Consuming Thoughts: JKL

J is for Jewels in Indra’s Jeweled Net. Roger Waters: Come on you raver, you seer of visions, come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine! What’s really cool (and can really suck) about being a living open system enmeshed within living open systems is that the health of the systems around us (political, economic, ecological) are directly reflected within us. Our individual and collective health also affects and influences these systems. Think about neighborhoods. Healthy neighborhoods are generally populated with people who regularly interact with and support each other. People spend more time, money and energy in the neighborhood. Unhealthy neighborhoods are typified by rising or rampant crime, disconnection and fear. People spend more time, money and energy protecting themselves. What’s the cause? We and the systems we create and effect are. If, as consumers and members of communities, we can find a way for more and more of us to shine, all of Indra’s Jeweled Net will radiate with our joy.

K is for Kindness and What it Begets. Jimmy Buffett: Were you born an asshole, or did you work at it your whole life? At a spoken-word performance back in the day, Henry Rollins told a story about living in New York and how it takes just one asshole to touch off a chain reaction of negativity and acrimony throughout the city. Now, turn it around. Well-targeted or even random acts of kindness and compassion can have the same effect. And, just to set the record straight, I’m not talking about some illusory feel-good bliss binge. I’m talking about a simple everyday practice of just being decent to each other, producing and buying that which does no or little harm, and creating opportunities for each of us feel valued and add value as we go about living our lives.

L is for Love that Binds and Connects. Morihei Ueshiba: A good stance and posture reflect a proper state of mind. I have learned more about love getting beat up in the martial arts than in anything else I have done. Love is connection. The deeper the connection, the deeper the love. And that love can be pretty tough. Scarcity, fear, unbridled anger, distrust all arise from negative reactions to changes around us – off balance – insatiable hunger, addiction, desire to consume more and more stuff come from a search for connection. Our capacity for love is bounded by our understanding of our selves. Our ability to love depends on our stance and posture as we face and engage with the world. Being grounded, centered, aligned and aware allows us to connect first with our selves and then with others. Extending love is enabled through practice, discipline. It’s not easy and it’s not free. Just ask the folks at Burgerville. Their mission is “to serve with love.” Realizing that calls for a culture of constant reflection and improvement. But when it works, you get some darn good burgers and some really good shakes.

Tags: Burgerville, Henry Rollins, Indra's Jeweled Net, Jimmy Buffett, Morihei Ueshiba, Roger Waters, to serve with love

Sustaining Sustainability

Here at the headwaters of 2009 and the backwaters of the first decade of the 21st century I’ve got the crashing power chords of Rush in my head singing: “Changes aren’t permanent but change is.” Da da Da dum. Da da da dum…

The Obama era is ushering itself in and with it a lot of hope and opportunity. However, what are we hoping for? Where is that opportunity going to take us? Is that even, really, an appropriate question anymore? Think about this. Meditate on this. Please.

I don’t think we’re “going” anywhere. “Going” is linear. “Going” is an illusion. 

My sense of things is that we are “happening”. We and everything else is “emerging” just as we, along with everything else is “subsiding”. Change is the name of the game. Change is changing change.

My sense of things is we have to become better at working and playing well with others. By “others” I mean both the people we work and play with on a daily basis as well as the myriad host of sentient beings blessing this planet and universe with their presence. All of God’s creatures. Not just the ones we want on our team, on our plate and in our garden but the ghosts of the Baiji still swimming in the murky hell of the Yangtze River as well.

The Yangtze springs from snowmelt in Tibet, by the way, and may also become a haunting memory one day if the capricious dynamics of global warming have their way…

We need leaders who are more than achievers (although, now more than ever, we need them too.) We need leaders who can ride the wild flux wave creating wakes of opportunity. We need alchemists who can change the leaden, oppresive beat of the industrial, fossil-fueled dirge into glimmering gold sun-shining circles of slam dancing electrons.

We need to re-discover hope. Bask in the warm winter glow of what could be instead of the November drizzle of what can’t. Re-imagine our Selves as the inter-related jewels holding each other in the shimmering embrace of Indra’s net.

Love. Man do we need love. I’m talking about Big Love here (although ain’t nothing wrong with the little one either). The kind of love Morihei Ueshiba was talking about when he said “Aikido is love“. It is the realization of our capacity to open up to and embrace each other, becoming something bigger, transcendent, simultaneously many and one. 

This quote is a good one as well “A good stance and posture reflect a proper state of mind.”

And, finally, for now, let’s forget about “sustaining” our selves. Let’s set our eyes on the prize of flourishing. Sustainability is sustainable when we are looking out for more than just me. Sustainability is sustainable when we are engaged and interwoven, breaking bread and doing good work with one another. The more we can do to benefit those around us, the more potential for us as well.

Forget green. Let’s go full spectrum.

Tags: aikido, baiji, flourishing, global warming, Indra's net, Morihei Ueshiba, obama, Rush, sustainability, Yangtze river