing booms. It will just break down again,” Volcker said.

“We cannot have so much consumption.”

Begin the Begin. Volcker’s position is that we have to shift our paradigm from one of endless production and consumption of stuff to one of innovation and creation of value through projects like infrastructure development, “green” technology, energy efficiency and (re)trofitting of existing buildings. For consumers that means a strategic (re)direction of our spending. Instead of accumulating stuff how can we (re)orient our spending to create value?

Can we (re)invest in community?

Can we (re)trofit our homes?

Can we (re)duce our mindless buying?

Can we (re)place waste generating habits with value generating ones?

Can we (re)cycle the waste we do produce and the stuff that we do buy?

Can we (re)pair things instead of throwing them away?

Can we (re)use things and the things in things?

Can we (re)fuse that which is wasteful, poorly designed and, essentially, junk?

Can we (re)direct our spending on things, businesses and services that strengthen the Value Web?

You get the idea. Feel free to add to the (re) list and, please, begin the begin.

Tags: Begin the Begin, consumer spending, energy efficiency, green technology, Michael Stipe, Paul Volcker, recycle, reduce, REM, repair, retrofitting. reduce, reuse, Reuters

Consuming Thoughts: Q

Q is For Quiet When the Noise Relents. Michael Stipe: Answer me a question I can’t itemize, I can’t think clear, you look to me reason, it’s not there…Begin the begin. Competing desires, a hundred brands of breakfast cereal, 1000 channels of TV, millions of blogs, websites, billions of people and a gnawing feeling that most of this has little meaning. Noise. We are surrounded by noise and most of that noise is designed to encourage us to shop, spend, consume over and over again. We rarely get or give our selves the gift of being alone, silent, quiet, still. Gretel Ehrlich wrote The Solace of Open Spaces a wonderful meditation on living in the vast silence that surrounds and holds this noise. In “The Body and the Earth” Wendell Berry refers to our moments of communion with quiet as “atonement”-literally “at one-ment”. To achieve this “at-one-ment” is to practice fidelity to deeper commitments like marriage, family, friends & community and our relationship with place-our home. This is a fidelity that can “preserve the possibility of devotion against the distractions of novelty.” It is local, it is living in appreciation of the abundance brought forth from our commitments to our selves, the place we call home, and to each other.

Turn off the TV, gently return your iPhone to it’s charger. Go, sit down and draw and play with your children. Hug your husband or wife like you mean it and, then, find a place. Your place. Sit and be quiet. Begin the begin. At home. At one. Atone.

Tags: atonement, Begin the Begin, Gretel Ehrlich, iphone, Michael Stipe, The Body and the Earth, The Solace of Open Spaces, Wendell Berry

Consuming Thoughts P

P is for Patterns and Being Present. Roger Daltrey: Listening to you, I get the music, gazing at you, I get the heat, following you, I climb the mountain, I get excitement at your feet. In our excitement to buy, adorn and enhance our selves through commerce it would serve us well to be aware of two things. 1) Our selves: What patterns of consumption drive us to buy and what exactly are we buying? Those of us who do the shopping probably have some well-worn trails we traipse. As I say to my son: pay attention, you might just learn something. 2) Our context: What environmental patterns (designed and emergent) drive us to buy what? Michael Pollan’s intriguing treatise, The Botany of Desire on the control plants exert on our development as people and cultures is well worth a read. As is Biomimicry, a beautiful book by Janine Benyus.

Ms. Benyus also gives us this to ponder: life creates the conditions conducive to life. Spend some time with that one, folks. As a consumer, parent, business person, educator, human being are you creating conditions conducive to life? How do you know?

Tags: Biomimicry, Botany of Desire, Janine Benyus, Michael Pollan, Roger Daltrey

Consuming Thoughts O

O is for Observing How We All Live. Happy Rhodes: Every step I take, I am life. I am life. Or, as John Muir wrote: “When we try to pick out anything by itself we find that it is bound fast by a thousand invisible cords that cannot be broken, to everything in the universe.” The Value Web is one very powerful tool for understanding how we inter-connect, inter-depend and inter-relate. Another beautiful process called the Muir Web was developed by Eric Sanderson for the Mannahatta project. If we were to focus on beavers, the two essential questions of the Muir Web are, “What does a beaver need?” and “What needs a beaver?” Both of these tools point us toward understanding how we relate and can sustain that which is around us and how that which is around us is related to and sustains us. Understand this and you will change what and how you consume. Trust me.

Tags: Eric Sanderson, Happy Rhodes, John Muir, Mannahatta, Muir Web, the Value Web

Consuming Thoughts N

N is for Now and That’s All There Is. Morrisey: You say it’s going to happen now-but when exactly do you mean? Buddhism calls rampant consumerism the world of hungry ghosts. Forever wanting, forever hungry we wander around samsara seeking happiness in things. In the Bible, the book of Matthew states: “You cannot serve both God and Mammon.” Mammon is typified as avarice and greed. Again, choosing wealth and stuff as a path to wholeness and contentment. As consumers we are frequently guided by desire and appetite. We want something so we buy it. We hunger so we consume. In this cycle there is temporary, fleeting comfort-instant and brief happiness. In this cycle we are not fully present. We are led by desire. There is no Now, there is a never-ending future, always just out of reach. We grasp at that next thing and, somehow, happiness still eludes us. Now, welcome to Now. Comfort and happiness are here-Now-in You-in God-in the Present. Continuous, constantly unfolding Now. Take a breath. Let it out slow. Check it out-Now.

Tags: Buddhism, hungry ghosts, mammon, Morissey, samsara, the book of Matthew